Radlett and Thameslink

The “Thameslink Programme” is a £5.5 billion programme to increase the capacity of the existing railway that serves Radlett by providing brand new 12 car trains. The Government finally approved the funding for the project earlier this year for the Northern part of the line from Bedford to London Bridge but not the Southern part to Brighton. After a long running campaign which I initiated over 15 years ago, Radlett will now be included in the programme so that our platforms will be extended to accommodate the 12 car trains and services to new destinations such as Sevenoaks will stop here.

Inevitably with such a huge engineering project, there will be disruption to services but Network Rail and the operators, First Capital Connect, have committed themselves to managing the work so that it should always be possible to get to and from London at weekends (when much of the major work will be done) although it will sometimes mean using different stations such as Kentish Town or West Hampstead rather than St Pancras.

The overall work will be in three phases, ending in March 2009, December 2011 and December 2015 (completion):

Phase 1 (March 2009) will see the end of services to Moorgate and some extra through services to Sevenoaks. From January 2009 the line between St Pancras and Blackfriars will be closed every weekday evening from 2230 until 0430 and most weekends until Spring 2011. Work will start on a completely new Blackfriars Station (located over the river) and the platforms used by Southeast trains will be closed for three years. FCC will have an extra 23 brand new “Class 377” trains operating from Bedford to London from 1 March 2009.

Phase 2 (December 2011) will include major work at Farringdon station, including a new footbridge, large concourse and platform extensions plus some work for the Crossrail Project (also now going ahead). As a result, Farringdon will be closed most weekends. It is during this phase, in 2010, that Radlett station's platforms will be extended and 12 car trains will be stopping here by Spring 2011.

Phase 3 (December 2015) will include a completely new station at London Bridge which will be built starting immediately after the Olympics in 2012. The completed project will see 24 trains per hour running through the central core from St Pancras to London Bridge although there are still some issues to be resolved concerning signalling to enable this to work. New destinations from Radlett (not all direct but some with just one change) will include Dartford, Ashford, East Grinstead, Eastbourne, Guildford, Horsham and Littlehampton.

A Secondary School for Radlett and Shenley?

As a parent who has just been through the secondary transfer process, I have become very aware of the anomaly that, although we have a wide range of nurseries and three infant or junior schools, there is no local state secondary school in the Parish of Aldenham. Over and over again I have heard other parents asking the same question – why don't we have a local secondary school?

Children attending nurseries, then infants and junior schools in Radlett often spend the years from age four to ten together making many friends locally. Then, when they have to move up to secondary schools, they find that they are split from these friends because they are forced to travel to secondary schools in Bushey, Watford, St Albans, Potters Bar and even further afield. For example, the 30 children who left Year 6 at Newberries School this July are now going to no less than 16 different secondary schools!

Hertfordshire County Council, which is responsible for our schools, has a rule of thumb that there should be 1,000 children in a locality before they could consider building a new school. At present there are around 400 pupils in the Parish attending state secondary schools so this is not enough. But there are also around 300 pupils from the Parish of Shenley attending state secondary schools and an unknown number (to me) from the two parishes attending local private secondary schools. At the current rate of growth of population in this area it is clear that the magic 1,000 number could be reached within the next few years.

There are two other major issues. Firstly, the increasing difficulties for Radlett & Shenley children to get places at secondary schools in surrounding areas. Until the early 1980s the majority of Radlett children transferred to one of the two nearest schools, Queens or Bushey Meads. However, entry to these schools (and the others in Garston and Watford) is now decided on the results of an entrance exam rather than on proximity to the schools, so local children must compete against others from a wide area of Hertfordshire and North London. This means it is increasingly difficult to get a place at the more popular schools; for example, in 2007, Parmiters School in Garston received 1,318 applications for its 185 places.

Over the past 25 years increasing numbers of children from Radlett & Shenley have been able to get places in schools in St Albans, where there is no entrance exam and the main rule is proximity to the school. But this year has seen no Radlett children get places at Marlborough School (the nearest school to Radlett) except from Fairfield School which has had a special arrangement providing up to 15 places for Radlett children. This arrangement has now been cancelled as the school can now easily fill its places from the increasing numbers of children moving into the new houses being built in and around St Albans who are therefore nearer to the school than anyone in Radlett or Shenley.

The second major issue is transport. Until a few years ago, secondary school pupils received free transport to school if their school was more than three miles away. All secondary schools are more than three miles away from Radlett but school buses are no longer free. The majority of children attending these secondary schools travel by more than 20 special school buses which stop in Radlett and Shenley. Some others travel by train (e.g. to Verulam in St Albans) and many others by car (e.g. to Dame Alice Owen in Potters Bar, for which there is no school bus). There is a significant cost to families for school buses or other forms of transport as well as an overall cost to the environment in terms of pollution and traffic congestion.

It's time for a vision:

Why can't we have a new secondary school located in Radlett or Shenley, primarily for the benefit of children living in the Parishes of Aldenham and Shenley? The main feeder schools would be Fairfield and Newberries in Radlett and Shenley School who have 150 Year 6 leavers between them each year, plus some from Clore Shalom and the Hertsmere Jewish School (although many of these will go on to Yavneh College in Borehamwood). The total number of pupils through to the 6th Form would therefore eventually be between 800 and 1,000. There would be no compulsion as some parents will still want their children to try to get places elsewhere, but I am sure that the majority would be happy with a local school.

Depending upon the exact location, it could be expected that a significant proportion (25-30%?) of the children would be able to walk or cycle to and from the school, thus greatly reducing the environmental effects from school buses and cars. Possible locations include the site earmarked for a secondary school in the 1970s (Watford Road, opposite Fairfield School), the field next to Newberries School (which is halfway between Shenley and Radlett) or, possibly, the site in Porters Park, Shenley which was also allocated to a new school when the estate was built. Although some of these sites are within the Green Belt, it is accepted policy that this is a suitable use of Green Belt land and many of the secondary schools in Hertfordshire have been built on Green Belt in the past.

The final question is how much will this cost and who will pay for it? The Government programme “Building Schools for the Future” is enabling the re-building and re-furbishment of all secondary schools in Hertfordshire over a fifteen year period, starting in this area in 2015. There is already a precedent set for building a new school (rather than just refurbishing existing ones) under this programme in Stevenage so, if we can make a strong enough case, the new Radlett & Shenley Secondary School could become a reality within the next 7 to 8 years.

If you share this vision and would like to help make it happen, please contact me and let's see what we can do!

Parking in Radlett is getting worse and worse. Despite the regular appearance of Hertsmere's busy Traffic Wardens, people do not seem to understand - or perhaps to care - that there are rules about parking and that they should abide by them. I am not myself overly fond of rules and regulations for the sake of them but the parking restrictions have been developed over a period of some years mainly for safety reasons.

The worst offender is Tesco. Despite their asking for permission to park lorries outside of their store and it being refused, they continue to bring in their large lorries each and every day. these lorries block up three or more shoppers' parking spaces and the pallets and boxes fill up the pavement. Tesco's lorries have been responsible for much damage to "street furniture" as well, mainly when turning round. They have demolished a bus shelter, phone boxes and caused damage to various posts and signs. Apart from their own lorries, there are also deliveries from PCL and 3665, both of whom usually park in the nearby bus stops (also an offence of course), thus causing buses to stop in the middle of the street - causing traffic jams - and passengers to get on and off the bus in the middle of the road. How dangerous is that?

There are a number of other places where parking is particularly dangerous, such as on the slip road to the main Newberries Car Park. The next pictures show two typical examples of this, despite the double yellow lines people stop here "just" to "pop in" to a shop or two. But they usually turn on their hazard warning "I can park anywhere" lights, so that's all right then...

Then there are bus stops. And places where people simply stop to use a cash machine and happily leave there cars blocking the whole road...

And what is it about parking on the kerb, whether just to leave it parked there or "just" to load or unload something regardless that traffic can't actually get past you...

And finally, does it ever occur to someone that someone else may want to get in or out of a drive that you have blocked?

I will return to this subject in due course....

There is so much going on in our village these days but I never get the chance to write about it!

The campaign to bring back our Fire Station continues. A petition demanding its re-opening is going round and already has 5,000 signatures (not bad for a community of 7,000 people!). But will it ever happen now, six months after it was closed it looks difficult.

Major concerns about waste collection now that it is only every two weeks, alternating with recycling collections. I must say that we find it difficult to fill our waste wheelie bin although it has begun to smell a bit. We manage to recycle most things now that the Council collects plastic too (although they don't seem to understand which types they can and can't collect). But I wish they would collect glass. The main complaint about waste collection is about food leftovers. We put most of these into our composter/wormary and the worms do a great job of breaking it all down into useful compost for our vegetable patch. I am sure many more people could do this too.

I am very much involved in planning the annual Radlett Festival (Sunday 10 June). It's going to be a great event this year so let's hope the weather is kind.

So they did it..

The Hertfordshire County Councillors voted on Tuesday (28 March) to close down Radlett Fire Station. The vote was 39 to 34 which was close but not close enough to save it. All the other elements of the "Community Safety Plan" were also voted through - including the closure of Bovingdon Fire Station, reducing overnight cover at Watford and getting rid of one of the three high-lift platforms and stationing the remaining two at Watford and Stevenage.

I joined the Radlett firemen and the Save Radlett Fire Station campaigners on a special Routemaster double decker bus to travel to County Hall in Hertford to attend the Council meeting. We had the overt support of our local police too, with a blue light escort part of the way!

The voting was a travesty of democracy. There had been over 3,000 letters and emails objecting to the proposals (nearly 2,000 objecting to the Radlett proposals alone). Apart from the individual residents, such letters also came from the Parish and Borough Councils and from our MP, James Clappison. But the Councillors took absolutely no notice whatsoever of the objections. It came down to mindless party politics. The opposition Labour, Lib-Dem and (lone) Green Councillors asked some searching questions about many aspects of the Plan, without getting any sensible answers in most cases. But then the "donkey" vote of the majority Conservative Councillors just voted for every aspect of the Plan regardless. With the honourable exception of Martin Saunders (who represents Radlett) and his counterpart from Bovingdon, who both made principled stands against the closures.

But there is a small light at the end of the tunnel. Instead of forcing the fire station to close at the end of the month (today!), it was given a three month reprieve to enable the Parish Council to come up with some funding to keep it open. Of course, the Parish Council can't actually run a fire station legally, but there is probably some waay it can part fund the service (I hope so anyway, as do most of the local residents I'm sure).

There is a meeting tonight of the Save Radlett Fire Station Committee - I hope they come up with something...