The forecast on Wednesday
The start of the chaos on Friday morning
I was crushed by happy, smiling and excited 'Swifties' on the packed Metropolitan line yesterday but the mood amongst Wembley Park residents was rather different.
It started off early morning when the 206 route from The Paddocks to Kilburn Park was stopped before 9am affecting people from the area travelling to work, school or shopping.
TfL via Twitter denied all knowledge of the curtailment and suggested residents rang their customer service, depite the fact they are a customer service. Instead they devoted themselves to publicising their Swiftie alternative tube map. Whimsy is no substitute for a public bus service!
The TfL website failed to inform passengers of the curtailment and the result was confusion and over-crowded pavements. Particularly worrying was that school children at each end of the 206 bus route would find that their bus was not running (southbound from Wembley Park) or would be dumped at Bridge Park (if travelling north to Wembley Park). People working at Brent Park Tesco and Ikea as well as the industrial area south of the stadium were similarly disrupted.
About half an hour ago I found a woman at The Paddocks bus stop vainly waiting for a 206. She had been waiting for more than 30 minutes and said she would demand a council tax rebate.
Unfortunately this feeds a feeling that as far as Wembley Stadium, Brent Council, Wembley Park LDN (Quintain) and TfL go the needs of Wembley citizens (and particularly bus users) come way down the priority list on event days.
Last word from a Wembley Central resident:
Last night when Wembley Hill Road and Wembley Triangle were closed to all but traffic exiting to travel down Harrow Road to North Circular Raid it was chaos . There were untold amount of Chauffeurs/Ubers/Taxi's etc all parked up on double yellows at the Triangle next to the railings, blocking the road into Wembley High Road. All drivers were out of the cars, on their phones no doubt calling their passengers to let them know where they were waiting, The traffic on the south bound High Road was at a standstill. It was complete chaos, I have no idea why Police or Traffic Wardens were not called to prevent this, it was still like this at 11.30pm. The concert did not officially end until 10.45 that's when the fireworks went off.
The consultation regarding Wembley Stadium's Planning Application to hold additional major events closes on Monday.
Make you comments HERE.
This has nothing to do with Quintain so please don't suggest it does.
ReplyDeleteOf course Quintain are involved in this - you have built all over the area and created this madness of everyone being cramned into a tiny area with no real consideration of the impact this would have on local services.
DeleteWe never had this problem years ago, in 1985 I went to see Springsteen at Wembley Stadium and I can remember getting a bus home from near the old Conference Centre.
Glad to know that Quintain are reating this blog though!
Big assumption that you think that comment is from Quintain 😂 pretty sure they’ve got better things to do
DeleteQuintain Ltd, the developer at Wembley Park, is behind the marketing website wembleypark.com and X/Twitter account @WembleyParkLDN. As such it has been publicising the Taylor Swift concerts. See https://wembleypark.com
ReplyDeleteOf course it is not directly responsible for local public transport but I would hope it has a interest in working with the other bodies mentioned to ensure that local residents are not unnecessarily inconvenienced on event days.
Go Martin! 👍🏻
DeleteThe Mayor of London says 'every journey matters' but not if you don't have a car and rely on public transport in the Wembley area.
ReplyDeleteIt's pathetic how residents are messed around.
Suggest you tag Taylor Swift in your Tweets and ask her for help - if she's such an amazing force of nature surely she can question these issues with the powers that be - afterall they'll all be at her concerts with their freebee tickets.
Why would anyone else defend Quintain?
ReplyDeleteThe impact on the local area was considered by the Brent Council Planning Committee in 1999 when a decision was made to grant permission on condition that the number of Large Events (those with attendance of more than 51000 would be restricted to 37 per year. Few years later they applied for a variation and Brent Planning committee approved an increase to 46 Large events per year. This weekend we have had 3 Large events in succession. As Martin has reported the FA is applying for more events:
ReplyDelete1. Number of Large events allowed each year increased by 8 to 54 and
2. Large Events revised to one with capacity of over 60000 - this is significant as there is no restriction of the number of these sized events.
Because of the type of problems described by Martin and the impact of more Large events on the lives of Local people I have called on Brent Council to hold Public Consultation Meetings before the application come to Planning so that local people can have their say and solutions to the problems identified are discussed and solutions proposed.
The applicants have been given an audience with the Brent Council Leader and Chief Executive who had their opportunity to have their say - it is only right that local people impacted by events at the Stadium should be given a proper hearing too.
Why aren't Barry Gardiner and Dawn Butler backing affected residents over this??? They are local residents.
ReplyDeleteThere are serious issues being raised - traffic pollution - bus diversions affecting elderly, disabled and school children - carers can't get to vulnerable people - huge increase in ASB of all different kinds on event days. Yet there is silence from them.
"The applicants have been given an audience with the Brent Council Leader" - to be clear the Brent Council Leader is Cllr Mo Butt who has received thousands and thousands of pounds worth of tickets from the applicant Wembley Stadium - see how many tickets he's received here, see here (you'll need to scroll down):
ReplyDeletehttps://democracy.brent.gov.uk/mgDeclarationSubmission.aspx?UID=128&HID=3715&FID=0&HPID=68046535
Interesting to see a letter of support for more "major' events at Wembley Stadium was submitted by "Wembley National Stadium Trust", see here...
ReplyDeletehttps://pa.brent.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=neighbourComments&keyVal=DCAPR_168879
"Wembley National Stadium Trust, Wembley Stadium, HA9 0WS (Supports)
Comment submitted date: Mon 24 Jun 2024
Letter of support received"
Are they supporting their own planning application? Is this allowed?
24th June 19.33 The Trust is the grant-making arm of Wembley National Stadium Limited so would claim to be a different organisation. https://wnst.org/
ReplyDeleteBut Wembley National Stadium Trust are surely biased in favour of more events to keep themselves in jobs managing these grants generated from more income?
ReplyDeleteHow do we find our what grants they have given out in the local area since the Trust was established??? We’ve not heard of any.
There's a bit on their website https://wnst.org/ as above. The cover Brent, London and England. This is from the Brent section:
ReplyDeleteThe sports sector in Brent is unusual. There are very few senior charter standard clubs in any sport. But there is a plethora of smaller, grassroots community clubs and organisations, often run solely by volunteers and operating on a shoestring.
WNST’s support for the residents and sports organisations in Brent is at the heart of what we do. Over the years, we have supported projects which have helped tens of thousands of local residents, of all ages and abilities, to get more active. Football has always been the most popular activity, from children’s grassroots sessions up to senior non-league clubs. But we know this is not for everyone – and more than 30 different sports have received grants from us.
We fund both local sports clubs as well as larger or more general community organisations providing sports activities or facilities. Grants are available for both revenue (running costs, training courses etc.) as well as capital (facilities, equipment etc.)
In the past, there have been two grants rounds a year, as and when funds allow.
Each round has two programmes:
• Community awards – grants of up to £3,000 to local sports clubs or other smaller organisations towards general running costs, coaching, training courses, equipment etc.
• Strategic awards – a smaller number of larger grants, up to £25,000, to fund broader revenue projects or larger capital works.
But please note that the trustees are currently reviewing their grant-making strategy and will announce their conclusions in due course.
Wembley National Stadium Trust
We are a charitable grant-making trust, distributing funding received from Wembley National Stadium Ltd to support community sports activities.
Wembley National Stadium Trust © 2022
WNST is a registered charity in England no. 1072392, and a registered company no. 03667982
Interesting but doesn't give specific details of any actual grants which is odd? You'd think they'd have photos and information promoting the grants they have given out?
DeleteLots of trustees - wonder how much they get paid?
ReplyDelete