Petition to Protect Kensal Green Cemetery from irreversible harm

 

Kensal Green Cemetery

 

The Keep Kensal Green campaign to urge Sadiq Khan to call in the Kensal Canalside Development because of widespread concerns over contamination of the  site and other issues closed on February 15th but that has been followed by a major petition calling for the protection of the well known Kensal Green Cemetery on the other side of the canal. It is a familiar  and intriguing sight to anyone on the upperdeck of buses on the 18 bus route who can peer over the cemetery's tall walls.

 

 

 The proposed development (Credit: BBC)

 

 

The Petition to Sadiq Khan reads:

 

      

A nationally important place of remembrance for Londoners is at risk of irreversible harm.

 

We ask the Mayor of London to step in now to protect Kensal Green Cemetery — a place of remembrance, peace, and profound human meaning — from irreversible harm caused by development proposals at Kensal Canalside.

 

Still in daily use for burials, cremations and memorial visits, Kensal Green Cemetery is a place of quiet reflection and remembrance, where generations of Londoners have laid their loved ones to rest. It is a rare green refuge in a dense urban area, valued by families, visitors and local communities. It is also a Grade I listed historic landscape of national significance.

 

The proposed developments would significantly overshadow the cemetery with a wall of 98m tower blocks, damage its setting, tranquility, and fragile ecology, and permanently alter its character. Added to that, developers want to build a commuter route right through the middle of the cemetery! Historic England has warned that the resulting harm will be “widespread” and “profound”. This is not a marginal impact or a matter of taste. It is a clear and lasting harm to one of London’s most important historic burial grounds. Once this setting is damaged, it cannot be restored.

 

This threat sits within a wider pattern of serious concerns about the scheme, including:

 

• unsafe emergency vehicle access
• excessive scale beyond the site’s capacity
• inadequate provision of genuinely affordable housing
• unresolved contamination and unexploded ordnance risks
• poor transport connectivity and traffic impacts
• insufficient green space and public health concerns

 

Taken together, these failures point to a scheme that does not represent good growth and does not meet London’s strategic planning objectives as a whole.

 

We therefore urge the Mayor to use his powers to intervene — including calling in or directing refusal of the application — to prevent irreversible harm and to ensure that development here respects human dignity, heritage, safety, and community wellbeing.

 

Protect Kensal Green Cemetery and London’s history — for the families who visit today, for the wider city that values it, and for future generations.

 

Why Kensal Green Cemetery Matters

 

Kensal Green Cemetery was established in 1833 as the first of London’s great Victorian garden cemeteries. It is one of the 'Magnificent Seven' cemeteries, created to provide dignified burial, green space, and places of reflection for a growing city.

 

Now a Grade I listed historic landscape, the cemetery reflects London’s religious, cultural and social diversity. It contains over 250,000 burials and is both a site of national heritage and a living place of remembrance, visited daily by families, mourners, and local residents.

 

Those buried here include both ordinary Londoners and figures of national significance — engineers, writers, scientists, reformers, and public figures who helped shape modern Britain — among them Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles Babbage, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope— alongside countless ordinary Londoners whose families continue to visit and care for their graves. 

 

The cemetery also holds powerful social history, including the memorial to Kelso Cochrane, whose 1959 murder became a defining moment in Britain’s struggle against racism and helped galvanise the cultural resistance and community organising that gave rise to the Notting Hill Carnival.

 

Beyond its cultural and historic importance, the cemetery functions as a vital urban micro-habitat: its mature trees, undisturbed ground, and low levels of artificial lighting support birds, bats, insects and other wildlife that can no longer survive elsewhere in the surrounding city.

 

Kensal Green Cemetery was designed as a place of peace, greenery and contemplation. Its open character, setting and sense of calm are central to its meaning. Once these qualities are lost, they cannot be recreated.

IF YOU SUPPORT THE CAMPAIGN SIGN THE PETITION HERE 

 

In an update  on the petition's progress the Campaign says:

          

Our hope is simple: that the Mayor of London steps in to overturn RBKC’s decision.

But we face powerful interests — so we must be ready to present our strongest possible case.

Contamination is one of the most serious concerns. When the former gasworks site is excavated, toxic gas and dust will be released. These pollutants do not remain contained to the site — they can spread through air and water, affecting residents and the fragile ecology of Kensal Green Cemetery. The concerns go even further: insufficient affordable housing, inadequate emergency access, lack of social infrastructure, and widespread gridlock.

To be able to act quickly and effectively, we have launched a Crowd Justice campaign to raise £20,000 to secure expert legal counsel and ensure we properly present our case to the Mayor of London.

👉 Please help with a small donation to legal funds.

There are thousands of pages of planning and environmental documents to review, and extensive legal arguments to prepare. Preparing properly takes expertise. And expertise costs money.

If the Mayor does not take positive action, we may need to pursue a full Judicial Review. That would require further funding. But right now, our focus is ensuring we are ready — and that our community is not priced out of defending itself.

We are not asking for large donations. If we all give just £5 or £10, we will be in a strong position to stand up for our neighbourhood and our heritage.

Every little truly helps! If you can, please make a small contribution — and please share the link with someone else who cares.

 

Keep Kensal Green - Ladbroke Grove Sainsbury's development site contamination issue VIDEO

 

Duffy asks, 'Why didn't Brent Council interview key witnesses over transportation of asbestos contaminated waste?'

Councillor Duffy has responded to Brent Council's replies to his questions about the asbestos contamination at Paddington Cemetery with this email to Carolyn Downs, Brent Council Chief Executive:

Thank you for letter you asked Mr Whyte to send on your behalf. I will study it and deal with the questions around the events of 24th June and 30th November and contamination in general in a second reply as I need to get more information. However this reply will focus on how the waste got to Paddington Cemetery, which is the most crucial issue. Firstly I am delighted you have said "I can confirm that the AAC report was initially restricted for its consideration by the Committee in December. it has been publicly available on the council’s website since the last Audit Advisory Committee on the 10^th January. I believe your decision to lift the restriction is a good decision for democracy and will allow an open debate around the report

As you know, until you published it, I was bound by the council standing orders not to reveal what was in the report. This was most frustrating as the report is flawed and omits crucial evidence. Only in Brent would a report that does not interview witnesses be acceptable. The report not only fails to interview anybody who witnessed the transportation from Carpenter Park to Paddington Cemetery (as they may tell a different story), it relies completely on what Senior Brent council officers say is true and does not seek relevant documentation.

As you know my allegations have always been the same since November 2017:

(1) The council knowingly/deliberate transported contaminated waste from Carpenters Park, putting the workforce and the public at unnecessary risk.

The report points out there were two known incidences of contamination in Paddington Cemetery. 

The first one took place in 2011, where the council received supposedly top-soil from a waste contractor. A council officer called Mr A dealt directly with the contractor named as company XX. He did not seek additional quotations as the contractor XX (this is normal for Brent not to seek best value) had previously carried out work in Willesden New Cemetery. Instead, Mr A met the contractor on site and agreed a price and raised a work order from the contractor to supply" Clean Top soil." 

While Mr A was off sick a Senior manager Mr F (rightly) challenged the workmanship of company XX and informed Mr A on his return to work that the company should not be used again. Mr F is now retired. Mr A however said the clay/soil was, he understood, to have been tested and no contamination was found. Bizarrely the investigating officer did not ask the name of the company who tested it or ask see a copy of the test results.

The second incident took place in Carpenders Park in August 2015, The work was being carried out by different contractor YY to carry out levelling work in section 3d in Paddington cemetery. Mr A was alerted to contaminated soil again .Mr A believed it to be (guessed it to be) "Asbestos cement", which he described as low risk. He removed some of the "Asbestos Cement"  and double bagged it and disposed of it to landfill and obtained a waste transfer certificate and the  remaining waste still contaminated  with asbestos fibres was transported to Paddington Old cemetery without a test being carried out to assert the level of contamination still within the soil this confirms the council knowingly transferred  waste to Paddington Cemetery knowing it to be contaminated. This is all confirmed at the bottom of page 6 and top of page 7 of the AAC report.

I assume the waste was then taken to the West London Waste Authority (WLWA) Site on Abbey road NW10 as we are a member of that waste authority. WLWA are required to keep Waste Transfer notes for a minimum of 2 years. So it is very likely they will still have copies and that information would be a basic requirement to any investigation Date, Weight, description but this obvious avenue was yet again not pursued by the investigator.

However the most bizarre thing I have ever seen in a report and after nearly forty years experience, I am still not sure I believe what i read. It was the statement from the investigating officer saying "Although dealing with contaminated land falls within the remit of the ( the council's) environment monitoring team they stated they would NOT pursue a criminal investigation against the the contractor should evidence of an offence under the Environmental Protection Act come to light." This is the Environmental team telling the investigator and the committee, whatever he then finds, it does not matter because environmental officers will not pursue it.

As I say, I welcome your decision to remove the restriction on the ACC Report and i hope it get a full airing at the public meeting, however I believe the publishing of the AAC report makes an Independent public investigation carried out by a Health and Safety expert( to reassure the public) inevitable. I believe the idea that issues in the public interest can be dealt with by a restricted special committee where the council mark their own homework and give themselves an A+  has to be challenged 

I have only one question: Are you happy that the investigating officer did not seek relevant available documents and failed to interview key witness involved in the transportation of the asbestos contaminated waste to Paddington cemetery 

An early reply will be much appreciated. I will also get back to you on the other two points later in the week. Namely, 

(2) That the council knowingly instructed the workforce to work in the contaminated ground in full knowledge that it was contaminated with Asbestos 

(3)  That the council knowingly did not follow proper H+S regulations on the 24th of June and 30th of November.

Better data needed to monitor successful recycling

'Green' bin in Salmon Street, Kingsbury this week

Green groups in Brent expressed fears that the new co-mingled recycling (everything put into one bin and emptied into one truck) would produce more contamination than the green box system where different materials were sorted at the pavement stage and put into different compartments of a lorry. This would result in more material being rejected at the recycling plant and ending up in landfill.

Now that the scheme has been running for some time I put in an Freedom of Information request to see if the amount of recyclates collected, which have increased now that some plastics are collected, was affected by increased contamination.

Unfortunately some data is not recorded so it is hard to get a full picture but the recent rejection rate seems to vary between  4% and 12%. It is argued that the recycling rate has still increased taking this into account.

Here are the full answers. Thanks to Chris Whyte for another quick response (Answers in bold)

1. What proportion of material collected in the co-mingled 'blue top' bins has been rejected at the Material Recycling  Facility (MRF)  since the new system was introduced as:

  a. Contaminated. The most recent sampling shows the prohibited fraction can range from 4% to 12%

b. Not recycled under the present scheme: As above. This is the same waste. The overall recycling rate has increased from 31% to 45% and this accounts for the prohibited fraction.

 2. How does this proportion differ from the previous separated green box system? Not recorded. This was a different system that saw prohibited items removed at source. Thus there is no real comparison.

 3. Please provide a table to show whether the proportion rejectedhas declined over time as residents have become familiar with the system. Regular sampling is not undertaken and the prohibited can
fluctuate from period to period. Our records show an overall increase in the amount, and percentage of, waste recycled since the new service began.

 4. If data is available please provide the above information for recyclables collected from communal recycling bins from flats. Not separately recorded.

5. What has been the cost of sending these rejected materials to landfill? There is no additional cost to the council for landfilling prohibited waste that is rejected. The  cost is contained within the £22
per tonnage charge for accessing the Material Recycling Facility (MRF). This represents a £70 per tonne reduction on waste collected for landfill through the refuse service.

 

Brent Greens oppose Harlesden incinerator plans

The site

Brent Green Party has joined opponents of the Energy Recovery Plant (locally known more directly as the Harlesden incinerator)  proposed for the Willesden Junction site on the borders of Brent.  They have sent the following objection to Ealing Council Planning Committee  LINK

CONTEXT

Brent Green Party is concerned about the negative environmental impact of the major part of the planning application, relating to the pyrolysis plant. We do not have equal objection to the anaerobic digestion part of the plant, since we recognise the potential benefit of utilizing CH4 released by biomass for energy rather than putting it in landfill, where it would be released anyway, contributing to climate change.

However, we cannot support the application taken as a whole and state our OBJECTIONS here:

AIR QUALITY

-         Insufficient modelling of potential air quality impacts and their assessment and foreclosure of the need for additional health impact assessments in line with Environmental Agency stipulations.

-         Insufficient assessment of the need for appropriate mitigation measures in light of potential air quality impacts at the planning application stage in line with EA stipulations.

CO2

-         Pyrolysis produces bio-oil and syngas which when combusted for energy, produce vast amounts of CO2, wholly inconsistent with the achievement of EU emission targets.

WATER COURSES

-         Contamination of London canals from run off pollutants during construction, not sufficiently mitigated by drainage measures.

-         Region is water stressed in terms of supply of mains water and site water demand will exacerbate this, in excess to the rainwater-harvesting techniques designed to reduce onsite mains water demand.

PEDESTRIANS

-         During construction, adverse effects on users of playground in Harley road, residential properties and pedestrians in Old Oak Lane Conservation Area, users of the Grand Union Canal and pedestrians walking through Metro Multi Trading Estate.

CONSTRUCTION

-         Adverse noise pollution during construction.

-         Medium to low risk impact of dust generated during construction.

-         Potential for ground contamination during construction period.

-         Potential for ground contamination from storage/handling of oils, chemicals & waste materials from the new plant, not met by proposal to place in storage facilities.

For these reasons we strongly object to the proposal in its current form.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Shahrar Ali, Spokesperson for Planning and Environment
Brent Green Party, PO Box 54786, London NW9 1FL
Contact shahrar.ali@greenparty.org.uk