Last month a huge fly-tip appeared off the Hatch End Broadway: sofas, beds, dumped at 2am on both sides of the road!
The fly-tipped furniture. (Photo: Matthew Goodwin-Freeman)
The next day I popped down and recorded a quick video calling out the perpetrators for doing this, pointing out that we offer free bulky waste collections and speaking to shop owners to gather CCTV footage of their van and them carrying the sofas to the pavements.
We caught them red-handed! But the real positive? Within a day, over 20,000 people had viewed my video, with hundreds of supportive comments, even more CCTV footage and a great deterrent to stop people fly-tipping there again. All from a 38-second video!
Another small step in the right direction was a few weeks ago we got the news that our newest park, Riverside in Hatch End, got a Green Flag Award recognising it as an excellent outdoor space. Just a few years ago this was a disused field behind the Harrow Arts Centre swimming pool that we funded and turned into a new park, with an outdoor stage, picnic areas, wildflower meadows and more in the pipeline.
Week by week, when the team were building the park, I was there documenting and live-streaming the progress, drawing attention to this wonderful community story. Now, alongside Chandos Rec in Edgware, this has become our latest addition to Harrow’s Green Flag parks.
Then finally just last week, we heard that Hatch End car wash will reopen. When we got the news earlier this year that Morrisons were closing the ward’s only car wash to build an EV charging area local residents were in uproar. There was plenty of space elsewhere in the car park to move it to, so I went down there, recorded a quick video, launched a petition and within days hundreds of residents had signed it.
Using that as leverage in discussions with Morrisons head office, we got agreement to look at reopening the car wash and just last week planning permission finally came through. We did it! And again, the video and petitions have since gone to thousands of residents, all now aware of the small differences we local councillors can make.
These are just three examples of the small things local councillors do to put residents first. In today’s modern world you can reach people you would never get a chance to speak to face-to-face. While much of what we read online can be negative and full of complaints, there are so many positive things happening – the power of our community, getting things done, delivering change and hope you will help share these positive changes next time you are online.
- Follow Cllr Matthew Goodwin-Freeman on Facebook, Instagram, TwitterX, Nextdoor, TikTok, and join his monthly e-newsletter and take part in his campaigns via www.matthewgoodwinfreeman.uk
