Petitioners on Lyon Park Avenue on Sunday 13th December copyright Paul Bambridge
Residents in Wembley have sent a petition to Brent Council officers and elected members demanding urgent action on traffic concerns on Lyon Park Avenue, Wembley, a very narrow residential road. The petition has been signed by over 100 locals who are alarmed at inaction by Brent Council to prevent the serious speeding and dangerous driving that occurs on their road.
The petition has been addressed to the Chief Executive, the Leader of The Council, the Head of Transport in Brent, Brent North MP and local ward Councillors for Wembley Central and Alperton. This step by residents follows several months of communication with Brent Council officers who have so far refused to commit to any quick actions to alleviate the traffic issues.
Lead petitioners Kay Carroll and Paul Bambridge along with local ward Councillor for Alperton, Anton Georgiou, had an online meeting with a Brent Council officer to request immediate measures before lockdown 2 ended, such as traffic enforcement and additional 20mph signs and Vehicle Activated Signs. They discussed the traffic survey conducted by Brent Council on Lyon Park Avenue which showed 4,039 speeding vehicles on the road in just one week, some at 40 and 50mph.
Brent Council blame lack of funding for their inability to act fast on residents’ concerns, so far they haven’t contacted the local police to undertake any traffic enforcement action and by the middle of December they can’t even advise how much the extra signage might cost.
Lead petitioner Kay Carroll says:
Residents are appalled Brent Council are ignoring our pleas for urgent action regarding speeding traffic on our road. Families should feel safe where they live and when they walk their children to school. We need enforcement action and proper solutions now before there is a truly serious incident.
Liberal Democrat Councillor for Alperton, Anton Georgiou says:
I am fully supportive of residents’ calls for quick action to deal with the traffic concerns on Lyon Park Avenue. The road is used as a through route for drivers seeking to avoid Ealing Road traffic and this has meant an increase in speeding. It must also be noted this is a busy road for pedestrians and many families and children use it to walk to and from the local schools. The lack of funding argument doesn’t quite add up, surely safety must be a priority – Brent has over £129 million in CIL money, it is about time some of this is spent on urgently dealing with issues like this.
Last Sunday afternoon,
ReplyDeleteI listened to the former Labour Government Chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown talking about his thoughts on how the current conservative Government is responding to the Covid19 crisis on the Radio Four news at 13.00.
Now, you may rightly wonder what relevance does that have with the subject matter of the slow response to complaints from local residents about serious speeding and dangerous driving that occurs on their road on Lyon Park Avenue, Wembley?
Well, please bear in mind that council that is being accused of being slow to respond to concerns expressed by Lyon Park Avenue residents, is the same council that imposed the ''healthy neighbourhoods'' scheme in spite of claims of “great concern and anguish” to many residents where it was implemented.
Further to that, the "healthy neighbourhood" scheme is also designed to tackle the problem caused by diesel fumes and Gordon Brown was the chancellor that introduced a tax incentive to encourage people to buy cars powered by diesel.
Fast-forward to the now and what do you know, a Labour run council implemented a scheme to tackle a problem that was hailed as something good but that illusion is now shattered and people are now being forced to drive less to protect the health of local residents and can be traced back to the Labour Government under the leadership of one Tony Blair and his chancellor Gordon Brown who is now playing the wise old statesman role in spite of the fact that he and his cabinet ministers are responsible for the anxiety, frustration and disappointment being felt and expressed by Wembley residents to a Labour run council who is now being slow to respond to their concerns.
This reeks of mismanagement, ineptitude, hypocrisy and double standards on the part of Brent council but it also reveals evidence of disorder at the top of the Labour party and yet that does not come as surprise to me given the much documented division within the Labour party under the disastrous leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.
If this fails to bring about a much needed change in the way that Labour operates on a local level let alone central,
things will stay the same and we will continue to pay the price for decisions made in Government that force local authorities to make decisions in the name of protecting the health and lives of people on a local level
that frustrates drivers in one way and pedestrians in another as seen in the case of the residents of Lyon Park Avenue.