This link will take you to a new e-petition. It reads:
"In Kingston-Upon-Thames there is a severe problem with the lack of youth facilities. Certain groups of young people want to be out and about late at night with their mates. In the current condition of youth provision across Kingston there is simply not enough to accommodate all their needs. As a result, large groups congregate on street corners and ultimately become rowdy and perpetrate anti-social behaviour. Boredom believes that these young people should not be victimised, but should be helped to find somewhere to go in order to add a sense of common purpose and belonging to their local community. We call on the Council to make investment in youth facilities a top priority for the next 4 years."
I agree with them completely. The youth service does not do a good job and whilst there is clearly a balance between youth centres and street based youth work I think we have gone too far towards street based work. We would have done something about this had we won the election.
There will be a new executive member covering youth provision (so I here) so now is the time for them to get a grip and change this service for the better. Please do your bit and sign the petition so we can apply some pressure.
Read more at epetitions.kingston.gov...
"In Kingston-Upon-Thames there is a severe problem with the lack of youth facilities. Certain groups of young people want to be out and about late at night with their mates. In the current condition of youth provision across Kingston there is simply not enough to accommodate all their needs. As a result, large groups congregate on street corners and ultimately become rowdy and perpetrate anti-social behaviour. Boredom believes that these young people should not be victimised, but should be helped to find somewhere to go in order to add a sense of common purpose and belonging to their local community. We call on the Council to make investment in youth facilities a top priority for the next 4 years."
I agree with them completely. The youth service does not do a good job and whilst there is clearly a balance between youth centres and street based youth work I think we have gone too far towards street based work. We would have done something about this had we won the election.
There will be a new executive member covering youth provision (so I here) so now is the time for them to get a grip and change this service for the better. Please do your bit and sign the petition so we can apply some pressure.
Read more at epetitions.kingston.gov...
14 comments:
And what would you have done with our problem youths Kevin had you not lost your seat in Berrylands?
Surely you wouldn't been advocating choir practice for some of those degenerates out there?
I appreciate your support for youth provision, but I am puzzled.
Why do you want to pull down the Hook Youth Centre (currently undergoing extensive modernising by the Lib Dems) and replace it with a 'small hospital'?
And I'd be very interested to know why you and your fellow Conservative colleagues have been campaigning AGAINST an excellent new youth provision - the recording studio planned at the Hook Community Centre. What better way to give young people something constructive to do? I'm sure you are aware of how successful the Barnfield recording studio has been?
So that's two centre based youth facilities that you want to delete in just one ward!
Well I suppose Mary that is so they can propose 0% council tax next year and again mislead residents
It is regrettable that you have fallen into the Lib Dem method of rewriting what has been written. A leaflet went out during the election which featured the paragraph below. This refers to the site behind Devon Way and makes no mention of demolishing anything.
“We welcome the Dementia Centre coming to Chessington, our community has a history of involvement in specialised nursing. However, as the centre has its own medical staff it would be possible to locate the Dementia Centre elsewhere in Chessington or Hook. If the Centre was built on the isolated site behind Devon Way fewer residents would be disturbed by the motor cars of people visiting the patients, by the buses taking day care patients to and from the centre and by the transport of the staff running the centre. “
Once again you are distorting reality on the issue of the proposed music centre. No one is arguing that youth provision should not be improved but you have set up a music studio with out ever finding out whether there is any demand for it. You consulted the residents of the area, they told you what they wanted, and you ignored them and built what you wanted. Again, I will quote the extract from the leaflet:
“The Hook Community Centre consultation result was also ignored. The residents were very explicit about their preferences, a new library, a public hall, a café and a toilet. No one asked for a recording studio, or a computer based learning centre, or a creche and no one asked for the hall to be replaced with a small meeting room. Yet the Councillors decided that is what we are getting! “
If you feel that the problems of our youth service are to be solved with one small music studio that provides…music….then it shows where the problem is. At the heart of this is the same problem that has dogged the Lib Dems up and down the country, especially in Kingston and Islington. They are great at winning elections but abjectly fail to do anything when they get into power and have no vision for where the town should be heading. It took five years to write K+20 and it is now out of date just as you publish it. It took three years to roll out door step glass collections that had started under the No Overall Control Council. Like Islington the Kingston Lib Dems came to power four years ago with an enormous amount of public goodwill. They squandered it by their arrogance in never listening to what people were telling them. As ever they took the usual Local Authority attitude to consultation which says “This is what we are going to do”, never for once asking people what the problem was you should be trying to solve. Hook library is but one of a stream: Herne Road, New Malden High Street, Gold Zones, Chrissie’s fountain, Ewell Road Bus Lane etc etc.
Mary, I have a great deal of respect for you and I am bitterly disappointed not to have won in Berrylands and really hurt by the rubbish some of your colleagues have written on this blog. You, of all people, must wake up to what is happening. Last Thursday, for all its personal disappointment, had fantastic Conservative results in safe Lib Dem areas such as Canbury, Grove and your own Chessington North. It speaks volumes about the problems you and Ed face. I have even had Lib Dem activists and deliverers who told me they were not going to work for the COuncillors this election because they thought they were terrible. 3 or 4 more year’s under this disastrous lack of leadership and who knows where we all might be – as one comment said we are not far from the Kingston Lib Dems being a Chessington party!
So, Kevin, it was all down to Lib-Dem lies why you lost in Berrylands?
When are you going to wake up to the fact that it was because residents were angry about your part in the internal wrangling of your party, the squandering of £0000's of pounds by your Conservative colleagues and your hypocritical planning application for your HQ when you publicly preach the need to protect our local heritage - that you got booted out in a rock-solid Tory ward.
Bleating about it now will do nothing to alter the facts but perhaps if you tried not to bury your head in the sand again and attempted to heal the wounds, it would be a start to making an honourable return. And don't kid yourself that the increase in Tory Councillors was down to your "renewed and refreshed" efforts in Kingston - you were simply riding on a national anti-Labour wave. Regards,
Dear me, a party kidding themselves that they win because of who they are rather than because of national anti-other party waves? That sounds rather more like the Lib Dems than anyone else!!
Up to this point the Lib Dems in Kingston have faced a Conservative party declining in popularity nationally. Now that the Tories are on the up again, I really wonder whether the Lib Dems can last? Considering they've never been able to drive the Tories away even in the late nineties suggests a pretty tough decade ahead of them.
I think you will find that it is in fact the Lib Dems who are riding on the anti labour wave. That is the only reason they got Penny Shelton in Norbiton because of national events.
I take political literature generally with a pinch of salt, but Lib Dem literature more than others. My Dad, in his effort to recycle, always uses Lib Dem leaflets as toilet paper and complains that they don't come perforated. Any Lib Dem version of the truth should go the same way - down the toilet.
The issue here isn't about attacking each other personally. What we should be doing is working together for the good of young people. This petition aims to highlight the lack of facilities for young people. It seems to be achieving just that with Robert Evans MEP, Chris Fullbrook young peopl's champion, Paul Messeder Kingston Fire Commander, Cllr Howard Jones and GLA member Tony Arbour signing it in just ONE day!
We need to ask young people what they want - especially those hanging around on the street. One suggestion though would be a place or places which replicate a pub type atmosphere with sport, music etc open regularly with facilities such as IT access. Somewhere with easy access other than security where people feel uncontrolled. It's no good 30, 40 or 50 year olds deciding these things.And by the way - I think the boredom coalition needs to be a little more careful on this point - the vast majority of young people cause no problems.
Whilst I agree that the area needs to do something about giving the youth things to do (hence my disappointment over sports schemes like the swimming pool near Tolworth station proposed years ago being scrapped), it's culture which needs to change as children grow up and their attitudes .
This should start with zero tolerance to the anti-social behaviour which widely exists in the Kingston area on a growing scale. It's a national problem but one which I'm really seeing the impact of near my home in Tolworth.
Youths vandalising property, cars, muggings, swearing, intimidation. All this goes on unchecked and unpunished just down the road from me in Tolworth even though the police in most cases know who these kids are. I've even seen youths goading an adult male into striking them after they abused and kicked him for asking them to stop swearing so they could film it on a mobile phone and 'do him for assault'.
It's true that not all kids are like this but a growing number appear to be around here or get sucked in because no no action is taken against it and just giving them a youth centre or Music studio will not address the problem.
It needs to be a combination of stamping out the behaviour, education for youths and the parents in partcular and new facilities to stimulate some other interests.
Give the Police real powers to get the worst cases and repeat offenders properly dealt with and begin a process of change where we feel safe on the streets and can protect our own property and other peoples without being targeted for further abuse.
C'mon Kevin, you still haven't said what YOU would do. Are you again sitting on the fence hoping for the right time to use this issue to your political advantage or are you just highlighting this as you know the public are easily stirred up about yob culture?
I though I had already outlined some things.
We are spending far too much of the youth service budget on street based activities that appears to do very little. Youth workers should not be running halls either - which has ben a problem in the past. There has been a gang of youths causing problems in Berrylands - there has not been much evidence of the youth service and in fact it is the Police who have been doing the best work with them. However when you speak to them you realise the problem is that they have nowhere to go.
I actually like the idea that Manchester(?) had. They had mobile vans that moved about the city. Each van had a different activity in the back (ict suite, music studio, vid games etc.). Thy would rotate from area to area so that kids could get off the street and participate in a range of activities, rather than having a fixed activity in a static centre that if they do not like then they do not do.
I am afraid I admit to not being young enough to know what activities the youth today want but they should "definately" be involved in a major review of the service and actually listened to. Despite all these forums and youth aprliaments etc no one seems to pay much attention to them.
Whatever else we ought to be reviewing the service and finding out what best practice there is across the country.
Sorry not to reply earlier but for some reason your blog keeps crashing!
First, your leaflet about the proposal to locate the dementia centre on 'the isolated spot' behind Devon Way does not mention that it is lies in the Green Belt and therefore cannot be built on. The only way to locate a new building here is to demolish an existing one, which means the Hook Youth Centre (or possibly Lovelace School, but I don't think you meant that). Hook Youth Centre is currently being refurbished to bring it up to the standards you would like and to provide a wider range of centre based activities for young people, as well as providing activities for older people.
Then again, you have not explained why Conservatives in Chessington were telling residents that the proposed new youth provision in the Hook Community Centre (ie the recording/rehearsal studio on the lines of the highly sccessful Barnfield Centre) was a waste of money.
Both these projects are the result of active consultation with many young people. What makes you think this did not happen?
If you had won seats in Chessington then it appears that you would have cancelled two major new youth projects.
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