Cleaner Greener Safer

The Herne Hill Society is supporting three applications from local residents in Southwark Council’s annual round of bidding for community projects.

Two of them are for street trees in Southwark’s half of SE24, while the third is for road safety improvements on Half Moon Lane. Cleaner Greener Safer funds schemes that benefit the environment, public health and community safety. Bids that meet the criteria are scrutinised by Councillors Margy Newens and Richard Leeming.

The tree proposals were put together by Paul Millington, the chair of the Friends of Sunray Gardens and a resident of Red Post Hill, and Jeff Segal, who lives in Warmington Road. Helped by former ward councillor Robin Crookshank Hilton, Paul and Jeff spent weeks looking at all the street trees in the neighbourhood bounded by Herne Hill in the north, Half Moon Lane in the south, Sunray Avenue in the east and Carver Road in the west. They each applied for £10,000, covering the cost of the trees and the work needed to dig new pits.

Jeff also bid successfully for electronic speed signs on Half Moon Lane and Village Way. Regular Community Roadwatch sessions testify to the high numbers of cars and vans consistently going at 25mph or above on the two streets, often by a very wide margin. They’re very effective when the Roadwatch team of police and volunteers are standing at the roadside in hi-vis jackets, but speeds shoot up again when they leave.