Alasdair Balfour, a Queen's Park resident presented a petition to Brent Cabinet today setting out the case for halting the current engagement process:
Background
My name is Alastair Balfour, and I live on Chevening Road in Queen’s Park. A lovely street, in a lovely neighbourhood. I should support the MP Smarter Travel (“MPST”) traffic proposals as they appear to benefit me. But having experienced the utter chaos that the current temporary traffic restrictions have wrought on the wider neighbourhood, it is evident that the proposals are ill conceived, unfair and simply push the problem onto less fortunate neighbours in the ward. These trial schemes have created division among residents and gambled with the health and safety of thousands of children who attend schools on the boundary roads. Sadly, after years of false starts, real damage is being done to our community and to the trust they have in Brent’s approach to this topic.
In the weeks since the MPST meeting on November 4th, our petition has had over 1,400 signatures, a leaflet was produced and delivered to over 2,000 residents, a video has been made and circulated on social media, and newspapers are beginning to pick up the story. This has all been done by volunteers who feel let down, and who care for their neighbourhood. This outpouring of opposition is years in the making.
The MPST engagement is so flawed that it cannot produce reliable results. The catchment thinking is too narrow, the engagement materials were confusing, the online questionnaire was changed mid-engagement and never effectively communicated as promised. There was clearly no technical analysis which stands behind the proposals. And even Councillors and residents benefitting from the schemes oppose the options.
MPST are not traffic management experts, their mission is modal shift and nothing else. They lack clear objectives and indicators of success or failure. And without proper stakeholder definitions, they do not know even who they are solving for.
Proposed Way Forward
We understand that this is a highly complex issue, and we do not have all the answers. But it is patently clear that if this cabinet is serious about improving the situation it needs to start from square one and go back to basics. This requires joined up thinking, reflecting all stakeholders and doing hard work first. We must stop wasting money on projects that are doomed to fail. The skills and resources exist within the community to assist Brent in developing a project roadmap, defining the problems, crafting solutions, thus ensuring transparent engagement and community support. These offers of help and expertise have been rejected in the past. We ask whether Brent will accept them now, especially when budgets are so tight and resources so constrained.
All community groups (including residents associations) have always argued for wider consultation and a genuinely transparent cooperative process. There is a clear view of how to deliver success which can be shared with councillors at the appropriate time. But this must be done with total transparency, coordination, and consensus. Who better to facilitate this than the residents in the community. We understand the complex trade-offs required.
In conclusion, I want to thank you Cllr Butt for giving me the opportunity to speak today, and for confirming that this petition will be considered as part of this engagement process. But if you are serious about finding a path forward, we now need action over and above telling us that we have been heard. I am therefore requesting a commitment from the cabinet to the following three points:
Stop the flawed MPST engagement (it is so tainted that it only fuels anger)
Halt all hyper local traffic schemes until a data-led, wider area impact assessment can be provided
Sit down with local thought leaders to i) define the most pressing traffic problems (focused on boundary roads and schools), ii) agree the process roadmap which the entire community can support and commit real resources behind and iii) to use utmost transparency in all behaviour, data sharing and communication.
We have mobilised a significant amount of support from across the community in recent weeks, and we owe those neighbours an update on how the cabinet responds.
We want to bring everyone together to support the council’s objectives for a healthy neighbourhood – who would not? But we must learn from past mistakes, plan properly and deliver improvements for the many and not just a select few.
The response from Cllr Krupa Sheth, the Lead Cabinet Member responsible for the environment can be seen at 06.20 on the video above, Queen's Park councillor Neil Nerva at 08.17 and and Brent Council Leader, Muhammed Butt at 10.25. You can make you own minds up as to whether they commit to the three points raised by Alasdair Balfour.
After the meet a local resident said:
Many residents watching online were bemused when Cllr Butt said at the end that Brent had 43 or 44 successful Healthy Neighbourhood schemes in place.. One said "We look forward to seeing his list. But I can only imagine he's referring to School Streets? To our knowledge, four years on from the first set of attempts, Brent has just one LTN running - in Harlesden and Stonebridge. A status update on that one was expected last April but has not yet appeared. Four of the first batch were implemented but had to be withdrawn before the trial ended because they were not working.
Later attempts at designing a feasible scheme that could gain community support in Kilburn and Queen's Park Wards have failed - and the current "Engagement" has all the flaws in the speech given this morning"
12 comments:
How gracious of Cllr Nerva to be 'impressed' that mere residents dared to exercise their democratic right to contact their elected representatives. Perhaps he's unaware that when people are repeatedly ignored and dismissed, they tend to find strength in numbers and finally demand the attention their concerns deserve. Who would have thought?
Another crazy box ticking LTN idea, that only serves a tiny number of select streets and seems designed only to ingratiate Brent to the Mayor of London. But, in fact would create the opposite of a ‘healthy neighbourhood’ causing far MORE pollution, congestion and road safety issues on roads beyond the immediate area around Queen’s Park - roads that are factually already the most dangerous and polluted, eg Chamberlyane, Salusbury, Wrentham, Mortimer, The Avenue and others.
This scheme would put good money after bad - £250K has already been spent on ‘temporary’ road closures, put in place in a highly undemocratic manner east of the park. ~120 people originally petitioned for them. These closures have simply displaced more traffic onto the above roads, Harvist, Kingswood and Salusbury.
More than 1400 have now signed the petition to remove them and demand the the proposed additional hyper-local measures are not introduced.
Let’s see if Brent listen to their citizens or railroad road measures in the face of such opposition, data and logic.
Since 2020 the council has engaged in a pattern of behaviour around traffic & active travel policy which has led to a serious breakdown of trust with the community in Queen's Park.
A widely held impression has formed that the council officers and ward councillors are doggedly determined to impose hyper-local "traffic calming measures" which ignore both the evidence as to the actual traffic problems in the area (which are primarily on the boundary roads) and the strongly held opinions of residents, who generally understand that any interventions involve complex trade-offs, and are not prepared to back interventions which haven’t been properly analysed, explored or articulated. “Suck it and see” proposals which gamble with the health and safety of thousands of out children who go to school on the boundary roads likely to shoulder the burden of displaced traffic are simply unacceptable.
The lack of community support for road closures was clearly established as recently as Autumn 2021 and documented in a 60+ page Living Streets report.
The community does not support hyper-local interventions which unfairly prioritise the concerns of a select few at the expense of the surrounding areas. There is also discomfort that all the proposed interventions focus exclusively on the most affluent area around the park at the expense of neighbours in Kensal Rise, Brondesbury and North Kilburn. Why is Labour pushing a policy likely to exacerbate inequality and division?
Recently implemented "trial measures" on the streets east of Kingswood Avenue have displaced traffic and the flawed decision-making process behind their implementation has stirred immense anger in light of
1) a deliberately narrow consultation of beneficiary streets only (justified by councillors with a promise of a "transparent, evidence-based trial"), and
2) a total lack of follow through on the Council’s own monitoring commitments in respect of a so-called trial (in Brent's own report Appendix F).
5. The role of ward councillors in the process has also drawn considerable scrutiny, particularly given the obvious appearance of a conflict of interest for one member who resides on a beneficiary street.
The time and energy being wasted on failing to achieve a straightforward healthy neighbourhood that addresses the traffic problems holistically is shocking. It's not rocket science.
There is a clear lesson here for all residents. If you live somewhere like the roads off Kingswood, you can get traffic stopped. The lesson: be connected, be a councillor, be in the affluent part of a ward and you can get what you want. Unlike the rest of us...
I find it unconscionable that there are those who think that it is acceptable to allow rush hour ‘rat runs’ down narrow residential streets to ease traffic on major arterial thoroughfares. Residential roads were intended for peaceful housing - arterial roads were intended for through traffic. If roads like Salisbury and Harvest has to cope with heavier traffic because of restrictions on small residential roads, so be it!! If the traffic on the main roads is too heavy then perhaps drivers will opt to use public transport like so many of us! Pushing traffic into small residential roads is not the answer as is completely unacceptable.
Mr Balfour, it seems, presents a wholly inaccurate and divisive account of the traffic situation in Queens Park. This selfish rhetoric does nothing to promote and even-handed debate. Peddling such rubbish is unworthy
TfL apparently just hands this LTN funding out to councils to do with/ be as hyper local de-population areas focused as they wish. No account being taken of car-free housing only growth zones as best use of these funds for healthy neighbouhood projects.
Shouldn't Krupa Sheth and Neil Nerva actually respond to the petitioner's requests? Instead they appear to read / regurgitate pre-prepared remarks. Doesn't inspire confidence as to good intentions or chime with the Council Leader's self-congratulatory claim of "democracy in action".
Sounds like angry David Pollard is a self-interested resident of one of the smaller streets who feels entitled to a private road at the expense of many more who live, work and go to school on Salusbury and Chamberlayne Roads - which are both B roads not main arteries, have multiple large primary schools and illegal levels of pollution to begin with.
Search- The five minute city, inside Denmarks revolutionary neighbourhood.
An alternative approah from Copenhagen planners to new car-free housing zones than Brents current policy of doubling vehicle roads in the SKTBZ by 2040. Angry David Pollard 'for our cars only conservation area streets' seems to Trump all common sense, the public good and how car-free 45 ha zones should clearly be Pollardised instead.
City of Westminster, the best separated cycle network in the UK. Bordering
South Kilburn, car-free housing new town doubling its vehicle roads to 2040. Bordering Queens Park Conservaton Area going hyper local with 'for our cars only' streets....
Could not this highly conflicted/ classist approach to disintegrated transport and increased congestion be questioned as being the chaotic only plan future for this part of London? If logic and data starts to factor, then Mr Pollard may even want to move to South Kilburn car-free zone. How does doubling vehicle roads in new SK help QP? 'For our cars only' hyper local is an ill considered/socially unjust response when the wider context is fully factored in.
If 'for our cars only' conservation area 'hyper locals' got their exclusionary wishes, then London would become undrivable even for them.
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