File:Falkland Road Planters - 2017-04-17.jpg

English: Monday 17 April 2017.

Photos for Zena Brabazon* who was following-up on a discussion in Harringay ward about these planters. They were funded, installed and are maintained by a local residents' group: The Friends of Harringay Passage.

This is one of several active local groups who get together and work together to improve aspects of the neighbourhood. They don't always agree with one another. But that's normal.

Less normal is the apparent inability of "leaders" of Haringey Council to understand and support what's sometimes called Co-Production. They know the words, of course. But not the tune.

In 2011 co-production was defined in a report by the New Economics Foundation as: "...delivering public services in an equal and reciprocal relationship between professionals, people using services, their families and their neighbours".

With hierarchies of power, it's unrealistic to assume equality. But "reciprocal" is vital. Not something that all Haringey Council leaders like hearing, let alone know how to practise.

For anyone who has never walked along, seen, or even heard of Haringey Passage, it's a long alleyway. It runs North-South crossing roughly midway all the streets on the Harringay "Ladder". So named because on a map - or from the air - they appear as parallel east-west "rungs" between the north-south Green Lanes and Wightman Road N4/N8

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§ Clicking the tag 'Harringay Passage' on Flickr displays over a hundred photos. There are probably many more elsewhere online. § "New community group forms to improve ‘unloved’ Harringay Passage". News item in the Tottenham & Wood Green Journal. 16 January 2014.

§ Declaration of Interest: My wife Zena Brabazon* is currently (April 2017) one of the three elected Haringey councillors representing Harringay ward, which includes the "Ladder" roads.