Posts Tagged ‘lewisham’
A real river crossing campaign – run the 108 to the Olympic Park
Amid the row over Greenwich Council’s dumb Bridge The Gap campaign, a little opportunity to improve cross-river links is looking set to be squandered. Ever one to leap on board a passing bandwagon, this website is today launching an “all-out” campaign to extend the 108 bus to the Olympic Park.
You what? I’ll explain. Transport for London’s launched a consultation on which buses should run into the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park when people start moving in later this year. It suggests seven services, including a night bus, should run into the park.
All well and good. But one’s missing. Why can’t we have a bus from south of the river to the Olympic Stadium?
The 108 is one of London’s oldest bus routes – it’ll celebrate its centenary in March next year. In 1930, it schlepped all the way from Clapton to Crystal Palace, charging a shilling if you were mad enough to want to ride all the way, but there was never long to wait – double-decker buses ran every three and a half minutes through the Blackwall Tunnel back in those days.
The route’s shrunk, grown, shrunk again, gone 24-hours (a lifesaver) and been tweaked since – the double deckers vanished in the late 1960s, but the Stratford to Lewisham service has been the sole bus service through the tunnel for decades. For many years, it was the only public transport link across the Thames east of Rotherhithe. Back then, it actually wasn’t a bad service, if the tunnel was behaving itself – in the mid-90s, when I lived in Greenwich and went to college in Clerkenwell, it only took 20 minutes or so to get me to Bromley-by-Bow station so I could get a Tube to Farringdon; making it pretty much the equal of taking the train.
But while other transport links have got better, the poor old 108′s been left in the shadows – an enforced diversion around the Millennium Dome building site months before North Greenwich station opened ruined it as a commuting route to anywhere but North Greenwich, but despite the idiotic transport arrangements around the Dome, it still carries healthy numbers through the tunnel each day. Remember, it’s a damn sight cheaper than the Tube.
I’ve heard loads of horror stories of endless waits for people in Blackheath who depend on it for travel to North Greenwich – they desperately need extra buses, but instead those get thrown into the schedule late at night for chucking out time at the O2. It’s time for someone with felt pens and a bus map to get to work and rearrange matters – but so far, there’s no sign of progress.
But there’s one change to the 108 that could gives us a real – yes – Olympic legacy, and might also improve the service. Tweaking the end point so it ran into the Olympic Park, rather than Stratford bus station, would still enable it to serve Westfield and the massive transport interchange there; but would also get it away from the awful traffic in Stratford, bring a 24-hour bus service from south of the river to the Olympic Park, and help us get to and from events there.
It’s a change that’d cost very little, but would make the regenerated Olympic Park feel a bit closer to us in an area that’s not been left with many physical reminders of the Olympics (especially once the mud goes).
Obviously, I’ll now be arranging a photoshoot with various pub landlords, kebab house magnates and the Stratford Westfield Massage Angels as part of my “all out” campaign to bridge this gap, but in the meantime, if you want to suggest it to TfL, head to its consultation page – it closes on 22 February.
Greenwich Council to oppose Lewisham A&E closure
It’s not the full-throated campaign that some would like to see, but Greenwich Council has finally come out against the proposed closure of Lewisham Hospital’s accident and emergency department.
The council’s response was quietly published on its website yesterday. It says “existing levels of demand” as well as past and projected population growth means it “cannot support the closure”.
It adds that “greater clarity is needed in particular about the types of injury and treatment that can be catered for at an Urgent Care Centre,” which is planned to open in Lewisham, “as opposed to a traditional A&E department”, and expresses scepticism about the travel times for ambulances.
While not explicitly calling for Lewisham to keep its maternity ward, the response also calls for extra capacity for a growing population. It’s worth a read if you’ve been following the campaign – I’d be interested in your views.
Friday 00.05 update: Greenwich Council leader Chris Roberts has told Greenwich.co.uk:
“The first question, frankly, we had to ask is ‘If we say we don’t support the closure of Lewisham, does that mean you come back and close Queen Elizabeth Hospital?’
“We produced a long list of questions that were added to by our Health Scrutiny Panel that we gave to the Trust Administrator and said ‘Before we say where we’re coming down on this, we want to know the answers to some of these.’” Read more.
For more on the consultation, which ends on 13 December, see the TSA website. For more on the campaign to protect Lewisham’s hospital services, see Save Lewisham Hospital. Shannon Hawthorne has a great summary that’s worth reading, too.
Save Lewisham A&E: Carol’s story
Guest post: Carol Brown explains how Lewisham Hospital’s accident and emergency ward, under threat of closure, saved her life earlier this year.
It is a miracle I am here at all.
In January this year, unbeknown to myself and my partner, I was very sick indeed, in fact dangerously so – only hours away from death.
I had a perforated duodenal ulcer, diagnosed by Lewisham A&E. This was swiftly followed by an emergency operation performed by Mr Steger and his team.
My partner, Barry, spent hours in a side room at Lewisham hospital thinking about his eulogy for my funeral. I was to be buried in a woodland grave in Shropshire and Bridge Over Troubled Water would be played. Mr Steger told Barry later that day I was “knocking at death’s door”. Statistically, my chances were not good. But I’m alive!
I cannot put into words just how very grateful I am. Thanks to the excellent surgery and about 6 weeks of brilliant critical care nursing, where everything was done for me, including for quite some time even breathing. Thanks also to the daily visits to my bedside and amendments to my treatment by the surgical team, and also to the interventions of the dialysis doctors – I am not six feet under, pushing up the wildflowers in a Shropshire meadow. I am here!
The ICU (intensive care unit) nurses are brilliant at their jobs. They would patiently and calmly explain what they were doing, and answer any questions posed by my anxious visitors, at a time when I was completely unaware and later conscious but unable to speak.
I would also like to thank the ICU physiotherapists who offered to brush my hair from early on – I shook my head at first until I felt certain that I would survive. Later, they helped me to leave my bed.
And thank you also to the therapists who monitored my initial drinking, and then eating very carefully, when I stopped being “nil by mouth”. I am utterly certain that without the experience, skills, patience, ability, time and dedication of the whole emergency team at Lewisham, I would not be here.
I would not have seen the sea, a full moon or a rainbow. I would not have happily woken up to a cat sharing my pillow – I understand that hospital staff would frown on such things!
My daughter would not have a mother. I have since discovered that the mortality rate of the critical care unit is low – I directly benefitted from that.
And seeing as, thank God I am here; I’m able to tell you exactly what I think of The TSA’s plans. The critical care unit, which comprises the ICU and the High Dependency Unit (HDU), is filled to capacity (95% use).
The Kershaw plan is not only for closure and relocation to Queen Elizabeth Hospital Woolwich, but for the number of critical care beds to be cut from 21 to 7. This is a devastating cut and inevitably will result in more people dying.
My impression, from a recent consultation and also to the reaction to the ICU consultants’ letter, is that TSA doesn’t want to be known and remembered as the person who closed (and failed to replace) critical care beds, though this is the reality.
There is no way this can be dressed up as anything but a loss.
I am extremely determined. One ICU nurse told me she had never seen anyone fight for their life as hard as I did. I wish to use my campaigning skills and that determination to keep Lewisham Hospital, its A&E department, its critical care unit and its maternity ward fully open, and its paediatric services as they are now.
I am still on the road to recovery. My memory is variable and I have some physical scars. Frankly, it is a very small price to pay for being alive. It is a privilege to try to save Lewisham as they saved me.
I understand I’m an atypical former patient of the critical care unit, in that I will go to great lengths to publicise my experience and the work of this wonderful unit. The majority are silent, but I am not!
As a celebration of my survival Barry and I recently got married, after 26 years together and the birth of our daughter, who is now 22 and who made a wonderful bridesmaid. Our wedding was blessed at the chaplaincy in Lewisham Hospital. And at our wedding reception, what did we play? Bridge over Troubled Water.
For more on the consultation, which ends on 13 December, see the TSA website. For more on the campaign to protect Lewisham’s hospital services, see Save Lewisham Hospital. Shannon Hawthorne has a great summary that’s worth reading, too.
Save Lewisham’s maternity ward: A mother’s story
Guest post: As well as the accident and emergency unit, Lewisham hospital’s maternity unit is also under threat from the Kershaw report into south-east London’s health services, which suggests that maternity services be carried out at Queen Elizabeth, Princess Royal, King’s College and St Thomas’s Hospitals, with Lewisham listed as only having a “potential” unit.
Erith & Thamesmead’s Labour MP Teresa Pearce criticised the plan last week at a meeting in Eltham. “Believe me, you don’t know how complex a birth can be until you’re in labour,” she said. Cuts at Lewisham would “have knock-on effects for all of us,” she added.
Clare Griffiths‘ son James, now five, was born at Lewisham. She takes up the story of how his life was saved by the staff there – and how being close to a maternity unit made caring for him much easier.
Lewisham hospital’s maternity unit handles around 4,400 deliveries a year, most of which (to use Matthew Kershaw’s language) are unremarkable. But what happens when things don’t go according to plan?
That’s what happened to me when I had my first child, James, at Lewisham hospital back in 2007.
I was 33 weeks pregnant when a bout of food poisoning brought on premature labour and I ended up on the maternity ward being given drugs to try and stop it.
They didn’t work, and James was scanned and found to be breech (feet down instead of head down), so I had to have an emergency caesarian section.
I also had an injection to try and mature James’s lungs a bit more, as at 33 weeks they aren’t necessarily mature enough to allow baby to breathe independently. These need 12 hours to work.
The team from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit came to see me before I had the c-section to explain what was likely to happen – I would have my baby, then he would be taken away from me to be resuscitated if necessary and put in an incubator in the NICU. This was not to be a normal “unremarkable” experience.
James was born at 6:25am, only about 6 hours after having the injection – they’d had to move to do the c-section quicker than they’d hope because the drugs to slow down labour hadn’t worked and I was in danger of getting to second stage labour.
He actually cried straight away – the relief I felt at that point is hard to describe – which meant I got to hold him for a very short time before he was taken to NICU and put in an incubator.
I was taken to recovery and didn’t see him again until the following day. At this point he was out of the incubator and into the low dependency nursery A of the special care baby unit (SCBU).
I had to express breast milk for him, as he was being tube fed. Expressing works best if you can do it near to your baby, as it helps the milk to flow. Regular visits down to SCBU were therefore essential, and despite finding movement difficult because of the section, by the following afternoon I was able to walk (slowly) down there myself.
The day after that I was discharged to make room for other mothers and James stayed in SCBU. Fortunately Lewisham hospital is a short drive from our house, so although I wasn’t able to drive myself, I could be driven there with relative ease. There’s also two buses that go there from near to our house so getting there quickly on public transport is straightforward.
This was really important, as I needed to get there to express milk for him, not having an expensive breast pump of my own, and obviously I wanted to spend as much time with him as I possibly could, so was travelling there twice a day or more. I spent a lot of time crying as well – to say this was not what I’d imagined is a huge understatement.
Six days later we were able to bring James home. Suffice to say that they were six of the longest days of my life. I cannot imagine what any of that would have been like if Lewisham hospital hadn’t had a maternity unit.
I would have given birth at King’s, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Royal or perhaps even St Thomas’. When I had been discharged, my baby would have been miles away in an inaccessible hospital.
There is simply no way I would have been able to visit him as often as I did at Lewisham. This would have made a difficult time into an impossible one. It was heartbreaking enough to have to leave him knowing he was fairly nearby and I could visit often.
It would have been cruel to think that I would only have been able to get there perhaps once a day, bearing in mind that I’d also had major abdominal surgery to get James out, so moving around was painful and difficult. On top of that, expressing milk would also have been more difficult – I wouldn’t have been able to use the hospital’s industrial-grade pump, I’d have had to buy my own and if I couldn’t afford that then that would have been the end of breastfeeding full stop.
Breast milk is really important for premature babies, even more so than full-term ones, so that would have been worse for James’s health and development.
In the end, my story is a happy one, and I fully believe that having given birth at Lewisham was absolutely essential to that outcome.
We cannot stand by and let Jeremy Hunt and his cronies take our maternity unit away from us. We owe it to all those mothers who have yet to give birth there, and especially to those whose stories will turn out to be a little out of the ordinary.
Paediatric consultants have also responded to the report – see here to read their criticisms.
For more on the consultation, which ends on 13 December, see the TSA website. For more on the campaign to protect Lewisham’s hospital services, see Save Lewisham Hospital. There’s a consultation meeting at The Valley in Charlton on Monday at 7pm.
Lewisham loses its cycle superhighway
South-east London’s first cycle superhighway will only run as far as New Cross Gate after Transport for London abandoned plans to run it as far as Lewisham.
Route CS5, which is due to open next year, is being cut short because “opportunities to introduce Cycle Superhighway-type infrastructure are limited” at the New Cross one-way system and on Lewisham Way, where the route was due to run towards Lewisham town centre.
The Barclays Bank-backed route will run from Victoria, across Vauxhall Bridge, and through Kennington, Camberwell and Peckham to meet the A2 at the Queen’s Road/ New Cross Road junction. It is due to open next year.
A letter from TfL told cycling campaigners it had “decided to concentrate investment in the area of highest potential demand” but would still deliver 700 metres of cycle lanes between New Cross and Lewisham, albeit without the distinctive blue branding.
CS5 will be London’s fifth cycle superhighway, and is due to the the first to head into south-east London. A further route, CS4, is due to run from London Bridge via Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, Deptford, Greenwich and Charlton to Woolwich in 2015.
While some parts of the fledgling superhighway network, like the one pictured above on Cable Street in Wapping, are generously-sized, other parts of it have been criticised for being too narrow and too dangerous. Last year, two cyclists died within three weeks at the end of CS2, at the Bow flyover in east London.
If TfL is unwilling to alter roads in New Cross to accommodate safe lanes for cyclists, it remains to be seen if CS4 will run to its full length, since it has the obstacle of the Woolwich Road flyover in east Greenwich to cross – where a cyclist died in 2009 – as well as the Greenwich one-way system.
Mayor Boris Johnson told a London Assembly meeting in May there was “a plan” to introduce Dutch-style cycling infrastructure at Vauxhall Cross – on the route of CS5 – and “in Greenwich”. Six months on, neither he nor TfL have elaborated on what he meant, or where he was talking about.
2.55pm update: London Assembly transport committee chair Caroline Pidgeon says: “Just one week after the Mayor and TfL were boasting about the new Victoria to Lewisham Superhighway we now discover that the plans have been seriously scaled back.
“The excuses for not linking the Superhighway to Lewisham show a total lack of ambition by Transport for London.
“This foolish decision suggests the Mayor of London is not really serious about introducing Dutch-style cycling infrastructure across London.”
Lewisham A&E under threat – a danger to all SE London
I was going to write a long and involved post about the threat to Lewisham Hospital’s accident and emergency department, which is threatened with being downgraded under the proposals to clear up the fallout from the South London Healthcare NHS Trust collapse.
But frankly, the NHS isn’t my strong point, and the effects of what’s going on should be bloody obvious.
Any threat to the NHS in Lewisham will affect the NHS on this side of the border too. Essentially, it’s proposed that Lewisham’s A&E is turned into a non-admitting urgent care centre, with all the burden shifted to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, a hospital that’s difficult enough to get to if you live in Woolwich, never mind somewhere like Forest Hill.
Essentially, there’ll only be four fully-fledged accident and emergency units in the whole of south-east London if these plans get approved – King’s College in Camberwell, St Thomas’s in Lambeth, Princess Royal University Hospital in Bromley, and QEH. That’s not a lot of cover for an awfully huge number of people.
Read all about the proposals here on the NHS Special Administrator’s website.
It’s also worth pointing out that the already-overloaded QEH currently has to deal with patients from Bexley, following the downgrading of Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup. It’s a total mess, and the people of south-east London are paying for the failures of successive governments to manage their NHS properly.
I was in Lewisham the other night and couldn’t help noticing Lewisham Healthcare, which is in line to take over QEH, had spent money on ads telling locals how great they were. Perhaps they’d be better off putting that money into running hospitals, but maybe I’m just old-fashioned.
Reaction in Greenwich has been pretty muted – hey, this is the borough that won’t even run a fireworks display with its neighbour – but in Lewisham, they’re apoplectic. Lewisham East MP Heidi Alexander has set up an online petition, while she and mayor Sir Steve Bullock will be addressing a protest meeting on Thursday evening (6-8pm) at the hospital’s Lesoff Auditorium.
There’s also due to be a protest march on 24 November – more at savelewishamhospital.com. It’s going to be a big fight to save Lewisham’s A&E – but in Greenwich borough, it’s our fight as well as theirs – the importance of south-east London having a strong NHS that’s there for us is something that crosses borough boundaries. Actually, most normal people know this – but do our local politicians? We’ll find out in the coming weeks…
No medals for Greenwich or Lewisham on TfL’s map
I was in the London Transport Museum shop the other day, admiring the Tube map of Team GB’s Olympic medallists – yours for a mere fifty quid. But then it was pointed out to me – something was missing…
Yup, the DLR’s retreated north of the river for the first time in 13 years. Still, it’s not like they held any Olympic events around here, is it? Oops.
Roll up! It’s Boris Johnson’s Deptford Bridge cycle challenge!
This video, from Lewisham Cyclists, was doing the rounds a couple of weeks back, but perhaps it needs a bit of post-Olympics attention. Would you want to ride a bike along here? Turn the sound up for the commentary.
This is the junction of Greenwich High Road, Deptford Bridge, Deals Gateway and Blackheath Road, right on the border between Deptford and Greenwich. This is what cyclists who leave the housing at Deals Gateway are expected to deal with – being left stuck in a box junction in the middle of the A2.
It’s the ideal spot for politicians to sit on their backsides and do nothing – it sits just off the border of Greenwich and Lewisham boroughs, and the A2 that cuts across this junction is the responsibility of Transport for London. But London Assembly members Darren Johnson (who’s also a local councillor) and Len Duvall have both put this to Boris Johnson – and so far, have had no joy.
I’ve done a piece for Snipe about whether the mayor can keep his promises on making the capital safer for cyclists. If an obviously dangerous junction like this can’t get sorted out – and it’s not on TfL’s list – then you do have to wonder if the mayor’s simply taking trusting campaigners for a ride.
Not Greenwich Park, number 3: Manor House Gardens
Run by: Lewisham Council/Glendale Services
Distance from Greenwich Park? 1.6 miles on foot – cross Blackheath and walk via Heath Lane (map)
Manor House Gardens in a sentence: Secret haven in the back streets of Lee.
It took me until 2010 to discover Manor House Gardens. Why would you if you don’t live in the immediate area? Tucked away off the Lee High Road, and hidden on three sides, it’s easy to miss. I came across it by accident while on an early cycle ride – I wheeled myself in, and found myself gawping at a fountain in the middle of a beautiful lake. How had I missed out on this place?
So my knowledge of Manor House Gardens is limited. But I do know it was restored in 2000, bringing nature back to what had been a dead lake and breathing life back into the park. It’s dominated by the manor house itself, once owned by the Barings banking family but sold to the London County Council in 1901. The following year the house became a library and the grounds became a park, and things have stayed that way since.
Just below the manor house is an ice house, recently restored and opened to the public occasionally. But that’s not the main attraction these days – that honour goes to the first Pistachios in the Park cafe, a favourite with local families.
Come during the week and you’ll find a secluded getaway, with kids playing and mums chatting – but at weekends Manor House Gardens is buzzing with local families. Once inside, it’s deceptively large, but it’s only when you walk around the streets surrounding the park that you realise how small it is.
The revival of Manor House Gardens has provided a template for revamping green spaces all over London; followed even more closely in East Greenwich Pleasaunce and Hilly Fields, Brockley, which have both gained their own Pistachios branches.
If you’ve never been, it’s worth a look. You’ll wonder why you’ll never been before – but be grateful that this part of London can still offer such pleasant surprises, even to those who thought they knew it all.
Lewisham’s Olympic legacy, Greenwich’s Olympic belly-flop
You might have read The Greenwich Phantom’s damning post about the plans for Greenwich’s new swimming pool. If you haven’t, go and read it now.
Work’s finally started on the old Greenwich District Hospital site, 11 years after the NHS moved out, where the plan is to build flats, a council service centre, a library (to replace East Greenwich Library) and a swimming pool (to replace the Arches). The Arches is a grand old facility, built in the 1920s and revamped in the late 1980s, featuring a proper old swimming pool with a very deep deep end.
So it’s been popular for the youngsters of the Greenwich Swimming Club to learn how to swim competitively and dive properly, as the Phantom’s correspondent Elaine says. Unfortunately, the replacement pool will be no good for them – it’ll be 1 metre deep at both ends, and 1.5m deep in the middle, which is too shallow for the Amateur Swimming Association, which prefers 1.8m for diving.
Another Arches user, Teresa Griffith, told me: “Most races (except backstroke) start with a dive. As a trainee official for swimming galas I love seeing youngsters flinging themselves into the water and flying up and down. What is the point in building a pool where they will not be allowed to fling themselves in?
“I see them swimming Tues, Weds and Thursday nights, as well as 8am on Sunday mornings… I don’t think they will enjoy their swimming if they don’t get to practice diving when at weekends. They are asked to compete against children from other areas who may be lucky enough to get to dive in from time to time.”
So much for an Olympic legacy.
She emailed a few councillors, and opposition leader Spencer Drury took her complaints to the council’s overview and scrutiny panel last week. Apparently the problem is being “looked at” by council leader Chris Roberts, and he was told a retractable floor originally planned for the pool had been scrapped because they don’t work very well.
According to planning statements published by original developer First Base, the design of the pool was “the product of consultation with the Council and their leisure providers, the Primary Care Trust (“PCT”), the Education Department and other key stakeholders”.
Ah, those key stakeholders again. They’ve got all the answers.
Still, never mind, according to the Phantom’s post, “swimmers can learn to dive and turn elsewhere in the borough”. Well, in actual fact, they’ll be able to do that without having to trudge all the way to Eltham.
Just a couple of miles away in Lewisham, the new Glass Mill leisure centre is taking shape on Loampit Vale. You might have seen it, it’s the huge great colourful thing appearing opposite Lewisham station (along with another development of flats). It’ll replace the Ladywell Leisure Centre (to the anguish of its regular users) and will be Lewisham Council’s flagship facility.
Unlike Greenwich, Lewisham has put all the plans for the Glass Mill on its website. Plans include “a competition pool – eight lanes (17 x 25 metres) with a moveable floor at the deep end to allow additional water area for teaching”. Cuh, those pesky moveable floors which don’t work, eh?
As for diving? Well, the full details are in the Glass Mill client brief. “The hallow end is to be set at 1200 mm which is considered a safe depth for competition swimming but will not be suitable for certain teaching purposes. The deep end depth should be set at 2000mm.” Poolside diving blocks will be provided.
So, Lewisham, the non-Olympic borough, has managed to commission a swimming pool suitable for teaching kids how to dive. Olympic host borough Greenwich, meanwhile, hasn’t. Good to know the legacy’s in safe hands… at Catford town hall.
Still, there is time for Greenwich to sort this mess out, isn’t there? Or it’ll face the embarrassment of its young people heading to a neighbouring borough to learn how to swim competitively. Is that the legacy it wants?
