It is very sad the Clean Air for Brent, a much needed organisation has decided it cannot continue. There is a final zoom meeting on February 21st.
This is their statement:
Last year we attempted to find 'new blood' to resurrect Clean Air for Brent and enable it to rise out of the doldrums. We held an enthusiastic zoom meeting and a few interested parties volunteered to take on steering roles. However we have been unable to find enough people with enough time to give to take CAfB forward in a meaningful way and, most importantly, we do not have a new chair to inject CAfB with the energy it needs. We thank those who did offer their support. Recently our chair Mark Falcon stepped down and we thank him for all his hard work and dedication in the post. Janey McAllester will act as Interim Chair while we resolve the group's future.It was also suggested that CAfB might merge with another group but as there is not enough appetite in the current steering group to make this happen, we cannot pass on our database and have only a small amount of funds there does not seem to be a way forward in that direction.Therefore the remaining steering group members feel that there is no alternative but to close CAfB and allocate the small amount of its funds remaining to another local organisation who is fighting the fight, and encourage our membership to join with them. It is suggested that this be Brent Friends of the Earth. We will therefore hold a final zoom meeting to go through the formalities on 21st February at 8pm. Should you wish to join this is the link:Thank you for all your support over the years and apologies that we have not been able to continue.Best wishes,Clean Air for Brent Steering Committee
25 comments:
I bet B~ent are over the moon
South Kilburn is a Brent Air Quality Action Area, not surprising given that its a 45 ha 51 metre car-free housing tall building zone since the Brent Local Plan of 2022.
A major problem is that tower developers and freehold tower management developers are not interested in the consumers of their zoned in new urban colonies. They were likely total dismissive of CAB and as community infrastructure from one tower goes to building another tower when spent in the zone.
Despite South Kilburn being set up to be one of the most population overcrowded zones anywhere in the UK by 2050, there is not a clue as yet from Brent planners about best supporting very obvious active traffic needs also growing inside this harsh zone, in fact quite the opposite with public rights of way having no definitive map for South East Brent as yet.
If Brent brought in weekly refuse collections for both general waste and recycling there would be less household rubbish dumped on our streets and therefore fewer vehicles trailing around our streets trying to deal with the issue - no Veolia out collecting the fly tips from the same place every, no council officers and enforcement officers driving around taking photos of dumped rubbish everyday.
Yes that’s going to make SUCH a big difference to our air quality ð ever heard of the circular economy or minimising packaging? It should really start with people being more mindful of what they buy to cut down on their waste altogether
So you'd rather have thousands of fly-tips still dumped on the streets everyday?
When the fly-tips are collected the waste is usually incinerated which really helps the air quality (not)!!!
Have you actually read the comment above yours? If less waste is generated then there’d be plenty of space in bins i.e. no flytipping
@ Anonymous2 February 2024 at 18:52 according to your reasoning the rubbish ends up incinerated either way, so how does that help air quality?
To Anonymous3 February 2024 at 00:49 - so what are Brent Council and our MPs Barry Gardiner and Dawn Butler doing to lobby the manufacturers to produce less packaging??? What are they also doing to implement a bottle and can return scheme?
It helps coz you dont have endless Veolia trucks and council officers driving around dealing with the fly tipping - our green areas don't end up polluted, our rivers don't end up polluted and money can be spent on better things like planting trees!!!
To Anonymous2 February 2024 at 12:19 - most people have to buy what they can afford rather than worry about packaging choices
A lot of the dumped rubbish is from illegal HMOs where the landlord has told their tenants to dump their waste rather than ordering extra wheelie bins from the council ð
But do you agree that if rubbish is minimised closer to source of creation that may well be a better solution than increasing bin collections?
You’ll have to ask them. I agree that a bottle and can return scheme should be easy enough to implement as has been happening across Europe for years - last I heard the Tory govt is planning this but, if I remember correctly, they stopped the Scots from doing it earlier for some reason I can’t recall. It’s a reason Scots at the time called for another move to independence.
Brent could implement its own bottle and can return scheme.
They could also bring back all the litter bins on residential streets which they removed to save less than 20p per Brent Resident per year leaving our streets full of litter which our Council tax has to pay to be swept up everyday.
They could also stop issuing so many alcohol licences to each and every shop that opens encouraging street drinking.
And what about all the hundreds of thousands of pounds of fireworks set off each year full of who knows what pollutants??? Are they not an air quality issue???
Does Brent council have the power to stop fireworks or is that a governmental issue?
This thread has gone wild ðĪŠ
Brent Council and our two Brent MPs can lobby the government to tackle the sale of fireworks.
Brent Council Trading Standards can:
- limit the sale of fireworks to certain days;
- they can check to see if the seller has a valid licence;
- they can check that the fireworks being sold all have the CE mark which should indicate that they have been safety tested for pollutants.
Brent North MP Barry Gardiner wrote to trading standards re the sale and use of illegal fireworks, not sure what the outcome was...
https://www.barrygardiner.com/recentnews/barry-writes-to-trading-standards-over-the-sale-and-use-of-illegal-fireworks
Brent Council Enforcement Officers and the Police should be enforcing the long existing regulations - it is illegal to set of a firework on a public highway/road/street or in a public space such as a local park but here in Brent it's carte blanch to set them off wherever you like, creating a thick smog of smoke and leaving all the debris behind - how is this safe or good for the environment???
Even the motions at full council meetings don’t actually go anywhere. It’s effectively pointless posturing. Trading standards will tell you to report to the police, the police will tell you they don’t have the resources.. Maybe more pressure needs to be put on the MPs, I’m not sure what they actually do. I’m quite surprised no one is looking to oust them from power, as they are with Mo Butt. Barry Gardiner has been an MP for donkeys years but what has he actually achieved for Brent North/West? He’ll keep going till he’s old and frail and we’ll all suffer because of it. Since we’re talking about it, isn’t he supposed to be a champion for environment/the climate emergency? He seems to be on the international stage but not so much locally!
We actually have three Brent MPs but you’ll find the third is utterly useless.
We actually have three Brent MPs but you’ll find the third is utterly useless.
MP Barry Gardiner's 2024 calendar states that in 2023 he travelled to "Svalbard...the most northerly settlement on the planet where our world leading scientists work to understand the impacts of climate change". And then he travelled to the UN COP 28 climate summit in Dubai claiming to be there "persuading the world's leaders to take the science more seriously. Our children demand and deserve nothing less". In 2023 he also travelled to India to "address the spectacular celebration in Ahmedabad"
Were those three trips where he must have travelled by plane really necessary? He could have held meetings on zoom and could have sent a recorded message to the centenary celebration.
We are all being told to walk or cycle to save the planet and help improve air pollution yet politicians are amongst the worst polluters - they should all be leading by example not preaching to us!
Which one?
Do we have a third MP in Brent? I know about Butler and Gardiner. Didin't the Kilburn one retire after the last election?
Tulip?
Yes, that one, didn't she join the Tories?
I'll make my point in this way.
When democratically elected MPs give their consent to the sale and use of cigarettes, and even when that naturally leads to serious and fatal consequences, it is allowed to continue unabated, we shouldn't be surprised when few people (if any) put themselves forward to support the campaign for clean air in Brent.
Indeed, the broken, misaligned, cigarette stub-covered pavements throughout The London Borough of Brent, reflect the sad reality of the extent to which the habits practiced by the people who smoke, have been persuaded to take risks with their own health and see it as their right to do so without giving thought to the multi-faceted damage it does wherever it is permitted.
Indeed, I argue the point that the longer smoking cigarettes are permitted, the more selfish, careless, complacent, and deluded human society becomes.
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