I wrote the following letter to Brent councillors who sit on the Welsh Harp Joint Consultative Committee ahead of the meeting on November 11th. I wrote in my capacity as the organiser of Brent School Without Walls which runs environmental education sessions for primary school pupils in Fryent Country Park. I also forwarded the letter to Natural England and the London Wildlife Trust who sit on the JCC.
Dear Brent Councillors,
I am writing to you ahead of this evening's JCC meeting to request that you do all you can to persuade the JCC to adopt a position of opposition to the proposed development of housing on the Greenhouse site. I know that the JCC does not make the final decision but I believe a strong stand on the issue, conveyed to the Planning Committee before their December 16th meeting, could be very influential.
Since the proposal was announced there has been a strong groundswell of local opinion against the plans. Two petitions opposing the development are currently circulating in the area and the 'Comments Book' at the exhibition at the Greenhouse itself contains many heart-felt, passionate pleas for the Welsh Harp to be defended. As local councillors I hope you will rise to that challenge.
As you know the proposed site is adjacent to the SSSI and MSINC and close to the Environmental Education Centre. The environmental report for the developer argues that a buffer zone of trees will be enough to mitigate the impact on the open space. I would strongly claim that this is not the case. The SSSI and MSINC need a much larger buffer zone to protect them. At present the limited opening hours of the garden centre and its large outside selling area, replete with plants, trees and shrubs, provide a buffer. This transition zone between housing and the open space will disappear and noise, traffic and light pollution; and loss of habitat, will have a direct impact on the wild life of the area. In addition the extension of Birchen Grove, across the open space, to provide access to the new estate will be a further loss of green field space. All these developments could have a detrimental impact on the diversity of the grounds of the Environmental Education Centre. Once housing has been developed on the Greenhouse site there will be inevitable pressure on the area between the development and Runbury Circle. This contains the Birchen Grove allotments, where I am an allotment holder, and the Environmental Centre whose work I strongly support.
Brent already has less green space than many other London boroughs and we must defend every inch of it. My mother played around the Welsh Harp as a child in the 1930s, and my brothers and sisters and I did the same in the 1950s when we visited our grandmother in Church Drive. I believe my life long interest in the environment stemmed from that experience and a similar one on Barn Hill. These are two gems of semi-wild areas that we have left in Brent and it is vital that we protect them and they are available to the next generation. London Heritage last year lamented the fact that Brent, unlike other London boroughs, had no official 'heritage champion' and suggested this explained the deterioration in Brent's conservation areas. In the absence of such a champion, councillors and residents should join together to be community heritage champions for the borough.
Martin Francis
WEMBLEY MATTERS News and views on local politics, the environment, climate change, culture and local history
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
WELSH HARP ENVIRONMENTAL CENTRE - A VALUABLE RESOURCE
The Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre is adjacent to the proposed housing development on the Greenhouse Garden Centre site.
The Centre is used by children from the boroughs of Brent and Barnet and wider afield and is an excellent and valued local resource,
Click HERE to see a video about the Centre's work.
The Centre is used by children from the boroughs of Brent and Barnet and wider afield and is an excellent and valued local resource,
Click HERE to see a video about the Centre's work.
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
FIGHT TO KEEP OUR DIMINISHING NATURAL ENVIRONMENT
Concern over the possibility of housing development on the Greenhouse Centre site at the Welsh Harp has increased in both Brent and Barnet since the Wembley Observer followed up the story first carried on this blog.
The development will be discussed by the Welsh Harp Joint Consultative Committee at 7.30pm on Thursday 11th November in the Council Chamber at Brent Town Hall, Wembley. The JCC consists of councillors from Barnet and Brent, users of the Welsh Harp reservoir and open space, Natural England, London Wildlife Trust, Old St Andrews Residents' Associaiton, Woolmead Residents' Association and West Hendon Community Forum.
The decision on planning applications will be made by the Planning Committees in each borough but the viewof the JCC will be important. The public have a right to attend these meetings and it is important to hear what our representatives are saying about this threat to our dimishing local natural environment.
The JCC Agenda says that the consultation on the plans ends on November 11th. We have rung Brent Council to query this and have been told by the Planning Department that the Brent consultation actually ends on November 20th and the most likely date for Brent's Planning Committee to consider it is likely to be December 16th.
Meanwhile at least two petitions are circulating opposing the development of the site as housing and there is a possibility of a public meeting on the matter.
The JCC Agenda can be found here
Saturday, 31 October 2009
ARK BIGGER THAN EXPECTED?
Since the steel skeleton of the Wembley Academy has gone up there has been a lot of chat amongst locals about its size, as it begins to tower above Bridge Road. Many think it is bigger, both in terms of height and in the amount of the site it covers, than they expected from the plans and visualisations they saw during the consultation.
Visualisations and artists' impressions can be notoriously misleading. Figures and lamp posts are often added to give some idea of proportion but is still hard to guage actual size. The tall part of the building at the junction of Bridge Road and Forty Lane is jammed right up against the trees of the SLINC (Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation) in the corner.
The size of that part of the building which is adjacent to Forty Lane can be seen from this photograph, remember there is also the lower building on Bridge Road.
Similar issues have arisen with the Brent Cross Development where developers have used illustrations which minimise how out of scale the development is with surrounding housing. The Coalition for a Sustainable Brent Cross Cricklewood Redevlopment have published illustrations which give a different impression on their website
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
BRENT COALITION STRENGTHENED AS COUNCIL FACES PROJECT COLLAPSE
Jean Lambert, Member of the European Parliament, this week backed the Brent Cross Coalition's call for a Public Inquiry into the Brent Cross Cricklewood Redevelopment Plan. The Coalition is now supported by individuals at every level of political representation, as she joins Sarah Teather MP for Brent East; Navin Shah, London Assembly Member for Brent and Harrow, Darren Johnson, Chair of the London Assembly; and many local councillors in calling for a public inquiry. In addition the Coalition is supported by Barnet and Brent Friends of the Earth, Brent Cyclists and organisations representing thousands of local residents in Barnet and Brent.
In announcing her support, the London Green MEP said, “This scheme clearly has regional repercussions in terms of its scale, because of questions of compliance with the London Plan, issues regarding traffic pollution and transport infrastructure. There are also unanswered questions about the planned waste disposal process and its impact on health. I fully support the Coalition’s call for a full Public Inquiry so that an informed and robust debate can take place into such a major and controversial development.”
While support for the Coalition continued to build Barnet Council was forced to contemplate the possible collapse of the whole project. A report prepared for their cabinet admitted that there would be no return for developers in the delayed first phase of the development and that the first rent revenues for the Council would not be realised until 2018. They drastically slashed the number of guaranteed housing units to 795 units against the overall total for the project publicised by the developers of 7,500 units. It is clear that after the first phase nothing is certain and there is still a risk of developers pulling out.Much more information is available on the Coalition's blog HERE.
No wonder the Barnet cabinet discussed face saving strategies in the event of the whole project collapsing.
Monday, 26 October 2009
WELSH HARP NATURE UNDER THREAT
What is important is that an area of peace, beauty and natural diversity will be threatened by the impact of housing, a new road, increased lighting and noise, and the loss of habitats.
The application has been made by the Greenhouse Garden Centre and is for 71 dwellings and hard-standing and access road on the Greenhouse site and the adjacent disused Woodfield Garden Centre site. The latter site had been ear-marked for possible Greenhouse expansion.
A display about the proposed development is tucked away unadvertised at the back of the Greenhouse, rather than at the front, but nontheless has attracted many entries in the Comments Book - most of them extremely critical. Among them are heartfelt appeals to save this unique corner of Brent and vows to fight the development as fiercely as previous attempts to build on the land and close down the Education Centre have been fought.
The development will be close to the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre and its extensive grounds, and the Birchen Grove allotments. In the manner of these things if the planning application is granted it may not be long before both these sites are under threat as the 'gaps' between blocks of housing are filled in. As the sites are owned by Brent Council, I have a hunch that it may not be long before they will want to cash in on these assets.
This will of course give them an interest in supporting the application.
See the plans and comment on them HERE
Planning Application No. 09/3220 Planning Officer: victoria.mcdonagh@brent.gov.uk 0208937 5337
To be decided no earlier than 12th November 2009
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
COALITION WINS MORE TIME TO BUILD THE CAMPAIGN FOR A PUBLIC INQUIRY
The Brent Cross Coalition appears to have Barnet Council on the run as the Planning Committee was once again postponed last night. Now the Council intend to hold a two evening planning meeting on the 18th and 19th November at Hendon Town Hall.COALITION TERRIERS
The terrier-like Coalition continued to bite at the Council's heels by rejecting this proposal as giving two helpings of inadequate consultation rather than one. Instead they demanded a full public inquiry where all interested parties could listen to lay and expert evidence, cross examine witnesses, and ensure that any decision is informed and robust, made in the full knowledge of all the facts. Such a huge, costly and long-term development, affecting much of North West London, cannot be left to a few local councillors only a few months away from their possible demise at the May 2010 local elections.
OPPORTUNITY
The delay means that the ever expanding coalition of environmental groups, political parties and residents' associations will have more time to win broad-based support for a full-fledged Public Inquiry.
More on the Brent Cross Coalition Blog
Sunday, 18 October 2009
NICK GRANT ON THE CAMBRIDGE REVIEW
I have received the following excellent article from Nick Grant,an executive member of the National Union of Teachers who lives in Wembley. Although not a member of the Green Party, Nick was a major force in getting the NUT Executive to unanimously agree a resolution supporting the greening of the economy and mobilisation for the UN Copenhagen Climate Talks.
Spare The Child
The 2009 Trade Union Congress in Liverpool approved a motion entitled ‘Democratic Deficit’ from the top civil servants’ union the First Division Association (FDA). Their job is to process the decisions of Parliament, making legislation workable for us citizens. But they are fed up with trying to implement unworkable, fanciful, highly ideological but mostly illogical laws.
Thus their first demand was that politicians of all democratic parties should “ensure that government policy decisions are supported by objective analysis and consultation.” What an illuminating indictment of the UK constitution this is, to suggest for those with ears to listen that our laws arise otherwise.
Such elemental roots of governmental purpose and methodology have clearly withered in the mother of all parliaments. There is seemingly little grasp of reality or engagement with relevant stakeholders by lawmakers.
Of no sphere is this more true than education, and no greater proof of the FDA’s pertinence is needed than last week’s Ministerial responses to the Cambridge Primary Review.
There simply has not been a more exhaustive analysis of primary schools in England and Wales since the Plowden Report of 1967. It has been edited by Robin Alexander, a former assistant to Chris Woodhead at OFSTED, now Professor at Cambridge University’s School of Education, and chaired by Dame Gillian Pugh. The book’s title is, “Children: Their World, Their Education”.
The Cambridge Primary Review in numbers
20 on its advisory group
14 authors
66 consultants
28 research surveys
250 focus groups
1,052 written submissions
3 years to complete
608 pages in final report
75 recommendations for change
Yet because it does not fully endorse current practices or suggest changes that suit current prejudices it has been either disregarded or trashed by politicians. They know best.
Labour Minister Vernon Coaker complained that it is already out-dated and that their own review by Sir Jim Rose is superior. He disparaged the review’s findings as “a backward step”. Tories have rejected the calls for a postponement of formalized learning by a year and a changed curriculum.
In contrast National Union of Teachers leader Christine Blower spoke for thousands of school workers, parents and kids when she said that; "It is absolutely extraordinary that the Government has decided to ignore the Cambridge Review recommendations. Any government worth its salt, particularly in front of an impending General Election, would have embraced this immensely rich report as a source of policy ideas.”
The government commissioned its own primary review under Sir Jim Rose, to head off the impact of the likely Cambridge recommendations. Central to Rose’s brief was an instruction not to research the SATs. Yet it is impossible to find one educational professional who believes that SATs are either fit for purpose or beneficial. Some parents may support them because they think that without SATs they would not know how their child is progressing. But no teacher opposes assessment per se. It is both an intuitive and formal component of learning.
The Cambridge Review rightly distinguishes between assessment for accountability, and assessment for learning.
What anti-SATs campaigners have railed against since 1992 has been their non-educational purpose. Author Alan Gibbons wrote in the Times Education Supplement of August 8 2008: “ At best, they have proved largely irrelevant to the task of raising standards in literacy. At worst, they have been an expensive distraction. Endless stale rehearsals for snap shot tests will not improve the situation. We urgently need to change course and concentrate on reading and writing for pleasure. In education engagement is everything. Nothing disengages children more effectively than the current SATs regime.”
Instead the core purpose of SATs has been to provide the crudest of currencies by which a school can be measured in a competitive marketplace. They are narcissistic proof to jobsworth politicians that they are ensuring value for money when committing funds to these particular public services.
SATs are the central cog in the neoliberalisation of schooling. SATs produce the League Tables, which create the demand for places, which puts bums on seats, which determines school budgets, which determine school human and other resources which produce…well, what is produced?
Sir Robin Alexander’s team has now conclusively catalogued the government’s Emperor’s New Clothes deceit that thousands of school-workers, parents and children have known only too well for 17 years.
SATs produce stressed-out kids and staff, with minimal value as a guide to past or future learning. SATs-related work has overtaken the curriculum time previously available for more creative work, languages and sport. The concept and practices of play have been more or less eradicated.
The classical Marxist concept of alienation has not been explicitly cited by the Cambridge Review, but it has recorded all the symptoms of it. Like cars or chocolate bars coming off a conveyor-belt, children have been commodified, reduced to a relation between things not people, reified not even by name but as National Curriculum Level this or that. The teacher-learner relationship has been prostituted.
One consequence for those staff who have not fled this lunacy, bullying has become the default educational management mode because, as the FDA insist, consent is hard to win when the statutory obligations fit so poorly with reality. Madness is a sane response, the inarticulate speech of so many broken hearts.
One of Lady Bridget Plowden’s recommendations forty-two years ago was to outlaw corporal punishment of kids by teachers. We now need to outlaw the mental torture of teachers and students by government.
In particular we need to reverse the push to start formalised learning earlier and earlier in the face of overwhelming evidence from the rest of Europe to the contrary. Finland is the world’s most eminent national educational system. Kids there have a kindergarten education until their seventh year. Yet even normally sharp journalists like The Observer’s Barbara Ellen have completely misunderstood the report’s recommendation to delay formal schooling by a year, believing that it is a middle-class yearning for mothers to stay home with their growing kids. It isn’t. It is a plea for a more humane and socialised sense of child development within a school context.
This is especially crucial for the most needy of families. Alexander puts great emphasis on Labour’s failure, despite all sorts of rhetoric and spin, to relieve the plight of the poor. The last thing that malnourished, hopeless infants need is an OFSTED-policed Early Years skills test.
An additional contradiction of government clap-trap concerns the space given by Alexander’s report to children’s views. They are shown as articulate and aspirational in a full and well-rounded sense, whereas the institutionalised notion of ‘Student Voice’ promulgated by Ministers is a consumerist, restricted version that abhors criticism and celebrates conformism. Thus students are often encouraged to evaluate the success or failure of teachers, but not of testing, funding or curricula.
Another aspect of children’s testimony in the report concerns a sense of worry about the planet’s future. The ecological catastrophe looming before us if ignored by world governments, should have already taught us that there is a fundamental urban estrangement from nature that distorts the general quality of human life. The Woodcraft Folk have known this for eighty years.
The ‘Sense of Wonder’ that US scientist Rachael Carson wrote about in 1964, and what contemporary educationalist Richard Louw systemises as a ‘nature-deficit disorder’ in his book ‘The Last Child In The Woods’, are implicit in the Cambridge Review even though its recommendations about greater access to outdoor space are modest.
What is being done to teachers and schools is also happening to social workers and other childcare professionals. Reactionary witch-hunts in the wake of Baby P - type cases obscure the penny-pinching carelessness of government-imposed systems. Its anti-scientific methods only value research which confirm Ministers’ a priori beliefs, and exclude practitioners from their design because of what is derogatively called “producer interest”.
So let’s re-build the battered confidence of everyone connected to child development. Let’s thank both the FDA and the Cambridge Review for trying to put the brakes on the runaway train of government, crushing the life out of its most innocent citizens. The fact that both voices emanate from deep inside the establishment makes their whistle-blowing that much more shrill.
Nick GRANT
October 2009
Spare The Child
The 2009 Trade Union Congress in Liverpool approved a motion entitled ‘Democratic Deficit’ from the top civil servants’ union the First Division Association (FDA). Their job is to process the decisions of Parliament, making legislation workable for us citizens. But they are fed up with trying to implement unworkable, fanciful, highly ideological but mostly illogical laws.
Thus their first demand was that politicians of all democratic parties should “ensure that government policy decisions are supported by objective analysis and consultation.” What an illuminating indictment of the UK constitution this is, to suggest for those with ears to listen that our laws arise otherwise.
Such elemental roots of governmental purpose and methodology have clearly withered in the mother of all parliaments. There is seemingly little grasp of reality or engagement with relevant stakeholders by lawmakers.
Of no sphere is this more true than education, and no greater proof of the FDA’s pertinence is needed than last week’s Ministerial responses to the Cambridge Primary Review.
There simply has not been a more exhaustive analysis of primary schools in England and Wales since the Plowden Report of 1967. It has been edited by Robin Alexander, a former assistant to Chris Woodhead at OFSTED, now Professor at Cambridge University’s School of Education, and chaired by Dame Gillian Pugh. The book’s title is, “Children: Their World, Their Education”.
The Cambridge Primary Review in numbers
20 on its advisory group
14 authors
66 consultants
28 research surveys
250 focus groups
1,052 written submissions
3 years to complete
608 pages in final report
75 recommendations for change
Yet because it does not fully endorse current practices or suggest changes that suit current prejudices it has been either disregarded or trashed by politicians. They know best.
Labour Minister Vernon Coaker complained that it is already out-dated and that their own review by Sir Jim Rose is superior. He disparaged the review’s findings as “a backward step”. Tories have rejected the calls for a postponement of formalized learning by a year and a changed curriculum.
In contrast National Union of Teachers leader Christine Blower spoke for thousands of school workers, parents and kids when she said that; "It is absolutely extraordinary that the Government has decided to ignore the Cambridge Review recommendations. Any government worth its salt, particularly in front of an impending General Election, would have embraced this immensely rich report as a source of policy ideas.”
The government commissioned its own primary review under Sir Jim Rose, to head off the impact of the likely Cambridge recommendations. Central to Rose’s brief was an instruction not to research the SATs. Yet it is impossible to find one educational professional who believes that SATs are either fit for purpose or beneficial. Some parents may support them because they think that without SATs they would not know how their child is progressing. But no teacher opposes assessment per se. It is both an intuitive and formal component of learning.
The Cambridge Review rightly distinguishes between assessment for accountability, and assessment for learning.
What anti-SATs campaigners have railed against since 1992 has been their non-educational purpose. Author Alan Gibbons wrote in the Times Education Supplement of August 8 2008: “ At best, they have proved largely irrelevant to the task of raising standards in literacy. At worst, they have been an expensive distraction. Endless stale rehearsals for snap shot tests will not improve the situation. We urgently need to change course and concentrate on reading and writing for pleasure. In education engagement is everything. Nothing disengages children more effectively than the current SATs regime.”
Instead the core purpose of SATs has been to provide the crudest of currencies by which a school can be measured in a competitive marketplace. They are narcissistic proof to jobsworth politicians that they are ensuring value for money when committing funds to these particular public services.
SATs are the central cog in the neoliberalisation of schooling. SATs produce the League Tables, which create the demand for places, which puts bums on seats, which determines school budgets, which determine school human and other resources which produce…well, what is produced?
Sir Robin Alexander’s team has now conclusively catalogued the government’s Emperor’s New Clothes deceit that thousands of school-workers, parents and children have known only too well for 17 years.
SATs produce stressed-out kids and staff, with minimal value as a guide to past or future learning. SATs-related work has overtaken the curriculum time previously available for more creative work, languages and sport. The concept and practices of play have been more or less eradicated.
The classical Marxist concept of alienation has not been explicitly cited by the Cambridge Review, but it has recorded all the symptoms of it. Like cars or chocolate bars coming off a conveyor-belt, children have been commodified, reduced to a relation between things not people, reified not even by name but as National Curriculum Level this or that. The teacher-learner relationship has been prostituted.
One consequence for those staff who have not fled this lunacy, bullying has become the default educational management mode because, as the FDA insist, consent is hard to win when the statutory obligations fit so poorly with reality. Madness is a sane response, the inarticulate speech of so many broken hearts.
One of Lady Bridget Plowden’s recommendations forty-two years ago was to outlaw corporal punishment of kids by teachers. We now need to outlaw the mental torture of teachers and students by government.
In particular we need to reverse the push to start formalised learning earlier and earlier in the face of overwhelming evidence from the rest of Europe to the contrary. Finland is the world’s most eminent national educational system. Kids there have a kindergarten education until their seventh year. Yet even normally sharp journalists like The Observer’s Barbara Ellen have completely misunderstood the report’s recommendation to delay formal schooling by a year, believing that it is a middle-class yearning for mothers to stay home with their growing kids. It isn’t. It is a plea for a more humane and socialised sense of child development within a school context.
This is especially crucial for the most needy of families. Alexander puts great emphasis on Labour’s failure, despite all sorts of rhetoric and spin, to relieve the plight of the poor. The last thing that malnourished, hopeless infants need is an OFSTED-policed Early Years skills test.
An additional contradiction of government clap-trap concerns the space given by Alexander’s report to children’s views. They are shown as articulate and aspirational in a full and well-rounded sense, whereas the institutionalised notion of ‘Student Voice’ promulgated by Ministers is a consumerist, restricted version that abhors criticism and celebrates conformism. Thus students are often encouraged to evaluate the success or failure of teachers, but not of testing, funding or curricula.
Another aspect of children’s testimony in the report concerns a sense of worry about the planet’s future. The ecological catastrophe looming before us if ignored by world governments, should have already taught us that there is a fundamental urban estrangement from nature that distorts the general quality of human life. The Woodcraft Folk have known this for eighty years.
The ‘Sense of Wonder’ that US scientist Rachael Carson wrote about in 1964, and what contemporary educationalist Richard Louw systemises as a ‘nature-deficit disorder’ in his book ‘The Last Child In The Woods’, are implicit in the Cambridge Review even though its recommendations about greater access to outdoor space are modest.
What is being done to teachers and schools is also happening to social workers and other childcare professionals. Reactionary witch-hunts in the wake of Baby P - type cases obscure the penny-pinching carelessness of government-imposed systems. Its anti-scientific methods only value research which confirm Ministers’ a priori beliefs, and exclude practitioners from their design because of what is derogatively called “producer interest”.
So let’s re-build the battered confidence of everyone connected to child development. Let’s thank both the FDA and the Cambridge Review for trying to put the brakes on the runaway train of government, crushing the life out of its most innocent citizens. The fact that both voices emanate from deep inside the establishment makes their whistle-blowing that much more shrill.
Nick GRANT
October 2009
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