Slung IN!

We have a garage again! Thanks to all the parents’ emails and calls the Council have reversed their decision and found us a new garage very close to the pitches.

So tomorrow (Sat 30th) we’ll be able to provide all the kit, as usual, and get back to playing some football. A couple of the ward Councillors, and possibly Martin Linton MP (Battersea) have also agreed to come down to chat to parents and see what a fantastic set up we have so it would be good if we show up en masse, whatever the weather.

See you at 10.30.

Slung Out - the response

If any of you were on the common last Saturday you will now be aware of the impact of our eviction from the garage in Mayford Rd by Wandsworth Council last Friday.

The amount of kit that we can now use will be significantly depleted owing to the difficulty of transporting it from the temporary storage solution the Council has imposed upon us at a Fitzhugh Estate lock-up. Unfortunately, the Fitzhugh garage doesn’t work for us at all since we have 2 heavy carts that store all the kit and each has to be hand-pulled by 3 people onto the pitches. We can’t use the pedestrian footbridge over the railway because of the railings and therefore would have to make a long round-trip down Trinity Road and across the railway at Bellevue Road which would be impractical and far less safe for all concerned.

Whatever the merits of the Council’s decision the club now has a problem to find a location nearer to our pitches. There are various suggestions that the club are considering but to give a focus to our actions I am asking that all Broomwood FC supporters email our elected Councillors making known your concerns and asking for help in finding a far more convenient location to store our kit. Quite a few of us have already started a dialogue with the Councillors but I am now asking you to add to this campaign. Please use your own words and ways of expressing yourself to your Councillors but to help you I attach 4 sample emails (see botom of post) that have been already been drawn up. I will leave it up to you to decide how you do this. When writing please remember to include your home address, phone number and target your own 3 ward representatives if you can.

Relevant email address are shown below so please and try and send as many as possible; Councillors are duty-bound to try and respond to all constituent residents.

The 3 Councillors who represent the ward we play in (Northcote Ward) are:

Philip Beddows - pbeddows@wandsworth.gov.uk

Peter Dawson - pdawson@wandsworth.gov.uk

Martin Johnson - martinjohnson@wandsworth.gov.uk (Cabinet member for Housing)

The 3 Councillors who represent the ward on the other side of the railway bridge (Wandsworth Cmn Ward) are:

Kathy Tracey - ktracey@wandsworth.gov.uk (Cabinet Member for Childrens’ Services)

Maurice Heaster - mheaster@wandsworth.gov.uk (Deputy Leader of the Council)

Henry Pugh - hpugh@wandsworth.gov.uk (Chairman of Audit)

A handy list of all 60 Councillors and the ward they preside over is in the link shown here http://openlylocal.com/councils/2-London-Borough-of-Wandsworth: - once through the link scroll down and you will see the email addresses.

Other Councillor email addresses which may be of use are:

Edward Lister - elister@wandsworth.gov.uk (Leader of the Council)

Sarah McDermott - smcdermott@wandsworth.gov.uk (Cabinet Member for Environment, Leisure & Amenity Services i.e. Sport)

The more adventurous may wish to go for:

Boris Johnson mayor@london.gov.uk

David Cameron camerond@parliament.uk

Jane Ellison (Candidate & Tory Parliamentary Spokesperson for Battersea, Balham & Wandsworth)
http://www.janeellison.net/index/contact

Martin Linton (MP) martinlinton@btinternet.com

Sir Trevor Brooking (FA Director of Football Development)

The Football Association
25 Soho Square
London
W1D 4FA

In times like this results are created through action on a common front. Your help is needed ……so email away!

Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3
Sample 4

Slung Out

Despite our best efforts to persuade Wandsworth Council that the garage we were using to store the Broomwood kit was more worthy than a private car driver, the council have decided to carry through an eviction order and have cleared the garage “on our behalf” with bailiffs and a big lorry this morning. This is somewhat surprising given that we have been in a long dialogue with them to at least give us more time. The man responsible for this was the Head of Housing, Ian Stewart, who in a lovely final mail after the bailiffs’ action said “You will appreciate that the Council has to comply with its own policies and as you are aware at least one person on the garage waiting list knew of your continuing occupation of the garage. To allow you to remain would have created an indefensible precedent and left the Council open to public criticism.”

No real mention of the 350 children who play at Broomwood then.

Just so you know what that one person on the waiting list did - they took pictures of the Dads and children returning the cart and said that as it was being used for non-vehicular use, the occupants should be thrown out to make room for the private car owner - a nice touch I’m sure you would agree.

Please feel free to offer any suggestions as to how to criticise the council, or elected councillors who promised with little result, as we would quite like to display our anger that they have taken this wholly inappropriate action. We’re open to any legal ideas.

On a more practical side, we now have a kit problem, in that it has been moved to another “council facility” on the Fitzhugh estate, just off the Trinity Road. In order to play children’s football tomorrow, we need to move at least some of it from there to the pitches and back again at the end. That could happen this evening/tonight using various people’s cars, or tomorrow morning. Let me know if you can assist in transport and perhaps temporary small storage of bits of the kit.

Also, we are in dire and immediate need of a private storage solution close to where we play. Many of you will have seen the carts we use, and it would ideally need to be something to get those in. Any immediate solutions really welcomed – the quicker we can get in the better. We are, and always have been, happy to pay a fair commercial rent.

Yours, extremely hacked off by the council,

Broomwood organising team

Please address your mails for any help to neil.backyard@btinternet.com

16th Jan - football still on!

We haven’t received any instruction from the Council to cancel football tomorrow because of waterlogging, so please assume that it is on. I’ll update this at 5pm tonight.
Tom

UPDATE: Nothing from the council. So footy is ON!

Football cancelled 9th January

Sadly, we have lost another weekend’s football to the weather. It’s too snowy now, more snow is forecast and below the snow the pitches are frozen anyway.

Hopefully this cold snap will have cleared by the 16th.