HAG Talk: Sandycombe Lodge

Ham Amenities Group (HAG) arranges an interesting of local history talks that I would go to even if I was not involved in the group; I produced the poster on the right.

The talk on Sandycombe Lodge took us slightly away from Ham and just across the water to East Twickenham where England's most famous painter, JMW Turner, designed a house for his father and himself.

The lodge is now run by a charity, Turner’s House Trust, which aims to restore and conserve Sandycombe Lodge for the nation. I was able to visit it a couple of years ago as part of Open House London and had seen some of their work at first hand.

The talk covered the design of the house, which drew heavily on the work of Sir John Soane, the restoration work done in recent years and the life of Turner, father and son, in the house.

It was his father's main home, he walked into Central London to work!, while the artist spent most of his time away touring abroad and staying as a guest in country houses.

Little was said about Turner's paintings as there is no evidence that he did any painting there though he did several of the Arcadian Thames which had drawn him to build a house there.

The talk was detailed and fascinating and there were lots of pictures to help tell the story. I liked the little things like it was common to draw brick buildings as if they had been rendered, i.e. to not draw the details of the rows of bricks, and so it had been assumed that Sandycombe Lodge had been rendered when new (not later) but the detailed analysis of the penny struck pointing shows that it was originally bare brick.

Another minor but fascinating detail was the Sandycombe Road became Sandycoombe Road (with two 'o's) because of the confusion with another Sandycombe Road in Kew.

Little things like that kept me enthralled throughout.

Possibly due to the poster (!), the talk was very popular and there were people standing at the back with all the seats taken. I am quite happy to stand for long periods, lots of practise in bars, and gave my reserved seat up for somebody who appreciated it more.

I really enjoyed that talk and I learned a lot from it but what I enjoyed most was seeing a full room and gaining the satisfaction of knowing that HAG had arranged another great talk.

HAG talk: Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck

I had never heard of Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck, and I am not that interested in history but I am interested in the place that I live and I always find HAG talks interesting and informative so I booked a place at this one. I also did the poster.

Mary Adelaide lived 1833 to 1897, a period when the royal families married each other with great regularity. As a result she was both granddaughter of George III and grandmother of Edward VIII and George VI.

While she was never in the centre of the Royal Family she was close enough to benefit from it, she was paid under the Civil List (or that period's equivalent) and was given grace and favour houses.

She lived for several years in Cambridge Cottage on Kew Green, which is now part of Kew Gardens where it is a popular venue for weddings. She also lived in White Lodge in Richmond Park for a while so she had strong connections to Richmond. One of the many things she did locally was open the Terrace Gardens next to the river.

She became known as the People's Princess because of the things she did and she was helped in this in Victoria's almost complete absence from public life due to her mourning for Albert. Mary Adelaide was one of the most active royals at that time and was popular because of this.

She is commemorated by a monument just outside Richmond Gate, somewhere between the busy road and the brambles. This site was originally chosen after a full sized model, in wood, of the monument was tried in various locations in Richmond. Plans are being developed to restore the monument and to remodel the setting so that it can be appreciated by people passing through the gate.

HAG talk: Ham's Modern Architecture

My involvement with Ham Amenities Group (HAG) is not that much to boast of but I do get to produce the posters for the events. An upside of this is that I get to know about the talks early and can be one of the first to book.

I was very keen to hear this talk for several reasons. I am interested in Ham and in Modern Architecture so this talk could have been made for me, and in a way it was. I had heard Richard Woolf talk about local architecture before and it was that which made me suggest him as a speaker for HAG.

I did not know beforehand that Richard also does lecturing and that came though in a superbly composed and delivered presentation.

The content was both detailed and authoritative. Richard certainly knew his subject and was enthusiastic about it too. That enthusiasm had taken him all over Ham and down no-through-road, like Sheridan Road, which I thought that only I walked down (for my Ham Photos blog).

Richard hit all the right buttons for me in the talk, and I would have been delighted with it whatever opinions he had, so it was a bonus that he seemed to agree with me on almost everything and as he was the expert that was even more gratifying.

The aim of the HAG talks is to interest and inform residents in some aspect of Ham and Richard Woolf did that magnificently. We are already trying to find a way to get him to do another talk.

HAG talk: The History of Ham

There was something of a mix-up over this talk. Originally it was going to be called The History of Ham and then we (I am on the HAG Committee) agreed that we wanted the speaker to do more than one talk and that we should ask him to focus on medieval Ham in hist first one. So I did the poster accordingly. But, somehow, the message did not get to the speaker and he delivered a talk on The History of Ham instead.

The room was packed and I ended up standing against a wall so as not to be in anyone's way. I do not mind standing at all and in doing so I could see the screen clearly.

The presentation was not so easy to listen to though because the alarm went off when somebody opened a window for fresh air and despite several desperate phone calls we were unable to turn it off. A few people left because of this but that just released some chairs for other people who were standing. The room was packed.

All that sounds like a disaster and it could have been were it not for the brilliant and entertaining talk. Gordon Elsden used the old border of the parish of Ham as the basis of his story and he beat the bounds and told tales of the places that we passed as he did so. The talk was rich with information , anecdotes and pictures. It was also very well presented and I was enthralled throughout.

Many of these stories and pictures will appear in Gordon's soon to be published book Remarkable Ham - The Untold Story which he showed us a copy of prompting much interest. I will be getting a copy when it comes out and so will many other people who, like me, loved his talk.

I also hope that Gordon has enough material for a second HAG talk one day.

Traditional Craftsmanship Meets High Technology to produce outstanding houses

If ever I was going to go to a talk then this was it. In Traditional Craftsmanship Meets High Technology Peter Huf told the story of the Huf Haus with a strong slant towards the house almost completing construction less than a minute away.

The talk was arranged by Ham Amenities Group (HAG) which I find myself the publicity for, This meant that I got to do the poster for the event that was on display at the library, where the talk was given, and also the community noticeboard on Ham Parade. I like to think that my publicity contributed to the room being full to overflowing with a few disappointed people left outside. They should have paid attention to the notice at the bottom of my poster recommending that people book.

I should have read my own poster too and then I would have arrived for a 7:30pm start rather than the 7:00pm I was expecting.

The plus side of being ultra-early was a seat in the front row and a chance to have a quick word with Peter Huf in which I was able to compliment him on his 1 Like No Other shirt which I had recognised from some distance.

I had seen Peter Huf talk before, way back in 2011, and expected something similar and was very pleasantly surprised about how different it was this time.

Because I had seen some of it before, and also because I was paying lots of attention to what was being said and shown, I took only a few notes. These are them.

Design the house for the plot. A Huf Haus is built around the trees and because it is made of timber it talks to them. The point of the garden is to appreciate it from the house, not from the street.

Design features like roof overhangs and automated external blinds that follow the sun help to keep the houses very comfortable to live in while providing remarkably high levels of sustainability, far more than any existing standard requires.

The heavy wooden beams (they support concrete floors) use structural protection rather than chemical protection. For example, they do not touch the ground or the concrete floors. This also stops sound travelling through the house.

The electric cables in the house are shielded (Cat 7) to prevent electromagnetic radiation leaking into the house. There were several examples like that which showed just how much care and attention Huf Haus pay to the quality of life of those living in their houses.

Planner like Huf Haus as they are built exactly to plan.

Peter said that the planning system in the UK is too democratic leading to mediocrity as bold schemes are opposed. We have had an example of this locally with the third Huf Haus being delayed by an appeal being lodged by two residents against the planning permission granted by Richmond Council. They lost the appeal but it added an unnecessary delay to a simple project that will replace a very average house with a special one.

It was a very informative and uplifting talk that prompted many questions from the (mostly) friendly audience and, just like the last time, left me wondering what I had to do to get my own Huf Haus. I've not worked out how to do that yet so I'll just have to settle for visiting them whenever I can.

You can see more about the coming of Huf Haus to Ham and Petersham on my Ham Photos Blog.

My final act as Chairman of the Kingston upon Thames Society

It was not an easy decision to make but after a year as Chairman of the Kingston upon Thames Society I descided to resign.

The reason was simple, there were many things that I wanted to do as Chairman but I had not found the time to do them and had, on more occasions than I would have liked, had not even found the time to do some of the basic things like setting agendas and reviewing minutes.

My final act was my report to the AGM and that was another symptom of the lack of time (and/or my ability to manage it) in that instead of reading a typed report I made some quick notes in the pub immediately before the meeting.

These were only a guide and I said a lot more than is written there. One of my colleagues in the audience took notes and from these wrote up the report that I should have written. Thanks, David.

I am pleased to say that it was well received.

I have since done a grant application (it is mentioned in the report) and that asked for a copy of our last annual report and this was the closest thing that we had to it so I took David's notes and added to them slightly. This is the final report, my final act as Chairman of the Kingston upon Thames Society.

Chairman's Report for 2015

Matthew Rees opened his report by saying that was not standing for re-election because of pressure of his full-time work which meant that he had not been able to devote as much time to the role as he had hoped and the role deserved.

He intended to still actively support the Society as manager of its website and would be involved with Julia Rees in the running of Heritage Open Days.

Planning Applications

In his review of the Committee’s scrutiny of planning applications, Matthew thanked Howard Shepherd for his timely and professional contributions.

While mixed views had been expressed on some of the applications, a consensus whether or not to give support generally had been obtained, sometimes after lengthy discussions. There had been several major schemes to consider during the year.

The Old Post Office (TOPO) application had taken up much of the Committee’s time and in Matthew’s view, while the latest revision of the plans was an improvement, the 16-storey tower block was still too tall.

The Eden Walk proposals were good in many respects, and the developers had put a lot of skill and effort in producing the proposals, but he felt that the buildings also were too tall and too massive for the site.

The Committee generally had supported Tesco’s proposals for the old government buildings site at Tolworth as housing was an appropriate use for the disused site but now that a new owner was involved, its future was unclear.

While the proposals for the Tolworth Tower area generally had gained the support of the Committee on architectural grounds, it was steadfast in its opinion that RBK needed to address the very real concerns of local residents.

Mixed views had been expressed on RBK’s ongoing Mini-Holland proposals, especially on the Boardwalk project, and it remained to be seen what the final scheme would be like.

Members

A wide range of public meetings had been organized in 2015, and Jennifer Butterworth’s efforts on this were much appreciated.

He felt that the modification to the format to allow more time for discussion with members had been a success though that did not mean agreement was always reached and there had been some robust debates, particularly over the Tolworth sites. Matthew welcomed this as he wanted more people to be more engaged with what was happening in Kingston.

He also welcomed the emails that he had got from members during the year either to comment on applications or to make suggestions for the Society.

The website had got better with more information but it had been a struggle to keep this up to date. Matthew hoped that he would have more time to do this in the coming year.

Heritage Open Days

He regretted that, because funding from RBK was not available in time, it had been impossible to produce a printed brochure for the 2015 event. Despite this, the number of people visiting the various sites was about the same as in previous years and the feedback was encouraging. Matthew hoped that a leaflet would be available for the 2016 event.

Matthew also hoped to be able to expand on HODs next year though he was not yet able to confirm what these might be.

Townscape Awards

It had been worth running the Townscape Awards again this year and six awards had been presented, following nineteen nominations from the membership. Brian Godding and George Rome Innes were to be congratulated for the great deal of effort they had put into the selection process and presentation event.

Matthew said that with the Society spending much of the year opposing large schemes that would change the character of Kingston it was good to be able to celebrate some of the good things.

Closing Remarks

Matthew thanked all the outgoing members of the Committee for their work in the past year and wished them well for the challenges they faced in trying to protect the Borough from inappropriate developments.

He said that his main concern was that lots of extra housing and shopping was proposed which would bring more people in to the main centres but no new  infrastructure was proposed to accommodate this. A lot of hope was being put in Crossrail2 but that had limited scope and was many years away. There were also things like schools and hospitals to consider.

These major developments did little to accommodate the needs of existing residents. They provided no new facilities for them and were changing the character of the Royal Borough, which is the reason most of us moved here in the first place. 

Joining the Kingston Conversation

Kingston Conversation was a series of meetings held with the public by the Leader of the Council, Cllr. Kevin Davis, and as somebody who is active politically and locally it was very much the sort of event for me.

The logistics were not ideal, i.e. I had a ticket for the Wales v Australia game at Twickenham that afternoon, but the 10am start and convenient location (Tudor Drive Library Hall) meant that I could get there.

The event started with a flood of old memories as the only other times that I had been to that hall was to take and collect toddlers from the playgroup there. They are now in their twenties.

While billed as a conversation the format was more Q&A, which I guess it was always going to be with about sixty people there. Kevin Davis started the session of with a short introduction on the changes facing Kingston, most of which had been said several times in several places so was not new and then he and a small panel of other councillors fielded our questions.

As usual I took notes of what was asked, what was said and what I thought at the time and I have restructured and added to those while writing this up. So none of this is attributable and all mistakes are mine.

Communicating with the public

Kevin Davis (KD) wants to improve communication with residents and while this series of meetings was welcome it could only reach a very small percentage of the public.

The recent whole-borough survey had had a good response by the standard of most surveys, around 8% I think, but was still a low number and the nature of surveys is that they can get simple answers to simple questions (such as, what shampoo do you use?) but are not very good at dealing with more complex matters (such as, how should Kingston grow?).

With the decline of local newspapers and Councils being forbidden to produce their own it is hard for them to engage with the public and that leads to bad decisions being made and reasonable decisions being explained badly.

Growth in Kingston

Kingston Council (RBK) seems to be saying two stories about growth simultaneously, one that it is being forced on us by the London Plan and two that is something that RBK is campaigning hard for.

Nobody has told us why Kingston has been identified in the London Plan for significant growth despite its physical constraints (Royal Parks and the river) and weak transport infrastructure. I suspect that RBK councillors had a large part to play in this but they are keeping quiet about it now.

Growth is a positive word and that helps to mask the negative aspects such as lost space, changed charters and even busier trains, buses and roads. It is difficult to see what the benefits of this growth will be to the existing residents of Kingston.

The large number of new homes that we keep being told about is only a target and there will be no sanctions if it is not met.

Major changes are being considered to accommodate this growth, such as moving the bus and railway stations and remodelling some of the main roads.

Growth does not necessarily mean more tall buildings and we may even lose some of the ugly ones that we already have. There was some debate on whether there should be a planning document specific to tall buildings. KD was against the idea because it could encourage developers to build to the limits, e.g. if we say a maximum of nine storeys in the town centre then everything will be exactly nine storeys. I would hope that we could develop a plan with some flexibility that would cope with this.

The good news?

Almost all of the questions raised issues around the negative aspect of growth, e.g. over-crowded trains and a lack of school places, and while that is understandable it did beg the big question, what is in it for us?

One person asked just that and the answer was Crossrail 2, regeneration of the council housing stock and transformation (!) of sports and leisure. So there was some good news for some people but none of those benefits were particularly attractive to me; I want some small theatres and for RBK to make more of our heritage assets.

There were some fine words from RBK on heritage but the evidence is against them. We have recently lost the Penny School and the TOPO scheme would smother the Post Office and Telephone Exchange.

Transforming Kingston Council

Kevin Davis said that the budgets cuts on the way would have a dramatic impact on RBK and it would be no longer possible to just implement across the board marginal cuts, the Council would have to think about stopping doing somethings altogether, e.g. the discretionary services like Libraries.

RBK is also looking for more revenue generation ideas but, for some reason, did not seem that keen on collecting more traffic penalties even though these are justifies penalties, i.e. somebody has done something wrong, and the alternatives, like paying more for council services, are more like general taxation.

One of the cost-cutting measures going through is the closure of all of the council's care homes as the private sector is cheaper. That worried me on two grounds; care not cost should be the driving factor and RBK needs to ask why the private sector is cheaper. If, as I suspect, they are cheaper because they pay their staff less then that is a problem for Kingston as we want care workers who are paid enough to be able to live here.

The final part of the meeting took me right back to working at Lambeth Council ten years ago with RBK extolling the virtues of shared services and promising to break down silos. Not only are these old ideas, they are bad ideas. Shared services only work when there are economies of scale and very few council services have this, e.g. one teacher is needed for every class of 30 infants, and silos cannot, and should not, be broken as that is where skills and domain knowledge grow.

RBK are promising transformation but they sounded very naive and gave me no confidence that they had the slightest idea of what transformation looks like or how to achieve it.

Ham: Know Your Place, another fine talk by Sir David Williams

A talk on Ham is always of interest to me and I had another opportunity to go to one thanks to Richmond Council's Know Your Place season of talks.

The Ham: Know Your Place talk was given by Sir David Williams with the subject Open Spaces in Ham and Petersham, Pictures, History and Management. This was the third time that I had heard Sir David talk this year so I knew that I was going to learn some interesting things, especially on the history of some of the places. One of his earlier talks, The History of Ham Riverside Lands, had covered some similar territory and that had been a fabulous talk.

But first I had to get there and I made bit of a Horlicks of the travel. I was working in Leatherhead that day and had made the mistake of buying a return ticket to Kingston. My first plan was to buy a single from Leatherhead to Richmond but the queue at Leatherhead for the one ticket machine there was far too long so I used my return ticket to get me on a train to Clapham Junction.

The second plan was to use one of the check-in Oyster card readers on the platform at Clapham Junction to start a new journey with my Oyster card. Unfortunately Clapham Junction does not have Oyster card readers on the platform, presumably because there is no interchange with the Underground there.

The next plan was to exit at Richmond using my Kingston ticket in the hope that it would let me out thinking that I was just ending my journey a little early. It didn't. Finally I showed my ticket to the person on the barriers and she let me out. A 65 bus from there, and a good walk from Sandpits Road got me to Ham Library at 6:50pm, in good time for the talk starting at 7pm. It all worked out well in the end.

Sir David took us on a logical journey through the major local open spaces from Petersham Park (part of Richmond Park) to Ham Lands via places like Petersham Meadows, Petersham Common, Great South Avenue and Ham Common Woods.

With words and pictures he told us about their history and their current status, particularly how they are managed. He talked about how the deer and cows help to maintain the vegetation in Petersham Park  and Petersham Meadows and how Petersham Common benefits from active management (funded by a Trust) while Petersham Copse suffers most from not being managed.

Management can be a mixed blessing and the recent major clearance works in Ham Common Woods had not been appreciated by a lot of people, myself included. Sir David was able to explain the context of these works which helped me to understand them even if I did not yet agree with them. The Woods had been an open space as recently as the 1920s and had been left to develop as a woodland rather than being managed and so there were some issues with dead and overcrowded trees.

There were many historical photographs to illustrate the talk and the one that made the most impression on me was of young girls dressed in their Sunday best outside of an orphanage on Ham Common, a building that was a hunting lodge and is now a collection of apartments.

Management came up again when talking about Ham Common and St' George's Field both of which suffered to some extent from the proliferation of signs and other urban clutter. I agreed with Sir David on that one.

The final problem area that he mentioned was the Thames Young Mariners site that all but divides Ham Lands, only the tow path connects the two sections. Surrey County Council own the site but make little use of it and had not been a good neighbour, as their major clearance of their land had shown a few years ago. That had caused The Friends of Ham Lands to be formed and me to join them.

It was, as I had expect it to be, a thoroughly entertaining, interesting and informative talk and it helped me to understand a little better the place that I have chosen to make my home.

Hidden Ham

For eight years now I have been compiling the Ham Photos blog. This basically consists of me walking around the place that I live and taking photos of the things that I like.

I do a lot of walking and I take a lot of photos and so far just over 2,000 photos have been added to the blog. I once thought that I would run out of things to photograph but that is clearly not true and there are enough changes happening for me to find new interesting things.

Thanks to this blog, I was asked by the Ham Amenities Group (HAG) to do a presentation on Hidden Ham. The title was their suggestions but I liked it as it gave me a means of selecting photos. I took a wide-definition of the word "hidden" and used it to mean things that are hidden because they are out of site, in plain site but easily overlooked or are now gone.

It took me a little while to decide on the precise structure of my presentation but I liked the way that it developed, I started with a few slides explaining what a blog is, what I am trying to do with Ham Photos and the mechanics of producing it. Over the eight years I have used three cameras so far.

I then did a quick-fire run through of eighty of the photos with brief stories of why I took each one and where it was before opening it up with a quiz of twenty more photos.

One of the early photos was of these elephants and I was very surprised that several people in the room did not know about them. They were pretty well hidden but were so unusual that I just assumed that word of them had spread everywhere.

Normally the only way to see them is from the top deck of a 65 bus where they are still heavily obscured by trees but I was so desperate to get a picture of them that I held my camera above the front gate and took the picture blindly.

I picked this photo because I liked the story that went with it.

I assumed that the unusual box-like structure was part of the chimney and said so when I posted the picture. Then, much later, I got an email from the man who used to live there who explained that he had built the structure to house a water tank. I duly updated the description.

One of the nice things about running the blog is that I get emails from people who have moved away from Ham or who had family who lived here and who are delighted to find photos of the place. Usually it is the common things that they like, things like shops they used to go to, rather than the grand buildings.

This anglo-dutch sign was in the quiz and I was not surprised that nobody recognised it. The sign is quite small and is around knee-height so is very easy to miss.

I enjoyed producing and giving the presentation and I was thrilled with the reception that it got. The meeting room at Ham Library was full and there were many comments and questions as I went through the 100 photos.

I've posted the presentation on slideshare and it has had a few reads already.

I could be tempted to do something like this again. I just need to take another 2,000 photos first!

Matthew's Manifesto for the Kingston upon Thames Society

When I took over as Chairman of the Kingston upon Thames Society in January I agreed to give a talk to one of our monthly public meetings about what I wanted to do in my new role and circumstances dictated that I would do this at the very next meeting in February!

This was challenging for a couple of reasons, it did not give me much time to get my thoughts together and I had already committed to giving another talk a couple of days later that also need quite a bit of preparation.

I managed to find an afternoon to work on this the weekend before I had to give it and after some juggling with ideas I was pleased with the structure that emerged. I knew most of the things that I wanted to say but the trick was to say them in the right order (and in the right way) to make a coherent and relevant story.

I started with just a few words about myself that were relevant to my new role, followed that with a few examples of places and building that I liked (a good excuse to dig out some holiday pictures) and then a few comments on what I found good, bad or indifferent about Kingston. Having set the context I then explained how I saw the role of the Society, how this could develop and what we would need to do to achieve that.

As is my strong preference, my slides had few words and as many pictures as possible. They were more there for my benefit, to remind me what to talk about, than to give the audience something to look at.

So, using the simple prompt "I moved to Kingston in '87" I was able to talk about why I chose Kingston, why that area and that house, and how I came to be a member of the Society soon after moving here.

I explained that a big influence on the way that I plan to operate as Chairman is my work, training and natural inclination for the structures approach of Management Consultancy, and this presentation was an example of that. Later I would say more about People, Process and Technology.

I made the section on some of the places and buildings that I like a little quiz and asked the audience is they recognised the places. There were a lot of correct shouts for Bruges and Portmeirion but nobody knew the amazing Python Bridge in Amsterdam.

The point of this part of the talk was to highlight the things that I like to see when travelling that could be applied to Kingston. I like exploring cities and finding little squares with fountains, or well designed public square or quirky buildings, and I like trams.

As a resident of Kingston I wanted to be able to have the sort of day out there that I have had in places like Hannover, Antwerp and Girona. That meant lots of interesting places well connected to each other.

I said some more about this in a quick summary of my thoughts on Kingston though my score on the good, bad and indifferent at 5, 2, 1 was probably more positive than I felt about the town.

Again the pictures allowed me to say more than just the words on the slide so when saying what I did not like about Kingston Station I mentioned the lack of routes and the way that the station is surrounded by the relief road so getting to or from it any any direction requires crossing several lanes of traffic where the lights are all phased to ease the flow of traffic to the hindrance of pedestrians.

Having set the context, I then talked about the purpose and activities of the society. I said that I think the Society is here to: Protect the things we like about Kingston, Celebrate them so that they can be appreciated by more people, which in turn helps their protection, and Enhance Kingston to make it a better place to live.

I had evolved the Protect/Celebrate/Enhance framework some time ago and this was the first chance that I had used it in anger and it lived up to the task. I used it to structure the activities that we already did and to show some of the additional things that I would like us to try, e.g. protect more through listing Assets of Community Value, celebrate more by arranging more visits and enhancing more by supporting relevant community projects.

Identifying things to do was the easy part, the hard part was working out how to do them, and the only way was to use more resources from within the Society or from other organisations.

The Management Consultant in me wanted to use the word "stakeholder" but I think that I managed to avoid it.

Having identified the main groups of people that we deal with I then went through each of them in turn suggesting how I thought we could work better with them. For example, we could do far more with our members than send them one email a month and invite them to one meeting. I said that I would like us to have more meetings of more sorts in more places, e.g. a semi-formal meeting in Tolworth to review plans for the former government offices site or a social gathering in New Malden to discuss local issues.

People was a large part of my manifesto but Process was significant too.

I closed the presentation with the summary, Matthew’s Manifesto means building our own capacity and using that of other groups so that we can do more things, improving our ways of working so that we can do things better and, above all, it means communication, dialogue and co-operation.

You can read the presentation on slideshare.

We then went in to an extended Q&A session that, I felt, worked very well. The questions showed that the members had understood what I was saying and were broadly supportive of it while understanding that it would be difficult to achieve. The questions were mixed and detailed and I enjoyed answering them, or rather participating in the conversations that followed.

I went into the lion's den confident on what I wanted to say but with some trepidation on how it would be received and I was delighted with the response that I got. I know it is not going to be easy making these changes to the Society but at least I know that a good number of our members are happy with the direction I am taking.

My next "state of the nation" address will be at the AGM in January 2016 and it will be interesting to see how much progress has been made by then.

Discussing 2050 Infrastructure and Transport Developments at the London Forum

One of the groups that the Kingston upon Thames Society is affiliated to is the London Forum of Amenity and Civic Societies who, amongst other things, hold some interesting events.

The event on 2050 Infrastructure and Transport Developments interested me both as a heavy user of all forms of public transport across London and as somebody interested in the future of London and of Kingston within that. Relatively poor transport is one of Kingston's enduring problems, particularly when compared to neighbouring Richmond and Wimbledon both of which have main-line trains and the tube with Richmond also having London Overground and Wimbledon the Tramlink.

The presentation was given by two officers of TfL, Geoff Hobbs talked about tracks and Helen Cansick about roads. In opening the talk Geoff also talked about how London's growth is anticipated to fuel demand for journeys and the set of plans that respond to this. The key document (for this meeting) was the London 2050 Infrastructure Plan, which was also the furthest looking of the current documents.

I found Geoff's presentation on tracks (tube, railways and trams) very informative and was only saved from the task of taking mountain of notes with the promise of a copy of the presentation afterwards.

It was a story that ranged widely in time (today to 2050) and geography (Zone 1 to Brighton). The overwhelming impression was that an awful lot was being done and more would carry on being done for some years.

The chart below summarises the line modernisation programme.

The main work being done was on signalling to allow more trains to be in service at the same time and so to increase the capacity. This was all very good, and needs to be done, but once it has been done the ability to get more throughput on the existing lines will be severely reduced. And the increased capacity only, at best, matched the anticipated growth and so would do little to ease the severe overcrowding that we already have; it will just stop things from getting worse. At some point we are going to need more tracks somewhere.

Geoff talked about potential new projects, such as Crossrail 2 and the Bakerloo Line extension to the south, which would provide more tracks but only a few.

Helen had less to say on roads but that was understandable. We are more or less stuck with the roads that we have and their is limited scope to remodel them.

I liked the way that she structured a lot of her talk about one particular problem, the morning peak, and the various kinds of measures that could be used to manage this.

The first thing to note is that, as with the tracks, is that this is a stand-still plan, i.e. the aim is to stop the morning congestion from getting any worse despite the growth in journeys, not to reduce the current congestion.

This section of the talk was rich with ideas some of which were no more than that and many of which would have uncertain impact on traffic. The plan was to try lots of things and see which ones worked best. For example, freight traffic in the morning is an issue and things that could be tried to address this are to limit the times that deliveries can be made and to consolidate deliveries to an area being made by multiple suppliers to multiple destinations (i.e. to solve the tricky m:m problem when the 1:m and m:1 problems are easy).

After the talks, and the first long round of applause, Geoff and Helen fielded our questions and they both impressed me with their knowledge (there was none of the usual, "I'll get back to you on that one") and with their enthusiasm for the subject.

The question time ran for quite a while before the curfew fell with many hands still in the air, and then there was another long round of well deserved applause.

The talks were excellent but I was left concerned that the ambition of the plans was to maintain current levels of congestion and that there was little in any of this for the residents of Kingston.

A fascinating talk on The History of Ham Riverside Lands

Ham Amenities Group (HAG) organised some talks about the area by locals for locals which I found appealing, and so did many others.

The talk on The History of Ham Riverside Lands was given by Sir David Williams, former leader of Richmond Council and a long-time local councillor. It soon became apparent in the talk that he was involved in many of the effort to protect Ham Lands and so was well placed to talk about it.

He started with a brief history of the area that had had various names, including Ham Fields and Ham Pits, before becoming Ham Lands. This started a short discussion among the audience several of whom remembered when it was market gardens or gravel pits.

The exploitation and the protection of the area has been the subject of many laws and the first one that David mentioned was the 1902 act which protected the view from Richmond Park but at the loss of some of the people's rights over the land.

The extraction of gravel started soon after and was the main use of the land for the next fifty years or so.

The last gravel pit closed in 1962. What is left is now is the little lake used by Thames Young Mariners.

As the gravel pits were closed the concrete barges that were used there were abandoned and covered up. These solid lumps of concrete now have a noticeable impact on the way that water moves through the area.

A border was established with Riverside Drive and the Wates Estate was built to the east of this. Being built on recently reclaimed land the estate has continued to suffer from subsidence problems.

The drawing above is from the promotional literature for the Wates Estate and is looking up Croft Way toward the church. The garage was still there when I moved to Ham twenty years ago but has since closed. The clean lines of the estate and the unusual shape of the church and, thankfully, unchanged.

Wates wanted to build to the west of the road too and this was the scene of the last great battle over Ham Lands. They wanted to build in three sections, shown on the map. The locals agreed to building of social housing on the first plot of 5 acres but the Council changed their mind and went for private housing instead in what is now the Locksmeade estate.

In 1979 a strong local campaign started to stop any further building. They were helped by the presence of rare orchids and birds (stone chats) on Ham Lands and eventually the campaign was successful and that section of Ham Lands has been protected.

The land to the south-east of there has housing much closer to the river as the precedence for this had been set by the Sopwith Factory.

I am not by nature a historian but I do care about Ham and this was a fascinating and very informative talk on how Ham Lands came to be and came to be protected.

The next HAG talk on Friday 20 February is Hidden Ham by Ham Photos Blogger Matthew Rees!

An architect explains Parkleys

If I had to design my perfect outing it would be something like this.

I am a fringe member of Ham United Group (HUG), which means I go to some of their meetings and at one of those meetings local architect Richard Woolf suggested that HUG got out and about a little to learn more about the area. The upshot of all that was that he ended up giving a talk on local development Parkleys in Parkleys.

A talk on architecture about a development that I like and is just a minute's walk from my house was not something that I was going to miss. Plenty of other people thought so too and a good crowd turned up to listen and learn.

Parkleys was designed by Span the driving force of which was architect Eric Lyons. The name Span was chosen to indicate that the design spanned the whole development, i.e. the spaces between the houses as well as the houses them selves.

It is the combination of the broad design of the site and detailed the detailed design of the features (including paving and lighting) that mean that places like Parkleys are still very attractive and popular today.

Richard had done a fantastic amount of research for his talk and had found some good illustrations to explain his points. This map shows the greenhouses that were on the site before and in red is an early outline of what the site could look like. It is very close to what was actually built.

Richard's talk covered other works by Lyons and he was helped in this by somebody who had worked for Lyons for a while (but whose name I forgot to write down).

It was a brilliant and fascinating talk that continued in the pub afterwards where Richard was able to claim a corner of the garden and display all of his posters so that we could examine them at a more leisurely pace.

This was something of an experiment for HUG and for Richard and given its great success I am hoping that there is more like that to come.

Kingston Society Public Meeting: RBK issues and challenges

The Kingston upon Thames Society Public Meeting in June saw Viv Evans, the recently appointed Head of Planning and Transport at the Royal Borough, give us his views on current issues and priorities.

After a good and well received talk he then spent a lot of time answering the many questions from the floor. There were some arguments over some of what he said but there were none on his knowledge, honest statements on how we saw things or his willingness to engage with the audience. It was an excellent session, even if we did not always like what he said.

What follows is a mix of stuff from the talk, the Q&A and my subsequent thoughts. None of this is attributable to Viv, RBK or the Kingston Society. The mistakes are all mine.

Shopping

Kingston wants to remain a top retail destination. It is currently one of the top thee retail destinations in London and one of the top ten in the country. It faces threats both from new centres, particularly the Westfield coming to Croydon, and from the ageing and tired looking parts of Kingston, e.g. the Eden Walk Shopping Centre. Doing nothing is not an option while other centres, e.g. Guildford and Woking, are making improvements.

There are several major opportunity sites that are due to be developed in the next year or two and most of these are close to Kingston town centre. RBK is trying to address these as one programme under the Kingston Futures umbrella.

Consultations on Ashdown Road (The Old Post Office) and Eden Walk are due to start in a few weeks.

Transport

Kingston is dominated by the car. This means that busy roads bisect the centre and that pedestrians and cyclists are always given a lower priority. This makes it harder to move around the town. This despite the fact that cycling is more popular in Kingston than it is generally across London, though this may be distorted by the presence of Richmond Park.

Mini-Holland is bringing in a minimum of £30m to improve cycling facilities across the Borough. Most of the attention has fallen on the proposed pontoon, which most people hate but I like, but it is important to remember that this is just one of many schemes in the project.

A major traffic and transport study is under-way.

Planning policies and procedures

Some town plans are getting out of date, the are around 6 years old and a lot of changes have been made nationally in that time.

RBK has no policy on building heights and does not have a dedicated conservation officer, though some staff have had training in this.

Housing

RBK aims for 60% affordable housing, usually gets 35%, sometimes only 16%.

Most of the new student accommodation is used by students who commute to universities in central London. Some people seemed to find this troubling but that is to ignore the fact that most of the family housing in Kingston is used by people who commute to jobs in central London.

My view

My view, which I put at the meeting, is that Kingston is continuing to push two main themes; large prestigious retail developments that pull in shoppers from far and wide plus more housing and transport to get people to live here when they work elsewhere. What is missing was much consideration of what sort of Kingston is being built for residents who spend a lot of time here not working or shopping.

Kingston needs public spaces (the refurbished Ancient Market helps but we need much more) and more leisure facilities (not just cafes!), and these all need to be easy to get to and between on foot and bike.

Lots of European cities show what can be done, e.g. Hannover, Antwerp, Bremmen, Malmo, to name just a few, but I am not convinced that Kingston is heading in that direction.

TFPL Connect: Supporting the Hillsborough Independent Panel

TFPL Connect events are always quick to fill and so I am always quick to get by booking request in. I was especially keen to attend this one as it covered a ground-breaking real-world example.

The topic was the Information Management work behind the Hillsborough Independent Panel who issued their report on the disaster in September 2012. Our guide was Jan Parry who led their IM work.

To help us understand the context of the work that the panel was asked to Jan gave us a summary of the history of the Hillsborough incident and the responses to it.

Not surprisingly the Hillsborough story was quiet harrowing and there was a very solemn mood in the room. It almost seemed disrespectful to take note. What was clear was that some obvious mistakes were made before, during and after the incident. The famous decision to open the gates may have been one of the bigger errors but it was by no means the big only one in a depressingly long list.

The Hillsborough Independent Panel was established by the Labour Government in January 2010 to "oversee the release of documents related to the 1989 Hillsborough football disaster". It was not the panel's role to recommend or judge but to provide the information so that others could.

Collecting the information was a Herculean task involving many agencies including more than one Police Force, health services, coroners, football authorities, local councils and, of course, the families.

The panel knew that there was a lot of documentation from the previous enquiries and they managed to uncover a lot more, even rescuing some from a skip.

The next task was to catalogue each piece so that it could be put in the appropriate places in the story. This enabled the story to be presented by time, by place, by organisation, by victim etc.

All of these documents were scanned and the originals returned. They were then redacted where necessary and published, or disclosed in the terminology of the Panel. There are over 300,000 documents on the Panel's website.

The discovery, cataloguing and disclosure of the documents was a worthy endeavour and I would like to see this approach adopted in other investigations, e.g. Jimmy Savile, Howard Shipman or Bloody Sunday. This neutral approach to getting to the truth reminded me of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established by South Africa which has been copied by other post-conflict countries.

The Panel had relied heavily on the goodwill of all of the agencies involved to provide the documents required and any future similar investigation would probably require a change in the law to force compliance.

The Panel also came up with recommendations on how agencies like the police and coroners should keep their records.

Despite the cause of the inquiry, hearing about the working of the Panel was an interesting and positive experience. The careful and dispassionate examination and ordering of the documents was a major achievement.

Jan Parry told the story clearly and fully making this an exceptional talk, and not just for Information Management professionals.

After the talk there was the usual networking eased with wine. I found plenty of people to talk to and plenty of things to talk about and was one of the last to leave.

TFPL Connect events are (usually) very good and this one was one of the very best. It was a most satisfactory evening on all counts.

Kingston Society Public Meeting: University Town House

My favourite Kingston upon Thames Society Public Meetings tend to be those where we learn about specific projects and so it was in May when Sean Woulfe, Director of Estates Delivery at Kingston University, came to tell us about the proposed new Town House on Penhryn Road.

This building was proposed to replace the "temporary" buildings that were constructed by the junction with Grove Crescent in the 1980's. This was a prominent site and called for a landmark building.

The University used a RIBA design competition as they were  keen to show their interest in quality design. The winners were Grafton Architects of Dublin whose University of Limerick School of Medicine building was short-listed for the 2013 Sterling Prize.

The University established some guiding principles for the design to follow. They wanted to remove the staff car park in front of the current building and to create a public space there which links to Grove Crescent. Staff would be encouraged to travel by public transport instead.

There was to be a permeable edge to the building with colonnades on each level. The building was also intended to be freely accessible, e.g. no swipe cards. The University was aware that some members of the public used the University buildings as a dry short-cut to/from Penrhyn Road and they were happy for this to continue.

In the centre of the building it was proposed to build a multi-purpose auditorium (not a theatre) that could be used for all sorts of events. This would be bookable by the public when not in use by the University.

Like the open entrance, the auditorium was intended to be another sign-post location that would help people to find their way around the building.

Levels 3 to 6 (the top) would house the library with access to one of the planted roofs on the 4th floor that would be a reading garden. This would be open 24x7 and would only be accessible by students and staff.

The plans for the site, particularly the floor plans were still being revised. New plans would be shown at the next public display due in July. It was expected that the pre-application stage would run from June to September with the final planning approval being given early in 2015. construction would take two years with the new building opening in 2017. The budget was around £30m.

The University was looking at the travel plans and was considering asking TfL to close one of the north-bound bus stops so that students and staff have a safe crossing place by the new entrance.

The University specified that the building must at least meet the "excellent" environment standard and they were hoping that it would be "outstanding". There would be solar (PV) panels on some of the roofs and there would also be some solar heating and a heat pump.

One design issue that had still to be fixed was the acoustic sealing for the dance studio on the first floor. With an open design (the University was keen on transparency) it was important to stop sound bleeding out of the studio. The concrete to be used throughout the building had been designed to dampen noise.

It was a very impressive presentation followed by an assured question and answer session. Clearly a lot of thought had gone into the requirements and the design of the building and this should produce a marvellous building. It is just a shame that we will have to wait until 2017 to see it.

Kingston Society Public Meeting: Marketing Kingston's markets

Our speaker at January's Public Meeting, following the AGM, was James Kennedy, Commercial and Marketing Director of Kingstonfirst, who told us about the new promotion activities for Kingston's markets. He also took lots of questions and we had a long and interesting discussion.

James started with some information about the customers of the markets. They see the markets as serving three groups of people; residents who do some of their regular shopping there, the 18,000 people who work in Kingston and the many visitors to the town. At the moment only around 1 in 10 visitors to Kingston buy anything from the markets.

All of Kingston's markets are being brought under one brand. This look-and-feel will be used mostly for Kingston's Ancient Market and Kingston's Monday Market but will be extended to other special events, such as the night markets. The look that they have gone for reflects the chalkboards used by many of the traders. A new website is being developed to promote the markets and this will have a piece on each of the traders that will include a short video.

In addition to the website there will also be a free quarterly magazine and extensive use will be made of social media like Facebook and Twitter. There will also be branded merchandise, and I quite liked the cheeseboard.

Kingstonfirst want to make the Ancient Market a cultural and creative space, making it the heart of Kingston again, and it needs one as Clarence Street is soulless. They hope to be able to use the Memorial Gardens occasionally as well but only if they get approval from the British Legion. I am not sure what this will mean in practise, and I suspect that it will not be my sort of thing, but anything that breathes life in to Kingston outside of the shopping and nightclub hours has got to be a good thing.

The night markets are successful but are expensive to arrange.

The Market House is an important part of the market but this is under the control of Kingston Council rather than Kingstonfirst. This was also the case with the renovations to the market place over the Christmas period.

James' talk was very interesting and very well received as the level of questions and comments showed. Kingstonfirst have clear and realistic plans for developing Kingston's markets and the Society supports them in this, as do I.

TFPL Connect: What a difference a web makes

I had various reasons for wanting to go to this TFPL Connect meeting.

I had missed some TFPL Connect events for various reasons, the subject matter interested me and the speaker Dame Wendy Hall and I studied Maths at Southampton University around the same time, we were not in the same year but I think we overlapped.

At first I was wait-listed, as were lots of other people, but I was saved when the high demand caused TFPL to move the event to a bigger venue so that more people, people like me, could attend.

We were in the Grand Connaught Rooms which made it an easy walk for me down from Kings Cross. That's my excuse for being the first person there. That also meant that I was the first to tuck in to the sparkling wine and nibbles that I was not expecting to see until after the talk.

The pre-talk drinks included the usual networking and I spoke to several people that I knew. Some of them claimed that this was their first TFPL event, this surprised me as I had known them for so long and I had assumed that everybody in the LIKE and Gurteen circles also went to TFPL events.

After the small talk we were politely ushered in to the conference room for the main talk.

Wendy Hall took us through a brief history of the internet, which has only had a brief history. She spent a bit of time, understandably on the start of the story. Understandably because she has worked with Tim Berners-Lee for some years (not quite from the beginning) and understandably because getting the initial architecture right was key to its rapid adoption and growth.

For the mid-life of the internet, Wendy used this familiar chart and teased out some key points from it, especially the relationships between the developments.

For example, Google could only exist once there were sufficient pages on the internet and enough people reading them to warrant a search engine and for there to be enough links between the pages for their algorithm to work. Similarly the (relatively) recent rise of applications like Facebook and Twitter has needed the increased bandwidth and mobile capabilities.

The growth in the internet is now driven by individuals. It is ordinary people who are uploading photos, swapping links and writing comments.

Wendy then told us something about her current work and her expectations for the future.

The next step is linked data, rather than linked pages and while corporates led on publishing documents it is government agencies that are leading on open data.

In the UK, these initiatives are spearheaded by the Open Data Institute founded by, that man again, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt, also of Southampton University. I saw him talk on the semantic web at the Royal Society and was not convinced then. I'm still not convinced.

Massive Open On-line Courses (MOOCS) have the possibility to reform education by making good quality courses widely available at low cost.

Wendy would like to build a Web Observatory to explore and map the web. We have built it but we do not know much about how it behaves.

Wendy spoke for the best part of an hour and then took several questions. It was a good talk and the questions took us in to some interesting areas of speculation, such as what might happen with the increasing amount of personal data that is being collected on us all.

I would have preferred to have spent more time talking about the future but the background is important and not everybody there had lived through it.

After the talk there was more networking and more drinks to go with it, possibly more than was strictly necessary, and some very nice canapés too. I spoke to lots of people including several that I had not met before. As always, these conversations were an important part of the evening.

Having been the first to arrive I was among the last to leave which is proof enough of how much I loved the event.

TFPL has gone though several changes in the years that I have known them, including three owners and more offices than that, but they have kept the KM community that started, for me, with the Bath Club going all that time. Long may they do so.

"Written in the Stars" with Prof Jim Al-Khalili

This was another those confluences of good things in one place which meant that I had to be there.

I think that Jim Al-Khalili is the best science broadcaster currently (TV and radio) because of the amount of hard science that he includes. He gave this talk in his role as President of the British Humanist Association, which I belong to. And the talk mixed very hard science with a touch of philosophy.

The question Jim tried to answer was that of free will and he addressed it from a scientific angle, i.e. if the future predetermined and predictable then we have no free will whatever philosophers may think.

He started with four hypotheses drawn from a simple 2x2 matrix, which is exactly how you should approach problems like this.

One on axis there were the choice of the universe is predetermined or random and on the other that we have free will or we do not.

Newton thought that the future was predictable in a mechanical sort of way and Einstein said it was already there, i.e. other times exist in the same way that other places do.

The scientific consensus seemed to be that the universe was both deterministic and predictable, then Quantum Mechanics came along and through some crazy random stuff in to the mix.

Jim spent most of his time showing us just how weird QM is, which was understandable given that is what he does. He talked us through the slit experiment that shows particles behaving as waves except when we watch them. I had seen this done many times before but this was the clearest explanation of the lot.

As a mathematician (well, I do have a degree in mathematics even if it is rather old now) I love the fact that mathematics explains QM perfectly (e.g. the probability model for where a particle is) but physicians do not know what is actually happening in the real world, e.g. what the particle is doing to behave like a wave.

Having spent a long time taking us through QM weirdness, Jim then said that this weirdness disappears as we scale up and disappeared well before we get to human scale and so can be discounted from the deterministic argument, e.g. it does not matter how an individual electron behaves at a point in time as it has now discernible effect even at the molecular level.

So the universe could be deterministic (i.e. it has to behave the way that it does) but that is not the same as saying that it is predictable (i.e. we can tell what it is going to do).

The main argument here came from an extrapolation of Poincare's three bodies proof which showed that even very small differences in the starting conditions can lead to very different outcomes. This has been popularised as the Butterfly Effect. The point of this is that we can never know enough about the starting conditions to predict how things are going to behave.

The summary of all this is that Jim claimed that the world is deterministic but we can never know enough to predict it, so it is undetermined to us and, for all practicable purpose, we have free will.

The QandA session that followed showed how little most people know about QM and a lot of time was spent revisiting some of the arguments.

It struck me then that we, the human race, have a cognitive issue here (Martin Rees has said much the same) in that our thinking is conditioned by and limited by our brains which have evolved to solve one set of problems. That is why we cannot comprehend the scale of the universe or the behaviour of very small things. For example, in our human-scale world we are used to an object being in one place at two times but we cannot make sense of an object being in one time at two places.

There is also the very real possibility that our brains are incapable of understanding everything about the way that the universe works, much as a dog is incapable of learning French. That we may never know how QM works is a sobering thought.

During the QandA Jim opened a potential gap in his argument from his current work in the new field of Quantum Biology where a quantum change in a single molecule of DNA could lead to a significant change to the observable world.

I think there is a more obvious flaw. It is easy to devise a mechanism that scales the random quantum world up to the observable world and thus stops it from being deterministic - and you only have to devise the mechanism to make the world non deterministic, you do not actually have to build it. One such a machine would be to select a single Uranium atom and take one significant action if it decays in less than the half-life and another if it does not.

Sadly we ran out of time for me to put this him but I was able to grab a very quick word with Jim on his way out. Obviously that quick word was about Leeds United, the team we both support.

I might dispute his conclusion but Jim is a good presenter and he put the question and some of the implications very well, and dealt with the questions likewise, which made it a stimulating and though-provoking evening.

The Kingston Society learns about Kingstonfirst

The speaker at the March public meeting of the Kingston upon Thames Society was Lou Raggett of Kingstonfirst, the brand name used for the Business Improvement District (BID) of Kingston Town Centre.

In a highly informative talk she took us through the breadth and depth of the myriad activities that go on to promote Kingston as an attraction, many of which go on unnoticed.

The aim of Kingstonfirst is to "improve the trading environment for our levy paying businesses by animating our streets and creating high quality experience that draws visitors to the town and keeps them coming back."

The intention is simple, to get more people to come to Kingston, to spend more time here and to come more often.

Footfall is the name of the game and Kingstonfirst is winning. Before the BID was created visitor numbers were falling and now they are rising.

To attract more customers Kingston needs to be more than just a shopping destination and visitors need to be able to find the attractions when they get here. A common question asked by people arriving by train is, "Where is the river?" Kingstonfirst produces digital and pocket guides to the town and has visitor helpers, modelled on the Olympic Games Makers, who go out of their way to find and help visitors rather than waiting for visitors to find them.

The work that Kingstonfirst does comes under four broad headings; more customers, better experience, cleaner streets and safer streets.

One of the things that the helpers do is greet coaches to explain what attractions Kingston has and where they are. One of Kingstonfirst's objectives is to get more coach visitors, possibly as a shopping or lunch break for tours that take in Hampton Court or Kew Gardens.

Part of the better experience is making sure that there is always something going on in Kingston. These events range from the familiar flagship occasions like the markets, May Merrie and switching on the Christmas Lights down to street buskers and the Thumbs Up Its Thursday events for Children.

Kingstonfirst operate the Market House on behalf of Kingston Council and they see this as an attractive event space that can be used for exhibitions etc.

Cleaner streets is a major initiative to keep Kingston attractive.

Kingston Council cleans the streets in the town centre and Kingstonfirst washes them. It also removes stickers, graffiti and chewing gum.

Other cleansing includes fly-tip removal, alleyway cleansing and urineoff (it does what it name suggests) application around the town. Additional toilets are also planned to cater for the weekend surge of nightclubbers.

Safer streets is all about making visitors, customers and employees feel safe in Kingston. The town centre has a high crime image but the statistics show that it is not that bad. Initiatives here include the businesses working together to identify and track people causing problems and this can lead to a ban from the town, it's Behave or Be Banned.

The talk was, rightly, well received and led to many questions from the audience on topics ranging from trees to street pastors and cycle racks to Town Guides. There was a genuine exchange of information and ideas and Lou promised to follow-up on some of the issues raised.

It was an incredibly interesting and useful talk very well delivered by somebody who clearly knew their subject and was passionate about it.