December 2025

Food waste from Wanstead is now converted into renewable energy at this ReFood plant in Dagenham. Councillor Jo Blackman reports

Strong resident engagement and minimal service issues have marked a promising start for the first phase of the food waste collection service, which includes a number of roads in Wanstead.

I’m grateful to residents, as well as the various council teams involved, including RCS who collect the waste, the customer contact centre, business support team, IT and digital and communications. The results have been encouraging. In the first week alone, nine tonnes of food waste were collected, increasing to 10.5 tonnes in the second week, exceeding initial predictions and demonstrating positive uptake across the borough in phase one roads. Around two thirds of households in the phase one area have been presenting their containers for collection. The council received a low level of enquiries and any issues raised have been addressed quickly, ensuring residents feel supported.

The food waste is taken to the ReFood site in Dagenham, one of the UK’s most advanced recycling facilities. Here, the waste undergoes anaerobic digestion, a process that converts it into renewable energy and nutrient-rich biofertiliser. The biogas produced is injected directly into the National Grid, generating enough energy to power thousands of homes, while the biofertiliser is used to improve soil health and support food production.

The council will continue monitoring participation and collection tonnage. In January, a survey will be sent to all phase one households to gather feedback. The insights collected will help shape the full roll-out of the service, ensuring it meets the needs of the community and builds on the early success.

Around half of the waste generated by households in Redbridge is food waste. It is hoped that the separate collection will help reduce our waste volumes and increase recycling rates (as the food waste processing is classed as recycling). Experience elsewhere also shows that people reduce their food waste when they separate it out. This should be beneficial for household bills as well as the environment by reducing the impact of both the production of excess food and its processing.

Home-composting is still a great option to turn raw vegetables and fruit into garden compost, and the council continues to encourage residents to do this through reduced priced compost bins. Recognising this can be a challenge for properties without gardens, the council has supported a number of community groups to start communal composting in public spaces and parks, including a site on Wanstead Place next to Christ Church Green.

Our food waste collection service shows a promising start as we plan the further roll-out across the rest of Wanstead and wider borough. This should help us reduce our waste and increase recycling, helping build a more sustainable borough and reduce emissions.

Jo Blackman is Redbridge Council’s Cabinet Member for Environment as well as a councillor for Wanstead Village.

For more information on food waste recycling and collections in Redbridge, visit wnstd.com/foodwaste

Thousands of homes across Aldersbrook could become officially recognised as part of Wanstead following the efforts of a local resident who has lobbied Royal Mail to update its database.

“Over the past 18 months, I’ve been working to correct the locality shown for addresses in Aldersbrook that appear as part of Manor Park in Royal Mail’s system. The error has caused real problems, from banks pulling incorrect address data to inconsistencies in identity checks,” said the campaigner, who wishes to remain anonymous.

Boundary evidence has been submitted to Royal Mail using mapping data from Redbridge Council, the Office for National Statistics and Ordnance Survey.

“Royal Mail has accepted the proposal in principle. I now need to secure letters of support from the council, the local chamber of commerce and our MP before they begin a formal consultation.”

If approved, the changes are expected to affect over 2,000 homes across Aldersbrook that have an E12 postcode.

While Redbridge Council serenades the borough with its devotion to small businesses, doubts linger over its true intentions to Wanstead’s most loyal of High Street traders, says Colin Cronin-Whistlefrown

Dearest gentle reader, I am updating you with news from Redbridge Council. For I am as shocked as you that there is indeed some news (and I don’t mean anything about chess or CVs)! As surprising as it might seem, there have been stirrings underground amongst the trolls of Town Hall. Indeed, press releases and online posts are buzzing with the news: Redbridge Life is on your doorstep with the equally exciting promotion of ‘Small Business Day’ across the borough.

Redbridge Council were absolutely correct to champion this day (it was on 6 December). It’s what our Wanstead community has shouted about all along, not just for one day. Our small businesses along Wanstead High Street are part of our community and they are what makes this tiny part of Redbridge unique. Aside from their business operations, when a person trips over in the High Street (Redbridge should look at that paving), it’s our shopkeepers rushing out to help. It’s our shopkeepers who have readily offered sanctuary to kids being bullied or chased on their way home from school. Our shopkeepers who support us 12 months of the year as opposed to the mobile cash grabbers turning up for three weeks on Christ Church Green!

But there’s still a disconnect. Whilst council officers champion small businesses, I hear from my many correspondents that those seeking election this May do not. The charges of political motives have been laid at your doorstep by people who should know better. Elected officials who, rather than engage with local businesses on the High Street, now cross the road to avoid conversation with them. Indeed, the most out-of-touch justification they proffer is street-stall approval is a precautionary measure to ensure the correct licensing of our High Street! This from the very people who can’t enforce or have no interest in enforcing the already in place conservation area rules that govern our High Street. If it is a licensing issue, then stop wasting our council tax money and use the existing licensing arrangements used for the monthly market.

As a former local councillor, I floated the idea of a Christmas market on Christ Church Green 10 years ago, enamoured by the likes of the Christmas market I saw in Winchester. A quick consultation with our High Street traders informed me this was a very bad idea: it would decimate their trade and destroy our High Street. That’s called engagement. That’s called listening to your electorate. That’s called being a local councillor!

Our esteemed councillors and Redbridge Council should take note: small businesses are the backbone of our High Street, our community and our society! They are for all year, not just for Christmas! Above all else, our councillors should stop crossing the road and start to engage.

For more information on the street-trading proposals, visit wnstd.com/marketstalls

Wanstead and Snaresbrook Cricket Club has completed a successful tour of Pakistan, which included matches in Lahore, Islamabad, Sialkot and Jhelum.

The club won four of the six matches played.

“We also visited the Sialkot Orphanage School and the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital set up by Imran Khan, as well as spending a few days in the stunning mountains of the Hunza Valley and Skardu. We received an amazing welcome in what is a beautiful country,” said club chair Martin Pluck.

Redbridge Council is seeking the views of residents to help shape the future of the borough.

“We’re developing a new Borough Vision, which is a shared direction for how we want our borough to look and feel in the future. This vision will guide every major decision, investment and service improvement, acting as a ‘golden thread’ that connects long-term aspirations with everyday operations of the council. Please complete our survey and help create a thriving borough,” said a spokesperson.V

isit wnstd.com/bvision

A supporter of Saint Francis Hospice – which provides end-of-life care across Redbridge – is walking 5,000 miles from London to Ghana to raise funds for the charity and to take the ashes of his late fiancée to her final resting place.

“I lost the love of my life, Caroline, to cancer in 2024. I’m doing this to raise awareness and as much money as possible for the hospice, the place that looked after Caroline with so much care and affection right up until she drew her last breath,” said Daniel Forrester.

Visit wnstd.com/followdaniel

Having reached the finals of the Ilford and Redbridge Business Awards earlier this month, the Wanstead Village Directory lost out to Colours of Redbridge in the Social Value Award category.

“There was strong competition in our category and Colours of Redbridge are worthy winners. I’m grateful to all who took part in the public vote to help us reach the final,” said editor Lee Marquis.

Launched in 2023, Colours of Redbridge is a multi-organisation partnership that delivers community-led activities and events.

In the 14th of a series of articles, Revd James Gilder of Wanstead Parish recalls the traditions baked into his grandmother’s Christmas cakes and explains why we should all become tradition-makers

Do you have any family Christmas traditions? Lots of families do, of course. Often, these things are a kind of unwritten expectation of family life; they get passed down generations and they make each family just that little bit unique.

My grandmother would always make and ice a Christmas cake, replete with marzipan, of course. It would then be decorated with a little lake of silver foil, besides which would be placed the same decorations, amassed over the last 70 years or so: a plastic fir tree, a little church scene and an oversized, slightly menacing-looking robin, which always seemed poised to devour a rather smaller-scale Father Christmas along with his sleigh and reindeer. All of this would be fenced in with delicately piped blobs of lurid green icing, finished with those edible silver baubles that sit unloved for most of the year, next to the vanilla essence and bicarbonate of soda in the ‘miscellaneous’ drawer in the kitchen, awaiting their time to shine come December. In more recent years, my uncle has taken over the tradition and, of course, this cake would not be the same were it not for the decorations that everyone in our family remarks upon every year.

Perhaps we’re quite a boring family to delight in such a mundane tradition, but I doubt we’re alone. These apparently little things keep us grounded with what has gone before. They provide a link to those whom we love and no longer see and give a strangely dual sense of timelessness and seasonal rhythm we humans seem to like. ‘Tradition’ gets knocked about and dismissed in the name of progress quite a bit in our world, but you know, there’s something to be said for it. There can be a real emptiness when we lose it, because to lose it is to lose a sense of the love of someone else.

Of course, not everyone is blessed with happy memories of family time at Christmas. It can often be a time of arguments and sadly, reports of domestic violence tend to peak at the end of December, too. For some, it is an intensely lonely time. Those are traditions we could all do without perpetuating, and if you think you will be on your own on Christmas Day, please do sign up for our free Christmas lunch in the parish halls instead.

Yet, for all of us, this time of year can be a good excuse to carry on the good traditions of the past – to give not just gifts of ever-more ‘stuff’, but to help spread the joy of the season to new generations. Those of us who enjoyed the traditions of Christmas past must now be the tradition-makers for those younger than us.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the Christ child at Christmas. Jesus is the one part of Christmas that we Christians believe to be more than just a tradition, but instead, the living source of hope, love and redemption. Whatever your beliefs or traditions, I wish you all a very happy Christmas.

To contact Reverend James Gilder, email office@parishofwanstead.org

For the past decade, Wanstead Bereavement Café volunteers have offered tea, time, togetherness and a listening ear in a safe, welcoming space where people can share their grief

Bereavement. We all experience feelings of grief, and yet, when we’re in the thick of it, it can seem as if we’re the only person in the world who feels like this. It can cut you off at the knees, it can physically hurt, it can come out of nowhere, and it can feel like you’re never going to be the same again. And whilst we naturally think first about losing someone close to us, we can also feel grief at the loss of a precious pet, a job, friends moving away or perhaps a falling-out with family.

Grief hits all of us and in a variety of ways. Sometimes, it can help to chat. And chat with someone who’s not personally involved. It can perhaps make you breathe a bit easier to spend an hour with someone who can just accept where you’re at, listen and try to help you make sense of it. No judgement. No recommendations. No agenda for doing anything apart from offering a friendly listening ear over a cuppa and a biscuit.

The Wanstead Bereavement Café was founded in 2015. Since then, apart from during the period of the pandemic, it has been held in an accessible meeting room at Christ Church on Wanstead Place from 10.30am to 11.30am on the third Tuesday of each month. A group of four or five volunteers are ready to welcome people of all faiths or none. There is no charge and no need to book. (Our friends in South Woodford also run a bereavement café from 2pm to 3pm on the first Tuesday of each month at St Mary’s Church, Woodford.)

We’re not trained grief counsellors. We’re everyday people from Wanstead who’ve experienced our own sad times and are happy to share our experiences with others if asked to do so. Often, however, it is mainly a non-judgemental, non-threatening, listening ear that is needed. We’re just fellow human beings who are happy to stand alongside you for a bit or for as long as you need whilst you find a way forward.

Some people have only been bereaved recently, whilst others have been grieving for a long time. Some who come admit it’s easier to open up to strangers than to a family member or close friend. Some find sharing within a small group rather than one-to-one can be welcome. They may not be ready, or even able, to express their feelings, but are content just to sit and listen to others, knowing they are not alone in their grief. Tears are not uncommon and plenty of tissues are available. However, once the immediate release of emotions has passed and trust has been established, the atmosphere is relaxed and friendly, with laughter often lightening the tone. Some people only come to the café once, others become regulars, enjoying the group friendship. Feedback has been invariably positive.

Think this might help you? We’re looking forward to saying hello.

For more information, call 020 8530 8743 or email office@parishofwanstead.org

‘Tis the season to be merry… but be merry sensibly, says Abi Day of local solicitors Edwards Duthie Shamash, who takes a look at the real costs of drink- and drug-driving

The festive season is upon us. A time for Christmas parties and a well-earned tipple (or two)! Whilst it is the season to be merry, it is also a time to take extra care when it comes to getting behind the wheel. The consequences of drink- and drug-driving can be life-changing, not just for you, but also for other road users.

The legal drink-drive limit is 35mg of alcohol per 100ml of breath, while the drug-drive limit varies depending on the type of drug. The drug-driving limits are intentionally set very low, especially for illegal drugs, for which there is a zero-tolerance approach. For prescribed drugs, the limits are set accordingly, and you should always consult your GP and read the leaflet that comes with the medicine if you plan to drive.

Many doctors will tell you the drink-drive limit is set too high, that your driving is impaired even below the legal limit. If your driving is impaired, you are at risk of causing or being involved in an accident, which could have serious consequences.

So, how many can you drink before driving? The only safe answer is none. There are so many factors that affect how your body processes the alcohol that it would be wrong to specify a number of drinks. It is different for each person.

If you drive or attempt to drive a vehicle whilst over the prescribed drink or drug limit, you will face a mandatory minimum driving ban of 12 months. It will increase depending on your level of intoxication, whether you have been disqualified before or if you have a similar conviction. It’s not just a ban that you are at risk of either. You could also face a hefty fine and a more severe penalty, such as a community order or imprisonment and an associated criminal record. You will then also be looking at skyrocketing insurance premiums when you return to driving. And, of course, if you have to drive for work, your job is at risk as well.

If you aren’t over the limit, but your ability to drive is impaired, you could still be charged with being unfit through drink or drugs with similar penalties and consequences. It’s not just about driving either. Even if you are drunk in charge of a vehicle, this also carries severe penalties, which can include a ban or points. So, sleeping it off in your car could still land you in hot water!

What if you don’t blow in the breathalyser or provide a sample? Failing to provide a specimen, without reasonable excuse, is also a criminal offence with similar penalties.

If you are charged with an offence, you will have to go to court. So, this Christmas, think, plan ahead and avoid a New Year hangover.

Edwards Duthie Shamash is located at 149 High Street, Wanstead, E11 2RL. For more information, call 020 8514 9000 or visit edwardsduthieshamash.co.uk

Paul Canal asks if you can make up an extra plate on Christmas Day to continue the Wanstead tradition of sharing and kindness

For many of us, Christmas is a time of laughter, warmth and full tables surrounded by family and friends. But for some in our community, it can be a day of silence, a reminder of absence rather than abundance. That’s why, since 2020, a simple but beautiful Wanstead tradition has quietly made a big difference: local families cooking one extra Christmas dinner, plating it up, and delivering it to someone spending Christmas alone. No fanfare, no big organisation, just kindness on a plate.

We all cook too much at Christmas. The cost in money, food waste and carbon emissions is staggering. At the same time, a few streets away, someone is lonely and hungry. They would appreciate a Christmas meal. We are throwing food away. The connection is instant and the solution obvious! Plate up an extra meal and brighten a stranger’s Christmas.

Every year, I’ve been humbled by the generosity of our community: families juggling their own festive chaos who still take time to make up an extra meal; volunteers driving through the quiet Christmas streets, bringing not just food but warmth, conversation and a reminder that someonecares.

 This year, I’d love to make it even bigger. So, if you’re on your own this Christmas – or know someone who is, for whatever reason – please don’t be shy. Let us bring a Christmas meal (and a smile) to your door. And if you’re one of the many generous households in Wanstead who could make up an extra plate, we’d be so grateful for your help.

It’s a small gesture, but one that brings huge comfort – proof that Christmas spirit is alive and well in our little corner of East London.

The benefits are obvious. Less food waste, a delighted lonely person in need and a reminder that Christmas is really about giving. And in addition to a hot meal, and perhaps a Christmas cracker or two, we are also reaching out and offering friendship, empathy and real community spirit. There are many reasons why someone could need a meal this Christmas, from being on their own through bereavement or relationship breakdown to ill health, old age, disability or financial issues. Throughout the year, many people in Wanstead support the Tin in a Bin foodbank network. Think of this as ‘tin on a plate!’

Previous years have seen up to 80 meals delivered via the Wanstead Christmas Dinner Appeal, including vegetarian and halal meals. I certainly hope the need is less this year, but I also hope that whatever the need, our great local community can once again meet it and continue the Wanstead tradition of sharing and kindness.

To receive or provide a Christmas meal, send a message to 07769 159 433 or email havenhousexmasbakers@gmail.com

Those on their own at Christmas are also invited to join Christmas Day lunch in the halls of Christ Church. To book a ticket, visit wnstd.com/lunch25 or call 020 8530 8743