Letter: Brent Council is using heavily biased language in its Paddington Old Cemetery dog PSPO consultation - what are their real plans?

 Dear Editor,

The leader of Brent Council Muhammed Butt and his Cabinet have been accused of “treating voters with contempt” and “turning neighbours against each other” in Kilburn, with a completely farcical ‘consultation’ aimed at banning dogs being walked off leash in one of the few green spaces in that part of Brent. 

Paddington Old Cemetery – a Grade II listed historic green space and graveyard - which was landscaped by Westminster Council in the 1980s – has been an increasingly popular location for dog owners (who make up nearly half of the local population based on London dog ownership figures) in recent years. The cemetery is a wonderful open space for local residents walking their dogs. There are large spaces with no graves where dogs can exercise without troubling anyone.

It is also a vital source of bio-diversity, with many rare species living there as well as thriving bee hives. Growing visitor numbers have driven away the drug dealers who used to plague the cemetery, and residents living nearby say that dog walkers have made their homes safer.  

Things changed when management of the cemetery passed from Brent’s Parks Department to the Cemeteries team, who seem determined to extract as much money from the site as they can, regardless of the consequences to the community. Getting rid of dogs completely is being seen as the first step in that process. 

Brent has amended its borough-wide Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) to force dogs to be on the leash in the cemetery without discussing it with community groups, and without telling anyone until two weeks before it was due to take effect on 1 October. Following a strong push-back from local residents, Cllr Butt announced an eleventh-hour u-turn and paused the implementation of the new regulations pending a consultation. Nearly 450 residents have signed an ePetition calling on Brent to ensure that this consultation is “fair, open, transparent and balanced”.

However, those hopes were dashed when the Brent Council’s survey went live last Friday. Marketing expert, dog owner and founder of the group Dogs of Paddington Old Cemetery (DoPOC) Eleni Chalmers described it as “one of the worst surveys I have ever seen in my life”. 

Chalmers said: “The questions are leading and designed to gather evidence to support removing the freedom of off-lead dog walking in the cemetery, rather than being an authentic request for community input. The survey options are unbalanced and the language is loaded, such as options to ‘agree' with ‘dogs urinating and defecating on graves’. Most questions have a simple default option of ‘I don’t agree with dogs in the cemetery’. Further outrage has been caused by Brent’s edict that only one person in a household can fill in the survey and barring anyone who responded to the first after it was amended in the middle of the consultation. It simply breaks all rules of effective research.  It’s clearly designed to get the outcome Brent wants - which is to remove all access to this rare community green space to dog owners.” 

Brent has now taken the unprecedented step of sending letters by first-class post to residents in Kilburn and Queen’s Park to publicise the survey. This letter again uses loaded, heavily biased language, talking about increasing complaints about dogs “causing distress to visitors” and “causing disturbance to burial services” without providing any evidence to support this. 

Residents have been left wondering what the cost of this exercise has been to a borough that consistently pleads poverty and has cut street cleaning in Kilburn to the minimum.

“This was a missed opportunity to have a genuine dialogue with all cemetery users about how to manage the increasing popularity of the cemetery,” said Cordelia Uys, a local dog owner and DPOC member. 

“Responsible dog owners recognise that there are things we need to do to ensure that dogs and people visiting graves can co-exist, like reducing the number of dogs professional walkers can bring in and stopping people driving long distances to the cemetery to exercise dogs. This is what the consultation should have explored. Instead, they are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”

Chris Maggs walks her dog daily in the cemetery and also visits the graves of her great-grandparents there.

Maggs said: “It’s also important to remember that nearly half of the people who visit graves own dogs themselves and they often want to bring their pets with them. It’s simply false to try to pretend that dog owners and grave visitors are two completely different sets of people”

Brent’s Cemeteries team hit the headlines a few years ago when they dumped asbestos-ridden waste in the cemetery in a bid to create an artificial-raised section in which to dig new graves. [Editor: See LINK] As a result of the delays to that project they allowed the use of destroyed historic paths, and other unused areas in the cemetery, for burials. Michael Bond, the creator of Paddington Bear, is buried in one such pathway area and his tombstone is already leaning. After heavy rainfall his grave is often left temporarily underwater. 

Why are Brent pursuing this path for a green space that is full to capacity with an estimated 200,000 bodies in marked and unmarked graves? Residents and visitors to the cemetery strongly suspect that once dogs are banned, the Council’s next step will be to investigate whether it can dig-up old graves and re-sell the plots. 

Local residents including the Friends of Paddington Old Cemetery (FoPOC) and its dog loving counterpart DoPOC, want a permanent joint consultation committee with Brent on the future of POC in order to save it - for all members of the community.

 

Brent resident and dog owner