1 Morland Gardens – is proposed Stopping-Up Order another mistake?

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

1.Brent Council notice on display at Morland Gardens. (Photo by Margaret Pratt)

 

In June 2021, Martin published a guest blog I had written, Brent’s development delayed, about the Council’s failure to obtain the Stopping-Up Order needed before they could proceed with their proposed development at 1 Morland Gardens. They’d been told in December 2018 that they would need such an order, if they wanted to build over the footpath and community garden in front of the heritage Victorian villa. They could have applied for it at any time after they received full planning consent on 30 October 2020.

 

Now, finally, they have started the process, by giving notice of a proposed Stopping-Up Order. But already they’ve added to their long catalogue of mistakes over 1 Morland Gardens! The Legal Notice published in the “Brent & Kilburn Times” on 14 April failed to mention Morland Gardens when describing the highway to be stopped-up, only giving its grid references:

 

 

Under the Legal Notice, the only way to inspect or request copies of the draft order and plan was in person at Brent Customer Services, where they would be available for ‘a period of 28 days from the 14^th April 2022.’ I went to the Civic Centre on Tuesday 19 April, and the documents were not available to inspect or get copies of. I reported this, and the Senior Officer concerned has just let me know that they will be publishing a new Legal Notice in our local newspaper on 28 April.

 

These were procedural mistakes, but they are not the biggest error. Right from the start, when Council Officers greedily thought they could add the Council-owned “highway” to the 1 Morland Gardens site, in order to build more housing as part of the redevelopment of the Brent Start college, they failed to consider what the effect of a stopping-up would be.

 

3.Part of the Morland Gardens “highway” between the college and community garden.
(Photo by Margaret Pratt)

 

At the moment, pedestrians walking to and from Hillside to the homes further along Morland Gardens, and the Five Precious Wounds R.C. Church in Brentfield Road, can take the path alongside the low front wall of the college, and be shielded from the traffic fumes and noise by the trees of the community garden. If these routes (in green on the plan below) are stopped-up, they will have to walk alongside the busy roads, right up to the road junction.

 

4.Brent’s “stopping-up” plan, with before and after routes added.

 

The additional walking distances involved are not great, but pedestrians would now be exposed to the pollutants emitted by the heavy traffic, especially when it is tailed back along Hillside because of the traffic lights. This junction is in what has been designated an Air Quality Management Area (“AQMA”), because of its poor air quality, and in fact is one of the most polluted road junctions in Brent.

 

Because the site is in an AQMA, the planning application for Brent’s Morland Gardens redevelopment had to include an Air Quality Assessment (“AQA”). This was prepared for the Council by a specialist company (Gem Air Quality Ltd), but the scope of what they were asked to report on was just ‘the potential impacts of existing and future traffic levels on a proposed mixed-use development located at Morland Gardens.’ 

 

In short, the assessment only considered the effects of traffic pollution on residents and users inside the planned new building! It did not assess what the plans would mean for pedestrians and others, and did not look at the difference between pollution levels along the paths that would need to be stopped-up and those on the pavements beside the main roads here.

 

In fact, no actual air pollution readings were taken at Morland Gardens, Hillside or Brentfield Road as part of the assessment. It was a desk-based modelling exercise, but it did use an accepted technique described as a “comprehensive tool for investigating air pollution problems due to small networks of roads”. This was applied to a number of “receptor” points around the planned new building:-

 

5.Main part of Figure 3 from the Morland Gardens AQA report.

 

The AQA looked at the “before” and “after” predicted annual mean levels of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. It can be seen that the receptor locations R1 and R3 are the equivalent to points B and C on the stopping-up order plan, so the predictions for those do provide at least an indication of the likely levels of the traffic pollutants harmful to health. These are the tables of results prepared by Gem Air Quality Ltd and included in their AQA:-

 

 

6.Tables of predicted mean annual values from the AQA. (Gem Air Quality Ltd, October 2019)

 

It will be seen that the predicted level of Nitrogen Dioxide at ground level (especially at the corner of the building nearest the traffic lights – R3 = 51.0) is above the permitted “safe” limit. For particulate matter, the table appears to show levels at around half of the “objective”, but the World Health Organisation guideline value is 20, not 40 µg/m3, and the AQA only looks at PM10 concentrations, not the more harmful PM2.5 particulates (present in vehicle emissions).

 

Added to that, the AQA only contains mean annual predictions. The document admits: ‘that the short-term impacts of NO2 and PM10 emissions have not been modelled as dispersion models are inevitably poor at predicting short-term peaks in pollutant concentrations, which are highly variable from year to year, and from site to site.’  Pedestrians would have to walk closer to the traffic that the “receptor locations”, and the report also admits that: ‘street canyons have not been modelled as part of this assessment.’

 

Having Brent’s proposed nine-storey building at the corner of Hillside and Brentfield Road would contribute to a “street canyon” effect. The report says: ‘Street canyons may result in elevated pollutant concentrations from road traffic emissions due to a reduced likelihood of the pollutants becoming dispersed in the atmosphere.’

 

Taking all of these facts together, the levels of harmful pollutants which pedestrians would have to face when walking along the “red route” shown on the stopping-up plan above would cause a much higher risk to health than the existing “green routes” which the Council plans to stop-up. Did Brent’s planners consider this, when recommending the scheme for approval? NO!

 

7.The Air Quality section of the Officer Report to Planning Committee, 12 August 2020.

 

The Planning Officers report, and the advice from Brent’s Environmental Health Officer on which it was based, only looked at the AQA, which was just about the air quality inside the proposed building. But para.175 above includes this important sentence:

 

‘Officers acknowledge that there is the potential for high levels of nitrous oxide associated with pollution from adjoining streets to impact on the lower floors of the building (lower ground to second floor).’

 

To deal with this, a condition was included in the planning consent, requiring that the mitigation measures recommended in the AQA must be implemented, and proved to have been implemented, before the new building could be occupied. Those measures can be summed up in this extract from the “Building Mitigation” section of the AQA’s conclusions:

 

‘A mechanical ventilation system that draws air in from the roof may be considered acceptable as predicted NO2 concentrations on the fourth floor and above are below the relevant air quality objectives. However, the inlets should be placed as high as possible (roof level) and as far away from the local roads as possible.’

 

If the air quality at the corner of Hillside and Brentfield Road is only considered to be safe four floors above street level, then surely pedestrians need to be kept safe from the pollution as well! Deliberately forcing them to use the pavement by the busy junction, rather than the existing paths, shielded from the worst of the traffic pollution by the community garden, must surely be wrong!

 

8.The proposed Morland Gardens redevelopment site, as currently pictured on Google Streetview.

 

There is a variety of additional health risks to pedestrians from exposure to high levels of traffic pollution. I’m especially concerned about the increased risks of asthma to children which the proposed stopping-up could cause. 

 

One of my children has suffered from asthma since the 1980s (with more than a dozen childhood hospitalisations, and one almost fatal attack), caused by the traffic fumes encountered on a 50-metre stretch of Kingsbury Road, on the way to school. The reality of such risks was finally confirmed in the 2020 inquest verdict, following the tragic death of 9-year old Ella Kissi-Debrah, which found that she: ‘died of asthma contributed to by exposure to excessive air pollution.’

 

But there is a way that the stopping-up order can be prevented. Para. 4 of the Legal Notice (as it will be reissued) sets out how anyone can object to it:

 

'Persons desiring to object to the making of proposed order should send a statement in writing of their objection and the grounds thereof, to the Head of Healthy Streets and Parking, Regeneration and Environment, 5th Floor North Wing, Brent Civic Centre, Engineers Way, Wembley, Middlesex, HA9 0FJ, or via email to
trafficorders@brent.gov.uk , quoting the reference TO/23/031/NP, within the period of 28 days from the 28th April 2022.' 

 

And there is a final irony. The person who is responsible for Brent’s proposed Morland Gardens stopping-up order is the Council’s Head of Healthy Streets!

 

Result from the Address Pollution website, 29 April 2022

LINK

Philip Grant.