From Brent Council
Register for Brent Council's Air Quality Action Plan Resident Forum now!
Want have your say on air quality in your local community?
Here's a chance for us to answer your questions and hear your views on how we can work towards clean air in Brent.
This forum will provide an important opportunity to access, participate in and influence council decisions through an interactive session where we will summarise the AQAP.
The two sessions are identical. Two are being held to maximise attendance. Book your on-line place below.
19th April, 12:00pm-1:00pm: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/air-quality-action-plan-resident-consultation-forum-tickets-595888818497
20th April, 6:00pm-7:00pm: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/copy-of-air-quality-action-plan-resident-consultation-forum-tickets-597695472247
6 comments:
This draft 5 year core statutory required plan can be viewed online.
There, South Kilburn figure 2.1 has no air quality monitoring stations. South Kilburn is a Brent Air Quality Focus Area (12), great- but unlike the others no precise monitoring stations or plan consultation?
Given Brent Local Plan and its car-free housing 16 plus intensification tower blocks to 2041 in South Kilburn, a 45 hectare zone in re-development transition year 22......
Interesting how a plan for this car-free green active travel neighbourhood is still political trapped at 'localised solution'/ no 'specific plan' stage in this Draft AQAP?
In real world Brent developers still want to double vehicle roads inside this car-free housing 45 hectares zone, while vehicle reduction actions only happen in conservation areas Kilburn north of the mainline railway to date.
The power of vague, the power of no public landowner plan of what a car-free 30,000 population town re-development should be like to live life in.
For Brent car-free new towns AQM is let developers decide, this draft AQAP should be changing that cavalier uncare position towards South Kilburn massive population growth/ car-free housing zoned.
Our faux Labour Party Administration controlled by neoliberal right wing councillors who are better would suited to being Tory councillors are folowing the doctrines of the Tories - let the market decide - ie, let developers do what they want, sod any conception of a real plan for the benefit of Brent residents and their future. They don't even recognise that their regeneration and development at any cost is causing the majority of the borough's air pollution and consequently the increasing number of cases of asthma and the reduction in our life expectancy at an alarming rate over the last few years.
Not to worry, the shorter life expectancy will decrease the number of people receiving care in the borough.
The illustration of the stadium from the Welsh Harp (above) shows no sign of all the tower blocks which have been built around Wembley stadium.
All that construction work led to masses of pollution:
- from huge demolition projects including machines breaking up rubble etc and lorries removing it as necessary;
- from thousands of lorries delivering millions of tonnes of concrete and other materials to all the building sites;
- from vehicles stuck in traffic due to roadworks whilst construction works were taking place;
- from the loss of huge mature trees on these building sites or in our local streets to allow construction to take place.
It doesn't paint a very nice picture of Brent Council's Air Quality Concerns.
Brent's refusal to definitive map and statement its public rights of way as is legally required in the former borough of Willesden doesn't help. Active travel (zero air pollution) routes unprotected are being Brent stopped up and lost to public use forever. Hardly an Air Quality Action Plan.
I did notice a monitoring station mapped as being at Chippenham Gardens Local Centre South Kilburn, probably sited in Westminster?
Air Quality Focus Areas are where highest pollution levels meet with highest population density human exposure levels. AQAP Green neighbourhoods are being piloted Church End and Kingsbury Green, but why not South Kilburn as its all car-free site allocation housing blocks to 2041 and the most development sites for any neighbourhood in Brent?
Anonymous (12 April at 23:34) is right about Brent's ignoring of air quality concerns when development projects are proposed.
Council Officers, and the Cabinet members who gave them the green light, went completely against Brennt's existing Air Quality Action Plan when they decided to build over the community garden at the highly polluted corner of Hillside and Brentfield Road, so that they could build a block of flats as part of their proposed upgrade of the Brent Start college at Morland Gardens.
Their plans would remove a group of semi-mature trees, which help to protect pedestrians from the traffic fumes, and force people walking to and from Morland Gardens to walk much closer to the busy traffic junction - both consequences that the AQAP is supposed to prevent!
Harlesden NW10, the UK's biggest ever transport super hub, definitely needs a complete north to south public right to walk and cycle through it, of appropriate scale to this Major UK Transport Town's mass transit projects monumental scale and true environmental impact.
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