Councillor Mark Allison

Councillor Mark Allison, Leader of the Council, thanked the chair for the invitation. Mark has been a Cllr for nearly 20 years and is proud of his connection with the local area. He was born locally in St Helier Hospital and grew up in St Helier area before moving to Mitcham. Mark said that Merton is a great community but there are huge challenges. Morden is one of the more disadvantaged areas and over the last decade huge progress through improving schools, a vital element in improving life chances, a new leisure centre and maintaining council tax support. A lot of this progress has been undone by the impact of the COVID pandemic has hitting areas like Morden harder than other places.

As part of a mixed race family Mark said he is passionate about fairness and being inclusive, including appointing the most diverse cabinet in Merton’s history. As Leader he plans to celebrate Merton’s diversity, as with Black History Month currently.

Mark has been Leader since November so has only experienced the role during the COVID pandemic. Mark launched Merton Together to recognise how many in the community wanted to step up and help their neighbours. Mark thanked everyone who got involved in responding to COVID as their efforts have made a huge difference. Merton Council has worked with the NHS and other partners to help keep people safe but of course many families have lost love ones or had their circumstances changed and their lives may never be the same again. Supporting these households through this will be a major priority.

As a result of the major changes for many we launched the Your Merton engagement exercise to listen to residents about what they value and what their ambitions are for the borough. We are still analysing the results but it is clear that residents value their community, their local open spaces, and were much more conscious of their local area, especially their local high streets. Mark said he is still in listening mode and wants to hear want people have to say. Three of the issues have come out of the listening exercise we have started to address:

• Concerns about the cost of living – which is why we will not be raising parking charges
• The need for better homes – being isolated in poor housing has had a huge impact on some so the council will be investing in development of affordable homes
• People want to feel safe – although Merton is a low crime area people want to feel safe. £1m upgrade in CCTV coverage

Mark said he knows that there are other local issues that will need addressing and wants to work together, as we did during the pandemic, to tackle the challenges ahead. Mark said he was proud of Merton and Merton’s community, and wants to build on residents priorities.

A resident asked about the South London Waste Plan Public Hearing held at the Civic Centre on 2 September where it was reported that Merton did not have any air quality data for the waste plan sites, and the two inspectors were surprised. The Merton Environmental Health officer said that new sensors were being installed by the end of September and the data would be available live on the website. The resident wanted to know if the sensors have been installed, and if the data is published now. Mark did not know so offered to follow up. Mark said there was generally good story for Air Quality in Merton at the moment with more school streets introduced than any other boroughs.

FOLLOWING THE MEETING this update was provided by colleagues:

Merton are in the process of rolling out one of London’s largest AQ monitoring networks. This is funded through an external grant and will include 68 Breathe London sensors and Vivacity traffic monitors. The Vivacity monitors are starting to come online and the Breathe London Monitors are currently being calibrated and we’ll start to see these on lampposts at the beginning of November, following a delay caused by the worldwide lack of microchips.

The industrial estates across Merton, including Weir Road, were included in this monitoring. Data will be published live on Breathe London, with open access to the public, from about a week after they are installed. In addition and specifically around Weir Road we have secured funding to work with the waste transfer stations and how they monitor and react to exceedances. This project has just been through procurement and we have appointed a consultant to work with us, the Environment Agency and the businesses.

For the South London Waste Plan the next step in the independent examination process is for the four boroughs to carry out a 7-week public consultation on all the proposed amendments arising from the independent planning inspector’s examination. The Inspectors’ will take the consultation responses into account for their final report. The dates for this public consultation are yet to be agreed; please check the examination website for updates and all other relevant documents.