I would like to thank everyone for making the Northcote Road closure this weekend such a resounding success.
To give a bit of background, in November 2018 the businesses on Northcote Road, Battersea Rise, St John’s Road, St John’s Hill and Lavender Hill voted for the creation of a Business Improvement District (BID). A BID is a business-led, business-funded partnership which strives to improve the local area for the benefit of businesses, shoppers and visitors. The vast majority of the eight BID directors both live, and have business links locally, so are hopefully in a position to represent the needs and wants of both businesses and residents.
Please see The Junction website for more information: https://visitclaphamjunction.com/about/support-the-bid
Two months ago the BID board discussed the possibility of closing Northcote Road to traffic in order to help businesses to get back on their feet after the Covid-19 pandemic. It was voted unanimously that we would pursue this. We originally planned for a full time closure, however TFL have asked that we initially start at weekends, and if everything works out then we could potentially make it full time. This is a sensible suggestion, as I’m sure that there will be elements of the closure that will need further work.
Whilst there have been some concerned questions raised on several posts this forum, we have tried our very best to mitigate those problems, but understand that we cannot keep all the people happy all of the time!! To this end we would ask everyone to try and make this work over the next few weeks. We are providing additional stewards from the summer festival on Saturday nights in order to encourage everyone to behave as the community would want, and all of the bars and restaurants are well aware that if things get out of hand then this is the quickest way to have the decision reversed.
Having run the Northcote Festival for the last eight years, the most commented subject following the event has been “it’s a shame we can’t close the road more often”. This way we can see if it really can work and benefit shops, bars, restaurants and residents equally.
The one stand-out thing from this weekend was the sheer volume of litter that was generated on Saturday afternoon/evening. Predominantly this was from people who were buying drinks from the supermarkets, drinking in the street and then walking home, leaving their empties on the floor. This is incredibly frustrating as we simply don’t have the resources to constantly clear up after everyone. The bars and restaurants made a fantastic effort to clean up their respective pavements, but it is the careless and thoughtless litter dropping that is so frustrating to have to deal with.
Once again, a huge huge thank you to all the BID team, everyone in Wandsworth Council (who have been simply amazing!!), our town centre manager, Think Events for providing the security/stewards, all the local businesses, but most of all to the residents who came out, spent some money and made it a wonderful weekend for everyone. If you did enjoy it please do take the time to drop a note to Wandsworth Council to let them know - it will be very much up to the feedback they receive as to whether we can continue it in the future. Their contact details are licensing@merton.gov.uk and Paul.Martin@richmondandwandsworth.gov.uk
Jonny
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