This month's news and features-filled Enfield Dispatch has several items directly concerning our bit of the borough. Stitch! gets a big feature ahead of its reopening next week. Däna Burstow provides an update on Palmers Green Action Team's projects for trees in large planters along Green Lanes. There's an interview with Melanie Smith, the minister at Palmers Green United Reformed Church, about a new foodbank in Ponders End. The petition against Merkur Slots opening in PG gets some column inches, PG resident Joseph Wagland has a letter calling for a skatepark, and there's notice of music events run by Livestock which will be held in Broomfield Park during July.
The StopPGMerkurSlots campaign has been continuing to collect evidence for a review of a licence for a new branch of the Merkur Slots gambling arcade chain planned for Green Lanes. The campaign has the support of local councillors and the council leader and is being assisted by council officers, but as a review would be a lengthy process (nine to ten weeks) it may not be completed before the new arcade opens.
Ahead of the mayoral election on 6th May, a coalition of leading environmental groups have published a joint manifesto outlining ambitious programmes of action needed to reduce pollution and waste, improve health and wellbeing, secure nature's recovery and increase resilience to climate change. There will be an opportunity to discuss these proposals with the candidates at the Mayoral Environment Debate, which will take place online on 12th April.
A recently published Environmental Statement by the Enfield Society indicates support for measures to reduce car use and encourage walking and cycling, while stressing that the Society 'is careful not to become involved in political debate' and 'will only support schemes where it can be clearly demonstrated that reduced traffic flows in some areas do not significantly increase them elsewhere'. Cycling 'is not just the preserve of young people, it should be viewed as an important mode of transport'. By discouraging car use 'our air will be cleaner, our health better, the burden on the NHS reduced and deaths/serious injuries on the roads reduced'.
Nightingale Cancer Support have sent details of an Easter quiz and a spring raffle. They also have a vacancy for a part-time Finance and Governance Manager.
The group campaigning against a 24-hour gambling venue in Palmers Green says it has gathered substantial evidence to submit for a review of the application licence.
A petition calling on Enfield Council to 'save Paul Everitt and the Enfield cultural team from redundancy' has so far gathered around 800 signatures. Launched by Love Your Doorstep founder Emma Rigby, it alleges that the head of the council's culture team is being 'pushed out' because he is too outspoken. What are the facts behind the petition?
They took a long time to piece together, but at last the mosaic artworks for Palmers Green station are in place. They've been installed in existing recesses in the wall underneath the stairs to Platform 2 and can be viewed as an ensemble from the very front of Platform 1.
Enfield Council is inviting community groups to bid for grants of up to £60,000 to fund projects that will help develop their neighbourhoods and improve the day-to-day lives of communities. The Enfield Community Fund, totalling £1.4 million, will disburse the 15 per cent of developers' Community Infrastructure Levy contributions which is ringfenced for local projects.
On 23rd March Enfield Southgate MP Bambos Charalambous presented a petition to parliament requesting a review of gambling premises licences granted during the coronavirus lockdown, citing the case of the granting of a licence for a 24-hour gambling licence for a new branch of Merkur Slots in Palmers Green.
Campaigners and politicians have joined forces to raise the alarm about the takeover, in questionable circumstances, of GP surgeries in north London and elsewhere by a giant US health corporation.
Volunteers are required for an online NHS research project into balance anxiety and dizziness - the research sample needs to include both people who experience problems in these regards and those who don't.
