Paul Lorber writes that his complaint to Brent Council alleging the waste of money and damaging environmental impact of their Wembley High Road pavement etc £3.5 million project has reached Stage 2. This is what he sent to Brent Council officers:
Anyone with the minimum of knowledge of Wembley High Road and its Paan Spitting problem would have realised that using pale grey stones is downright stupid.
I refer to my complaint about the decision to rip up perfectly good pavements in Wembley High Road - including areas of safe asphalt paving and new paving provided by the developer outside the Uncle building in Park Lane just 6 months ago.
The justification for this waste used by senior Council Officers was that the Council was following a design guide from 2016 and that High Road locations were treated differently to residential roads where use of asphalt was being imposed despite local opposition.
The photographs show the new and expensive pavements completed outside the Uncle building less than a week ago.
Of course Brent Council Officers are very well aware that Wembley High Road has a serious Paan spitting problem which the Council has failed to contain despite painting warning signs on the pavements in this very area just a few weeks ago - signs of course only dug up shortly after!
If nothing else this highlights how foolish it is to use an out of date design guide which fails to take account of local circumstances - which officers should be or were perfectly aware of.
Using pale grey brick paving in this area was clearly not wise (and I am using measured language here). In contrast black/dark grey asphalt would hide this kind of mess much better and be probably easier to clean of.
The Design Guide is clearly useless and it would be highly irresponsible to continue to use it. I appreciate that Brent Council is like a juggernaut and Councillors and Officers never admit to making a mistake until it is too late.
In this case I would urge a revision to the current work programme to both save money and not to continue to put down material which is unsuitable for this location.
There are large areas of the pavements in Wembley High Road do NOT require ripping up as they are perfectly safe. Many areas just require a proper and effective repair reusing existing materials.
Residents want safe pavements and most will not care if part of the High Road are paved with asphalt, existing car resistant slabs or new materials where required.
They will however be angry about both the waste of large sums of money (especially when repeatedly told that “there is NO money to fix dangerous pavements in the streets”) or when they see the kind of mess shown in these photographs.
The money saved can then be used to repair and upgrade pavements in streets with unsafe pavements instead.
As a local Taxpayer I strongly object to the current Council approach of ripping up perfectly good pavements for the sake of a clearly useless Design Guide and the totally inefficient and environmentally damaging approach taken by Brent Council. The Council should re focus its approach and give greater emphasis to effective repairs and maintenance rather than the current ‘rip up’ approach.
I trust that you will listen rather than continuing to pursue your dogmatic ‘we know best’ approach.
