Hard on the heels of the Brent Licensing Committee turning down an Adult Gaming Casino application for the former Lloyds Bank in Willesden Green, Macau Casino Slots has withdrawn their application for 131-135 Kilburn High Road, the former Santander Bank.
Cllr Suzanne Gallagher (Green councillor for Kilburn Ward) hailed the news:
Huge news!
Following our community campaign against the proposed Bingo Hall, Macau Casino Slots have officially withdrawn their application for 131-135 Kilburn High Road. The hearing scheduled for July 8th is now cancelled.
The old Santander building was never an appropriate location. Kilburn High Road already suffers from a high concentration of gambling establishments. Crucially, this site sits within a community ranking among the top 2% most deprived neighbourhoods in England.
Brent has a duty to protect our most vulnerable residents from predatory industries.
Furthermore, we must protect former banking premises that now lie empty across our borough; casinos are not a suitable substitute for what was once an important community service.
This is a massive win for community power! Coupled with last week's refusal decision for the Adult Gaming Centre in Willesden Green, this withdrawal sends a powerful message of hope to boroughs across London and beyond.
These businesses should not be setting up shop in our most deprived areas. This victory goes beyond Brent, it is a blueprint for community resistance everywhere. We want to help those communities who are fighting for the heart and soul of their high street.
Let this serve as a crystal-clear message to other gambling operators: look elsewhere. You are not welcome in the most deprived corners of Brent.
Thank you to everyone who stood with us! We promise to continue standing with you in the fight against gambling harms
6 comments:
The tide is turning in Brent! Congratulations to Councillor Suzanne Gallagher who has put so much effort into mobilising local residents in Willesden Green and Kilburn and has worked so hard to demonstrate that councils can reject gambling applications.
Let's get real stopping one or two new Gambling Dens is not going to reduce gambling. The Green policy of banning things is the easy part - there is a need for individuals to take some responsibility for their own actions. Gambling is a choice and to then blame others for the self inflicted harm is the easy option. So what are the Green's actually doing to persuade residents in their wards to STOP gambling?
Thank you for your comment.
You’re completely right that chasing individual applications is not onlyan inefficient use of time, but is a symptom of a broken system. It is not our preferred strategy.
Because of the framework created by the Gambling Act 2005, local authorities do not have the power to simply say "our high street has enough gambling dens." Instead, we are forced to spend precious resources campaigning, and requesting officers, such as public health to build highly specific arguments against every single incoming application.
It forces canpaigners, residents and public health teams, who should be focusing entirely on preventative health measures and community support programmes, to act as a shield for the high street.
Regarding personal responsibility: individual choice is hard to exercise when predatory corporate billionaire backed models deliberately saturate a community to maximise profit.
This isn't just about "banning things", it's about local democracy. The community should have the power to decide the character of its own high street without being buried in national policy burdens. This is likely to continue with the newly proposed impact assessments.
We shouldn't have to endlessly fight just to promote and maintain a healthy public space.
Well done to Brent Labour run council. Always putting residents first.
It's also about getting proper shops and restaurants back into a High Street.
If Labour really cared about us residents they would have blocked all previous similar applications throughout the whole of Brent - instead they encouraged the blight of betting shops and gambing premises (and thousands of mini marts selling alcohol all hours of the day and night) which mar our communities.
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