The Olympic Torch in Wembley

See the BBC video here LINK

 Wembley High Road 10.49 Wembley Park station 11.46 Forty Lane 11.47 (Chalkhill banners)

Councillors back Asda petrol station despite local opposition

Pedestrian routes at Forty Lane/King's Drive/Asda junction

Brent Planning Committee last night unanimously approved plans for a new petrol station at Asda's Wembley Superstores despite objections from ward councillors, residents and the governing body of Chalkhill Primary School.

Planners admitted that the nearby road junction at Bridge Road/Forty Avenue/Forty Lane/Barn Hill was operating at full capacity but claimed that 100 yards down the road the Forty Lane/King's Drive/Asda junction (above) had spare capacity.

Cllr Shafique Choudhary (Labour -Barnhill) drew attention to the health hazards posed by petrol fueling stations to nearby residents and foodstuffs at the store, less thyan 100 metres from the proposed fueling station..He particularly focused on the carcinogenic properties of benzine. Steve Weeks of Brebt Planning said these dangers were known about but that the problem was being addressed nationally through redesign of petrol. Cllr Ann John remarked that many petrol stations had food stores and nearby flats without any problems.

Cllr Michael Pavey, the Labour winner of the recent Barnhill by-election, lambasted the planning officers'; report for being base don old data, lacking specific figures and being based on trip figures submitted by Asda and accepted by officers without an independent check. He said that the business model submitted by Asda which claimed that it would not be in 'aggressive' competition with other petrol providers lacked credibility - in fact Asda prides itself on low prices and will draw in additional customers. A check revealed that current Asda prices at their petrol stations were 3-5p cheaper that other local facilities and he could not see Asda charging higher prices in Wembley than it did elsewhere.   The 2009 traffic figures did not take into account school expansions in the area.  He concluded that the application should be rejected on the grounds that the officers' report was unsubstantial, unanalysed and untrustworthy.

Rachel McConnell for the planning department said that the trips data was based on national data as well as Asda's own experience of their other petrol stations. The peak flow was 2,300-2,400 cars and there would be only 43 extra trips caused by the petrol station, and this did not take into account trips that would be made to the store anyway.

Earlier I had made a presentation on behalf of the Chalkhill Primary School Governing body. I noted that we had not been formally consulted about the plans despite the school being close to the proposed site - we had only heard about the application through our community contacts.

As a governing body we are responsible for the safety of pupils both in school and on their way to school. In line with Brent Council policy, for environmental and health reasons, we encourage children to walk to school.  However, in the case of this development there appeared to be a conflict with our duty of care to keep children safe and implementation of the walking to school policy. If the petrol station were to be built increased traffic (at the 7 crossing points marked in blue - two not pedestrian controlled) would put children walking to school in more danger.  There were already problems with people avoiding the multiple blue crossing points by walking straight across Forty Lane from the Town Hall bus stop (red line on map) to the chestnut tree lined avenue leading to Chalkhill Estate and the school. There had been traffic accidents at the junction and injuries to pedestrians at the unofficial crossing.

I further contended that the planners' report did not take into account the increased vehicular and pedestrian traffic which would result from the expansion of schools places in the area. Ark Academy (secondary)  is due to add a further 540 secondary school places over the next 3 years, Ark Academy Primary 180, Preston Manor Primary 180 and if plans to be discussed by the Executive on August 20th go ahead a further 210 or 420 at Chalkhill Primary. This amounts to more than 1,000 extra journeys when planners admit that the morning peak is already higher than in 2009. Overall the report focused on vehicles and not on pedestrians.

In addition when Brent Town Hall is sold off next year, depending on its new use which could be retail or hotel, further journeys may be generated. Surely planners should take into account future pressures as well as the current situation?

The lone voice that spoke in favour of the proposal was that of former Independent Conservative Group councillor Robert Dunwell. Speaking on behalf of Ban Hill Residents Association (2004) he supported the application 'in principle' as being a good amenity for the store and for the surrounding community. He suggested that there could be a delay while the problem of capacity at the Bridge Road/Forty Avenue was dealt with.  Barn Hill Residents Association (without the 2004 in brackets!) has opposed the proposal on grounds of increased traffic.

I have to record that the points I raised were not addressed by planning committee councillors or officers. I remain seriously concerned about the safety of children walking to school from King's Drive and Pilgrims Way estates (bottom right of map) as well as those using the Town Hall bus stop.

Willesden Green: 'Is this all there is?'

Well, that was my reaction in the words of the old song,  when I saw that the proposed consultation with the community and redesign, following the withdrawal of the Willesden Green Redevelopment Planning application, amounts to a one day event.

The truth is that the Keep WillesdenGreen campaign, through its website, public meetings and face to face cobersrtions with local people, has done far more consulting that the developers.

Still it will be worthwhile going along and remaking the points that have galvanised so many local people and library, bookshop and museum users into action:

Dear Resident

 

The planning application for the proposed new Willesden Green Cultural Centre was withdrawn by Galliford Try at the beginning of July.

 

The Council and Galliford Try are now proposing some further engagement activities with local people and other stakeholders to explore the design for the Cultural Centre including what the building will look like and also what activities will take place in and around the building.

 

An open day will be held on 8 August 2012 at the Willesden Green Library Centre in the Library Lab to update all stakeholders. You are welcome to drop in at any  time during the day and we will be available to answer questions. There will be presentations at set times during the day and further information on this will be available at the Library Lab.

 

Thursday 8 August

11am to 8pm at the Library Lab at the WGLC

 

All Souls urged to bring their original spirit of enlightenment to Kensal Rise issue

Lindsey Davis, Chair of the Society of Authors, has written to the Warden of All Souls College, Oxford, about the situation at Kensal Rise Library.

Dear Warden,

Like many people I was horrified by the uncivilised scenes when Kensal Rise Library was recovered by Brent Council in the middle of the night.  I won't dwell on that. If nothing else, All Souls must be aware what a terrible PR disaster it was. I am writing to you both in my position as Chair of the Society of Authors and personally, as a concerned Oxford alumna. I remember that friends of mine who read Law were fortunate to use the wonderful Codrington Library in their studies.

I was ashamed to see an institution of my university, and a registered charity, involved in actions that were reported so luridly. There has long been a spirit that Oxford colleges, often unobtrusively, bring help and enlightenment to deprived areas (my own has a Settlement in a poor area of London, for instance) The same spirit would appear to be behind the original grant of the land at Kensal Rise under a restrictive covenant to the people of that area, the gift to stand as long as the building was used as a library.

I understand that the library doors are now locked and All Souls have put a security guard inside - a sad image. As I believe you are advertising for tenants, may I say on behalf of the Society, that we hope All Souls will bear in mind the importance of public libraries at a time when so many are threatened with closure. I wrote recently in The Bookseller about what libraries had meant to me , growing up in a depressed city environment and a home where money was tight, eventually allowing me to be one of the first in my family to go to university, and Oxford at that.

Of course you have financial responsibilities, though in this context I was interested to see recently that Lord Hodgson has suggested making it easier for charities to invest in social enterprises by scrapping the requirement that charities have to maximise profits. Perhaps this would help All Souls in their current predicament. Perhaps, since you have the original grant of land as a precedent, you might even anticipate the change.

Children's authors slam phonics tests

A item from the Guardian to give teachers heart over the holidays. Three cheers for our children's authors!

More than 90 of Britain's best-known children's authors and illustrators have called on the government to abandon its plans to introduce early-year reading tests, warning that they pose a threat to reading for pleasure in primary schools.

The former children's laureate Michael Rosen is leading the writers' charge against a phonics-intensive approach to teaching young children how to read.

A letter to the Guardian signed by 91 names including Meg Rosoff, Philip Ardagh and Alan Gibbons says millions is being spent on "systematic synthetic phonics programmes" even though there is "no evidence that such programmes help children understand what they are reading".

Rosen told the Guardian: "It does not produce reading for understanding, it produces people who can read phonically."

The letter calls on the government to abandon plans for reading tests, specifically the phonics screening check at the end of year one and the spelling, punctuation and grammar (Spag) test at the end of year six.
The former requires five- and six-year-olds to sound out the letters of a short word or nonsense word and blend them to make the word (for example: emp, sheb, shelf, splok, blow, pine).

Rosen claimed schools were coaching children through the process and at least half were still failing. Many were failing because they were trying to correct the nonsense words, he said, for example saying "strom" as "storm".

"It is incredibly baffling to most parents because it sounds as if they are being told that their child has failed at reading, which is not the case," he said.

The proposed Spag test is to be sat by children at the end of primary school as a way of addressing what the government sees as a lack of attention given to spelling and grammar in recent years.

Rosen said it would mean teachers spending months on a "drill, skill and kill" programme, "trying to get them to pass this thing. It's bad enough with Sats. Anyone who has a year six child will know that for the past six months up until the Sats test, our children have been drilled and drilled, doing paper after paper, when they could have been writing, reading and playing with language in all kinds of ways.

"They have no evidence that any of this stuff they've imposed will actually improve children's writing. If they produced it, perhaps we'd have to shut up, but they don't."

The letter highlights a recent Ofsted report, Moving English Forward, which recommended that the government should call on schools to develop policies on reading for enjoyment. "To date there has been no such move by government," it says.

Instead the government has concentrated on phonics programmes. "As a result, more school time will be devoted to reading as an academic, test-driven exercise; less time will be available for reading and writing enjoyment.

"We deplore this state of affairs and consider that the quality of children's school lives is about to be altered for the worse."

Real spirit of Olympics wins out over corporate hijack

Children, parents and teachers herald the Olympic Torch

Local people turned out in force today as the Olympic Torch came along Forty Lane.  The contradictions of the Olympics were much in evidence with the commercialisation competing with more traditional values of community and diversity.

Just before the Torch was due a Samsung vehicle drew up and in what at times was a potential mini-riot started distributing 'blow-up' Samsung flags on which Samsung's name was very large and the Olympic rings symbol very small. Samsung cheer leaders tried to get the crowd banging their Samsung advertising flags together to welcome the torch.



At first it looked as if  the hand-painted  banners made by school children with the Mahogany Carnival Arts workshop would be over-shadowed by corporate plastic  but as the photographs shows the beautiful banners won out.

The torch itself was preceded by sponsor vehicles from Samsung, Cocoa Cola and Lloyd's bank - the latter drew a shout of 'Give us back our money!'.

Nonetheless beneath the corporate shenanigans there was real enthusiasm and a sense of history being made from a typically diverse Brent crowd.

Local MPs should back zero waste EDM

With air pollution a constant concern in London, and particularly in Brent, readers may wish to ask our local members of parliament to sign Early Day Motion 383 on 'Zero waste strategies, recycling and incineration'. With possible incinerators at Brent Cross and Park Royal the quality of our air and its impact on the young, unwell and elderly is a vital local issue.

EDM 383

That this House notes the European Parliament's adoption by a large majority, on 24 May 2012, of a resolution on a Resource Efficient Europe, which commits to working towards a zero waste strategy and the Parliament's call on the Commission to bring forward legislative proposals, by the end of 2014, to ban both landfill and the incineration of recyclable and compostable waste in Europe, by 2020; further notes growing evidence of incinerator overcapacity in the UK by 2015, which seriously risks harming recycling performance, as has already happened in some European countries; further notes UK figures showing a steady and significant decline in residual waste since the middle of the last decade - even allowing for the economic recession - and rising recycling rates; acknowledges the impact that these developments will have on the economic case for, and environmental sustainability of, mass-burn incinerators in the UK within a decade; and calls on the Secretaries of State for the Environment, Energy and Climate Change, and Communities and Local Government, and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to work together to examine how government policy can positively facilitate the pursuit of zero waste strategies, and to report to Parliament on their findings as a matter of urgency, as many local communities across the country are currently opposing their local waste authorities' costly, environmentally damaging and unsustainable plans to build mass-burn incineration plants.

Sixteen MPs including Labour, Liberal Democrat, Conservative, Democratic Unionist and Green have signed so far.Full list HERE

Tara Brady a champion of the people of Brent, leaves tomorrow

Tara Brady, senior reporter of the Brent and Kilburn Times, has been making the news herself tonight, following her announcement that tomorrow is her last day with the newspaper. She, like her predecessor Kate Ferguson, is moving to the Ham and High (Hampstead and Highgate Express) which is also in the Archant Group.

The Kensal Rise Library Campaign said:

The Save Kensal Rise Library Campaign would like to thank Tara for her part in defending this community through her continued commitment to investigating those in authority and the impact their decisions have on communities.

She is indeed a defender of the community.

We wish her all the best as she leaves the Brent and Kilburn Times. We will miss her as will the many communities she has helped in Brent.

Kensal Triangle Residents tweeted:

What will the good people of Brent do without you. Thursday's essential reading for the last few years. 

The work of Tara, Lorraine King and latterly Max Walters have made the Brent and Kilburn Times essential reading. They have shifted it from the usual local paper fodder of crime and rewritten press releases to genuine stories that emerge from the local community. The BKT campaigned to save Kilburn College and through its coverage and investigations supported the many campaigns around the libraries, as well as battles over the Charteris Sports Centre and local nursery closures. They are now getting behind the campaign to Save Central Middlesex A&E.

It is no secret that some of our councillors and council officers have been peed off with them at times but a vigorous local press is absolutely essential to democracy and, as current national events show, too close a relationship between press and politicians is not good good for democracy.

It is right that the relationship is tetchy at times.

I wish Tara all the best in her new job and look forward to her swansong in Thursday's edition with some  anticipation.