Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity
1.Brent Council notice on display at Morland
Gardens. (Photo by Margaret Pratt)
In June 2021, Martin published a guest blog I had
written, Brent’s development delayed, about the Council’s failure to obtain the
Stopping-Up Order needed before they could proceed with their proposed
development at 1 Morland Gardens. They’d been told in December 2018 that they
would need such an order, if they wanted to build over the footpath and
community garden in front of the heritage Victorian villa. They could have
applied for it at any time after they received full planning consent on 30
October 2020.
Now, finally, they have started the process, by
giving notice of a proposed Stopping-Up Order. But already they’ve added to their
long catalogue of mistakes over 1 Morland Gardens! The Legal Notice published
in the “Brent & Kilburn Times” on 14 April failed to mention Morland
Gardens when describing the highway to be stopped-up, only giving its grid
references:
Under the Legal Notice, the only way to inspect or
request copies of the draft order and plan was in person at Brent Customer
Services, where they would be available for ‘a period of 28 days from the 14th
April 2022.’ I went to the Civic Centre on Tuesday 19 April, and the documents
were not available to inspect or get copies of. I reported this, and the
Senior Officer concerned has just let me know that they will be publishing a
new Legal Notice in our local newspaper on 28 April.
These were procedural mistakes, but they are not
the biggest error. Right from the start, when Council Officers greedily thought
they could add the Council-owned “highway” to the 1 Morland Gardens site, in
order to build more housing as part of the redevelopment of the Brent Start
college, they failed to consider what the effect of a stopping-up would be.
3.Part of the Morland Gardens “highway” between the
college and community garden.
(Photo by Margaret Pratt)
At the moment, pedestrians walking to and from
Hillside to the homes further along Morland Gardens, and the Five Precious
Wounds R.C. Church in Brentfield Road, can take the path alongside the low
front wall of the college, and be shielded from the traffic fumes and noise by
the trees of the community garden. If these routes (in green on the plan below)
are stopped-up, they will have to walk alongside the busy roads, right up to
the road junction.
4.Brent’s “stopping-up” plan, with before and after
routes added.
The additional walking distances involved are not
great, but pedestrians would now be exposed to the pollutants emitted by the
heavy traffic, especially when it is tailed back along Hillside because of the
traffic lights. This junction is in what has been designated an Air Quality
Management Area (“AQMA”), because of its poor air quality, and in fact is one
of the most polluted road junctions in Brent.
Because the site is in an AQMA, the planning
application for Brent’s Morland Gardens redevelopment had to include an Air
Quality Assessment (“AQA”). This was prepared for the Council by a specialist
company (Gem Air Quality Ltd), but the scope of what they were asked to report
on was just ‘the potential impacts of existing and future traffic levels on a
proposed mixed-use development located at Morland Gardens.’
In short, the assessment only considered the
effects of traffic pollution on residents and users inside the planned
new building! It did not assess what the plans would mean for pedestrians and
others, and did not look at the difference between pollution levels along the
paths that would need to be stopped-up and those on the pavements beside the
main roads here.
In fact, no actual air pollution readings
were taken at Morland Gardens, Hillside or Brentfield Road as part of the
assessment. It was a desk-based modelling exercise, but it did use an accepted
technique described as a “comprehensive tool for investigating air pollution
problems due to small networks of roads”. This was applied to a number of
“receptor” points around the planned new building:-
5.Main part of Figure 3 from the Morland Gardens AQA
report.
The AQA looked at the “before” and “after” predicted
annual mean levels of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. It can be seen
that the receptor locations R1 and R3 are the equivalent to points B and C on
the stopping-up order plan, so the predictions for those do provide at least an
indication of the likely levels of the traffic pollutants harmful to health.
These are the tables of results prepared by Gem Air Quality Ltd and included in
their AQA:-
6.Tables of predicted mean annual values from the
AQA. (Gem Air Quality Ltd, October 2019)
It will be seen that the predicted level of
Nitrogen Dioxide at ground level (especially at the corner of the building
nearest the traffic lights – R3 = 51.0) is
above the permitted “safe” limit. For particulate matter, the table appears to
show levels at around half of the “objective”, but the World Health
Organisation guideline value is 20, not 40 µg/m3, and the AQA only looks at PM10
concentrations, not the more harmful PM2.5 particulates (present in vehicle
emissions).
Added to that, the AQA only contains mean annual
predictions. The document admits: ‘that the short-term impacts of NO2 and PM10
emissions have not been modelled as dispersion models are inevitably poor at
predicting short-term peaks in pollutant concentrations, which are highly variable
from year to year, and from site to site.’ Pedestrians
would have to walk closer to the traffic that the “receptor locations”, and the
report also admits that: ‘street canyons have not been modelled as part of this
assessment.’
Having Brent’s proposed nine-storey building at the
corner of Hillside and Brentfield Road would contribute to a “street canyon”
effect. The report says: ‘Street canyons may result in elevated pollutant
concentrations from road traffic emissions due to a reduced likelihood of the
pollutants becoming dispersed in the atmosphere.’
Taking all of these facts together, the levels of
harmful pollutants which pedestrians would have to face when walking along the
“red route” shown on the stopping-up plan above would cause a much higher risk
to health than the existing “green routes” which the Council plans to stop-up.
Did Brent’s planners consider this, when recommending the scheme for approval?
NO!
7.The Air Quality section of the Officer Report to
Planning Committee, 12 August 2020.
The Planning Officers report, and the advice from
Brent’s Environmental Health Officer on which it was based, only looked at the
AQA, which was just about the air quality inside the proposed building. But
para.175 above includes this important sentence:
‘Officers acknowledge that there is the potential
for high levels of nitrous oxide associated with pollution from adjoining
streets to impact on the lower floors of the building (lower ground to
second floor).’
To deal with this, a condition was included in the
planning consent, requiring that the mitigation measures recommended in the AQA
must be implemented, and proved to have been implemented, before the new
building could be occupied. Those measures can be summed up in this extract
from the “Building Mitigation” section of the AQA’s conclusions:
‘A mechanical ventilation system that draws air in
from the roof may be considered acceptable as predicted NO2 concentrations on
the fourth floor and above are below the relevant air quality objectives.
However, the inlets should be placed as high as possible (roof level) and as
far away from the local roads as possible.’
If the air quality at the corner of Hillside and
Brentfield Road is only considered to be safe four floors above street level,
then surely pedestrians need to be kept safe from the pollution as well!
Deliberately forcing them to use the pavement by the busy junction, rather than
the existing paths, shielded from the worst of the traffic pollution by the
community garden, must surely be wrong!
8.The proposed Morland Gardens redevelopment site,
as currently pictured on Google Streetview.
There is a variety of additional health risks to
pedestrians from exposure to high levels of traffic pollution. I’m especially
concerned about the increased risks of asthma to children which the proposed
stopping-up could cause.
One of my children has suffered from asthma since
the 1980s (with more than a dozen childhood hospitalisations, and one almost
fatal attack), caused by the traffic fumes encountered on a 50-metre stretch of
Kingsbury Road, on the way to school. The reality of such risks was finally
confirmed in the 2020 inquest verdict, following the tragic death of 9-year old
Ella Kissi-Debrah, which found that she: ‘died of asthma contributed to by
exposure to excessive air pollution.’
But there is a way that the stopping-up order can
be prevented. Para. 4 of the Legal Notice (as it will be reissued) sets out how
anyone can object to it:
'Persons desiring to
object to the making of proposed order should send a statement in writing of
their objection and the grounds thereof, to the Head of Healthy Streets and
Parking, Regeneration and Environment, 5th Floor North Wing, Brent Civic
Centre, Engineers Way, Wembley, Middlesex, HA9 0FJ, or via email to
trafficorders@brent.gov.uk , quoting the
reference TO/23/031/NP, within the period of 28 days from the 28th
April 2022.'
And there is a final irony. The person who is responsible
for Brent’s proposed Morland Gardens stopping-up order is the Council’s Head of
Healthy Streets!
Result from the Address Pollution website, 29 April 2022
LINK
Philip Grant.
