The current Kilburn Times has a letter and an article by a Tory councillor critical of the schemes
As there is a limit of three speaking slots for the public at Brent Council meetings a ballot had to be held to select three of the applicants to put their views to the Extraordinary Council Meeting on Healthy Neighbourhoods to be held on Friday 16th October at 3.30pm.
The ballot resulted in Brondesbury Park Residents' Association, Brent Clean Air and Brent Cyclists gaining a slot.
Given the short-notice of the meeting and the deadline for applications closing before the agenda was published, it is pretty amazing that any applications went in at all.
Local opinion is divided with many supporting the low traffic neighbourhood schemes as a way of reducing air pollution and reclaiming the streets from cars while others have mobilised against the scheme (see the current Kilburn Times). A petition 'Stop Road Closures in Kensal, Brondesbury and Queens Park' has mustered 2,262 signatories at the time of publication. I do not know whether the organisers have fulfilled the fairly stringent requirements that would enable the petition to be presented at the meeting.
The seven councillors who called the Extraordinary Meeting are not asking for the scheme to be dropped but calling for evidence about the rationale behind the specific schemes and information on how it will be evaluated.
They call the meeting...
To instruct the Lead Member for Regeneration, Property & Planning to provide a comprehensive rationale for the introduction of the temporary Healthy Neighbourhoods in the various areas.
This to provide details about how these areas have been chosen; how it impact targets; mitigations, if any; viability of the monitoring of the scheme; what prior public and stakeholder engagement has taken place; the equity of the trade-off between loser residential streets and gainers; the risk of increased congestion on certain residential roads and implications on emissions; the methodology to be used to evaluate the outcome, notably the goal of lower overall traffic volumes; and the measurements in place to secure adequate baseline data for ALL streets affected (including the connector roads).
If you are not at work, shopping or collecting the kids from school (which covers an awful lot of people) you can watch the meeting live on the Council webcast HERE
