The Wandsworth Voice has been a little silent of late. 

But now we’re back in action and here are some of the issues and causes that we shall be espousing and exploring over the summer …. and of course beyond.

1.  SPORT

The profound irony of Wandsworth Borough vaunting the sporting success of local children – they actually won The London Youth Games Jubilee Trophy in competition with people from the other 32 London Boroughs.

http://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/news/article/12917/wandsworth_scores_youth_games_hat-trick

Yet at the same time this sometimes rotten borough remains committed to shutting down the Battersea Sports Centre.  This is to our minds an inconsistent policy – so much more on this in the next weeks and months.

2.  ROADS

Lots of activity on the revised traffic routing through and around the town centre – the results of last Autumn’s Consultation have been published. With quite a lot of detail.

https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/wandsworth-town-centre?cid=wandsworth-town-centre
We clearly applaud the fact that such a consultation is taking place – but now comes the time for more detail to be shared with all concerned residents and businesses.  Beyond the broad sweep of information on new traffic management schemes we do now need a precise indication of what is going to happen in and to every single local road and street in order be able to comment properly.  

So that’s what we’ll be campaigning for – bringing this to the attention of the very many interested parties.

3.  The Ram Quarter Development 

The Editors of THE WANDSWORTH VOICE were 2 of the 3 local people (yes – only one other person!) who attended a helpful presentation on Wednesday July 8 on the site itself. Involving the developers, the builders and a representative of Wandsworth Borough Council.

http://www.ram-brewery.co.uk/TRQNL.pdf

Very clear and very helpful – but one big issue hit us ….. In the next weeks and months as the site is excavated some 70+ trucks per day will leaving Wandsworth by road to go to a landfill/processing site in Stratford, East London.  Already busy and polluted roads will become even busier and even more polluted.

This does appear to be at odds with the overall positive attempts of the developer to be environmentally-sensitive.

We wonder whether the river waste barges – which dock on the Thames but 300 yards from the Ram Quarter – might not be an option well worth examining.  And this before the multitude of traffic movements that will happen once the construction phase itself starts.