WELCOME to the website of the Raynes Park and West Barnes Residents' Association, designed to inform you of current local issues and to provide a brief history of the local area and the Association. 

Our Residents' Pavilion at 129 Grand Drive, London, SW20 9LY, is available for hire. Click this link for the booking page. Thanks to a grant from the Big Lottery Fund, the Pavilion now has accessible step-free access.

For regular updates about local issues, news, events and similar, please join us on Facebook or Twitter (see left). 

Our members also receive "The Guide", a monthly A5-sized magazine, which is widely distributed in the locality. "The Guide" has local information, news, events, letters and advertising. For more information about advertising in "The Guide", click this link.

We are holding an "Open Day" at the Residents' Pavilion on Saturday 29 September 2018,  Click here for details.

Our 90^th Anniversary   

Being founded in 1928, the Association has been going 90 years.

We’re holding a celebratory dinner on

Thursday, 8 November 2018. Click here for details.

Chairman's Blog - Oct 2018

90^TH ANNIVERSARY DINNER

The Residents’ Association was founded in 1928 and we are celebrating our 90^th anniversary with a Dinner. All members are warmly invited, and it will be held on Thursday 8^th November. Do please come and join us if you can.   Numbers will be limited so tickets will be provided on a ‘first come’ basis.

The Dinner is at the Taste Restaurant at Merton College, London Road, Morden. The College is well renowned for its catering and hotel courses for students; and the food and service will be provided by them.  We held our 75^th Anniversary dinner in the same venue, and it was excellent. The cost is only £25 for a three-course meal, with a cocktail on arrival.

Click here for more information on how to make a booking.

RUBBISH COLLECTION

As you will be aware, the Council is entirely changing its system for collecting household waste from October. We are now switching to alternate weekly collections for most refuse and recycling. This means collections will only be every two weeks. Paper and card will be collected every two weeks, as will non-recyclable matter (landfill) This means that storage must be found for two wheelie bins; Three, if you also pay for garden waste. Many will find this difficult to cope with. 

Paper and cardboard are to be placed in a new wheelie bin provided by Merton, and household (landfill) waste in another.  The rest of the re-cycliable products: glass, tins, plastic bottles and food-trays, cans and cartons will still be collected from our green boxes, but these, too, will only be once a fortnight. 

The Council has promised that those who cannot physically manage a wheelie bin (they are quite heavy) will be assisted, but, obviously, this will take time to work through.  We also understand that smaller wheelie bins can be supplied for single households – but you must apply for these directly via the Council’s website, or by a telephone call to the refuse department.

Blue and Black plastic bags will be supplied to flatted housing estates so that they can fill these and put them into the relevant bins for collection.

Collection days will also change in around threequarters of properties.  

The aim is to increase amount of re-cycling and to prevent waste from being strewn over into the streets due to foxes and other animals tearing at plastic sacks that have not been placed in a lidded dustbin. It is also claimed that in the long run the new system will save costs.  

Everyone will have their own views about all this and there are almost are bound to be major problems at the outset, so please let your Councillors know of any issues affecting you. They are the best people to take these matters up with the service provider.

TRAVELLERS ON CANNON HILL COMMON

Once again, a group of Travellers managed to evade the huge logs placed around Cannon Hill Common to prevent incursions and parked their caravans and vehicles near the former Pavilion.

As before, it was left to the Council to clear up the mess after they were removed.  

There have been many such incidents on this site, but it is hard to put up sufficiently immovable barriers to prevent these, without taking away the visual beauty of the Common itself.   

A possible permanent solution has been suggested by one of the Cannon Hill Councillors. He notes that where there is an ongoing problem, other councils have obtained an interim or permanent blanket injunction in the High Court banning illegal traveller incursion. Such an injunction cannot stop the problem altogether but makes removal very much easier and quicker.

He asked a question at Council to find whether the Council was willing to look at this as a solution. We will let you know whether they take up this suggestion.

John Elvidge