The Liberal Democrats Reply

In answer to the questions I asked about libraries, local shops and cycling and walking, I have had the following response from Liberal Democrat Councillor James Barber:

Libraries.
We passionately believe in public libraries hence why we have 14 and are building a new £14M one at Canada Water. I pointedly encouraged Dulwich Library to be opened a 7th day each week and hope that the collegiate way officers, their managers and the unions agreed the re rostering to make this possible be extended to other Southwark libraries. I'm also expecting self service to help enable the same resources to allow more opening hours and more time to respond to individual queries from users who need help.

Shops.
For council owned shops we are obliged to charge a market rent unless specific other non financial benefits accrue. Equally Southwark Council can't force rents specific rents on private landlords for shops. BUT through enforcing planning laws we can ensure categories of use are maintained.
However, we do have a capital programme to invest in local shopping areas and all community council areas were given devolved significant budgets to choose shopping areas to upgrade and fix. In Dulwich we chose Norwood Road shopping areas. Borough&Bankside chose Great Suffolk Street. The latter transformation has been completed and its really is amazingly better. The latter also contributed to shop fronts and we'd like to do more of this especially in East Dulwich and Peckham Rye areas.

Walking and Cycling.
Agree and yes to your points.
We're working on removing one way streets or allowing cycle contraflows. This will take some time to complete but its underway and about 15 roads have plans in place for this. Even in East Dulwich we have roads with no obvious reason for being oneway - Spurling, Crewthrew, Hindmans.
Lots and lots of cycle parking has recently been installed. More will come.
Cycle Superhighway. We negotiated funding that Southwark Bridge Road will be made 20mph. So that this type of road will feel very different to other through roads.
We're trailing average speed cameras. This will at some point be approved and I would hope we deploy lots, especially for the half of vehicles that start and end journeys outside Southwark.

One caveat to all these answers. IF central government slashes the money it gives to Southwark we will need to prioritise. I'm hopefully these things will be prioritised but really depends how deeply cuts in our funding go. Fortunately the latter two categories are capital funding which we have more control by selling assets.