Caroline Pidgeon and Sadiq Khan's exchange on Cricklewood Aggregate Terminal

Caroline Pidgeon, Liberal Democrat Assembly Member,  has also written to Sadiq Khan about the Cricklewood Aggregate Terminal:

It is my understanding that planning permission was granted by Barnet Council last week, however, there are a number of reasons why I believe it is vital that you now carefully examine this planning application.
The reasons why I believe this is necessary include:
1) The Barnet Council planning committee decision was made by a majority of only 1 vote: 6 councillors were in favour and 5 were against.
2) The London Borough of Barnet was both the planning authority and the joint applicant
3) The votes in favour appear to have been cast on party lines with all 6 of the ‘aye’ votes being by Conservative Councillors (and with no Conservative Councillors voting ‘no’).
4) The neighbouring boroughs of Brent and Camden both posted objections to the applications and councillors from those authorities spoke against the development at the meeting, along with London Assembly Member Navin Shah.
5) The development has the capacity to impact profoundly on the wellbeing and amenity of residents in three boroughs (Barnet, Brent and Camden) in terms of air quality, congestion on the already-over-used A5 and traffic safety. It is predicted by the applicants that there will be a further 452 HGV movements per day on the busy A5 (with consequent NO2 emissions and traffic impact) and PM10 emissions from the proposed stockpiled materials.
6) The impact on air quality report presented by the applicants was formulated by comparison with a baseline scenario gleaned from an inaccurate/non-representative traffic recording for previous use of the site (for example the traffic count included about 200 bus movements when the site was being temporarily used as a bus park whilst Cricklewood Bus Garage was unable to accommodate the buses in the usual way).
7) The broader previous use of the site was as a result of uncontrolled/illegal subletting and so, even if the counts had been accurate, they represented a scenario unfit for comparison with a proposed permitted development. Proper bases for comparison would be the current situation or, arguably but sub-optimally, the existing section 73 permission.
8) The applicants had previously released (informally and to only one residents’ association during the consultation process) an air quality addendum, which contradicted the results of the addendum that they later relied upon, but they did not publish the previous report on the planning portal. That previous report suggests that there may be ‘substantially adverse’ impact on air quality from the development.
9) There is good evidence that the traffic data is flawed in relation to both junction safety and the overall capacity of the A5.

For all the above reasons I would urge you to call in, review and then reject this planning application.
Yours sincerely,

Caroline Pidgeon AM

 Sadiq Khan replied: