Strathcona Road - off Carlton Avenue East
Discussion around the potential move of Islamia Primary School from its Queens Park site to one in Preston, Wembley, (not Kingsbury) has centred around the difficulty of the journey for parents who live near the current site.
Here are some journey options I researched today as well as a video (above) of a site visit I made this afternoon.
A reader suggested this (could also be Bakerloo line)
By bus even longer walk at the end (1 hr 14 mins)
Car journey (may be longer at peak school run time) 23 or 29 minutes
Cycling routes - pretty unlikely given lack of safe cycle paths (37 or 39 minutes)
Practicalities regarding cycling or buses as a mode of travel leaves driving a car during school peak times or the tube journey. The video shows Strathcona Road and the parking on it as well as the double yellow lines near the school so car travel, discouraged anyway on environmental grounds, is problematic.
Of course parents don't all live near the present school site but it would be essential to have some kind of travel assessment as part of the consultation. There is clearly a danger that some families will be excluded from attendance at the new site by the difficulties outlined and the cost.
Sofia Moussaoui, Islamia Chair of Governors, told the Cabinet meeting that approved consultation on the move, that they would look into ways of 'how the get them (parents and children) there.'
There will need to be an Equalities Impact Assessment as part of the consultation as the danger is that less well-off families will be excluded from the school because of the cost and difficulty of the journey. This could amount to discrimination.
Neither Yusuf Islam/Cat Steven, nor the Yusuf Islam Foundation, have responded to requests for a statement giving the reason for the eveiction order on the school.
Note: Tube and Bus rotes from the TfL Plan a Journey website
7 comments:
What about getting a bus to collect the kids in Queens park and drop to the new site and back in afternoon????
This is a clear strategy to discourage the poor from attending this school. Along term plan by the school foundation who have influenced the local authority to believe in their agenda of inequality.
Would Bakerloo Line from Queens Park to South Kenton be possible?
It would but there are no lifts at both ends. So if you or your children have mobility problems or you have very young children and babies in prams that will be impossible. Also the platforms will be packed already at peak time. Imagine adding dozens of people with young children. Safeguarding at its best.
“The poor”? This is queens park. House prices are cheaper out preston way.
At least it's a school land use remaining as a school land use.
In South Kilburn its two school land uses to become two housing land uses instead and that money used to build schools and housing on Brent Kilburn's only park scale park land use!
If policies BGI1/ BSESGA 1 were Brent Local Plan planning policy for real " South Kilburn Park will be extended and enhanced", then this park would have Local Green Space Designation granted by Brent long ago and the enormous green funds available to this park 'extend and enhance' currently blocked by brownfield land registration at the Land Registry would instead already be flowing, or am I missing something?
Why would Yusuf Islam and his Foundation want to evict the school he build in the first place, it just does not make sense
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