Help plant 250 trees in One Tree Park tomorrow!

Predictable comment but I haven't had my second coffee of the morning yet...    I expect they will have to rename it 'Twohundredandfiftyone Tree Hill.'  Great stuff after the Brent Council tree removal controversy.

From Wembley Central and Alperton Residents' Association

WCARA will be holding another tree planting event this year. Planting over 250 trees in One Tree Hill Park on Saturday 23rd November between 2:30 pm and 3:30pm.

We will be joining many other community groups during the National Tree Week whic is the UK's largest annual tree celebration, marking the start of the winter tree planting season.
Trees do so much for us every day. They give us oxygen, store carbon, improve air quality, conserve water, preserve soil, support wildlife and are a key solution to climate change. They also make our communities more beautiful and improve our wellbeing.

But trees need our help now. We need to champion them, by planting many more trees and caring for the ones we already have, to ensure a green, tree-filled future.

National Tree Week is an opportunity for everyone to plant a tree and help ensure a tree-filled future. So dig out your sturdy boots, grab a spade and become a Tree Champion today!

Green candidate calls on Brent Council to review Mapesbury asphalt & Furness trees decisions

William Relton, Green Party  parliamentary candidate for Brent Central is calling on Brent Council to review two actions that were due to be implemented on Monday morning in the night of its Climate Emergency Declaration. William said,

Quite why this is happening so soon after The Climate Emergency Declaration was made is quite staggering.The Climate Emergency Declaration must be more than a public relations stunt. It will only have credibility if residents can see that it affects Brent Council’s every environmental action. I support Mapesbury residents concerned about the detrimental environmental impact of asphalt replacing paving in Dartmouth Road and the people of Furness Road who have managed to delay the cutting down of trees in their road, five of which are outside Furness Primary School. Both cases indicate that the Council is prevented by a bureaucratic interpretation of its own guidelines in making sensible decisions that contribute to   the fight against climate change. 

I call on Brent Council to review both decisions and ensure that all such actions are seen through the lense of the Climate Emergency Declaration. Coincidentally I responded in the comments section of the CED specifically about Brent needing to implement a large scale tree planting programme, and this removal of healthy trees seems to be completely at odds with its own policy.

Roe Green Strathcona strike again to save jobs

When talks with Brent's Strategic Director of Children and Families on Tuesday evening failed to win a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies, NEU members at Roe Green Strathcona decided to take a sixth day of strike action today.

Jobs are threatened following Brent Council's decision to implement a phased closure of the Strathcona Site.

The NEU is asking for funding to enhance voluntary redundancy, retrain staff and to pay the existing staff who will be deployed at the main site in the expectation they will gradually leave for new jobs.

Public urged to support the Roe Green Strathcona staff on strike today

NEU staff at Roe Green Strathcona School will be on strike today following the failure of attempts to negotiate an arrangement with Brent Council that would avoid compulsory redundancies and facilitate redeployment from the Strathcona site to the main Roe Green Infants site.

Striking staff will be demonstrating outside Brent Civic Centre from 8am to 9am this morning. This will be the sixth strike in a campaign that initially started to stop the closure of Strathcona but following confirmation of the Labour Council's decision has now moved to protecting jobs.

Battles over school closures were last prominent in the 1970s when the number of pupils in schools fell.The strike is significant because it will set a precedent for how closures are handled by local authorities. It is thought that closures are likely in some of Brent's neighbouring boroughs. Falling pupil numbers are likely to be affected by movement out of the UK by some European families in the event of Brexit.

'If not now, when?' Read the Green Party's radical Manifesto here - '

Click on bottom right corner for full screen view:

Council pauses work in Furness Road to re-assess the situation

A spokesperson for  Brent Council told Wembley Matters this afternoon that the Council had paused the work in Furness Road 'for now so that we can re-assess the situation.'

Earlier in answer to a request from Wembley Matters they gave the background to the issue:

“When a footway is selected for renewal based on a condition survey, we make an assessment of all the trees in that street to identify those that are either dead, diseased or dying, and so which can sensibly be replaced by a new tree as part of the work.

“It’s actually a means of taking advantage of the work in order to be proactive in the management and replacement of poor quality trees.

“There are also other factors that may need to be taken into account regarding these trees, not least if their roots are presenting a significant trip hazard that cannot be overcome or if their health is likely to be impacted negatively by the new footway work so that they perish soon after.

“Of those considered a safety risk, a further site assessment is carried out specifically to see if there may be a workaround so that we don’t take them out unnecessarily.   

“Whenever we decide we must remove a tree as part of these works, it’s always a case of one out and a new one. There is no net loss. We are very mindful of air quality and climate change considerations and the council is committed to a much wider programme of planting new trees all over Brent.

“There’s a balance to be struck. As the local highways authority, we do have a duty to provide safe footways for our residents, particularly for the elderly and for those with mobility issues.”

Pensioner's heating restored after a week of cold

I am pleased to hear from John Healy that his heating was restored yesterday by Oakray. His South Kilburn flat was without heating and hot water for more than a week following a boiler breakdown.  Vaillant were distinctly unhelpful and attempts to make a complaint via Brent Council failed. LINK

Brent children need clean air NOW!

Dr Ian Mudway addressing the meeting

A packed meeting held at Queens Park Community School last week (Tuesday 12 November) heard from experts and campaigners how severely our children’s health is being affected by air pollution, and what should happen now to stop it.

Over 60 parents and campaigners from across Brent came together to hear Dr Ian Mudway, a respiratory disease specialist at King’s College London, explain how children’s lungs are damaged by daily exposure to diesel emissions, even when they don’t display any apparent symptoms.  Dr Mudway, a global expert on the subject, said:

I now believe that there’s no doubt that children who grow up in polluted areas have stunted lung development. Their lungs don’t develop properly. We’re seeing that in our children in Tower Hamlets and Hackney. Their lungs at the age of nine were already smaller than they ought to be. And that’s a burden that they’ll carry with them for the rest of their lives.

The meeting also heard from Rosamund Kissi-Debrah.  She became a passionate campaigner after her daughter Ella, who had a rare and severe form of asthma, died in 2013.  She was nine years old.  The pathologist who carried out her post mortem said it was “one of the worst cases of asthma ever recorded in the UK”. The family were living next to the South Circular road at the time. 

Rosamund said:

It is unacceptable that children in Britain today die from asthma. There are 240,000 under-19s with a diagnosis of asthma in London.  Government and local authorities are not taking strong enough action…there needs to be new Clean Air Act.  Air pollution is related to many other diseases as well, costing the NHS millions each year to treat…My daughter suffered terribly, and hopefully her death will not be wasted.

In May 2019 Ella’s inquest was re-opened, to determine whether "unlawfully high levels of air pollution" were partially the cause of her death. Air pollution has never previously been officially recorded on an individual's death certificate.

Cllr Krupa Sheth, Cabinet Member for the Environment at Brent Council, attended to outline various Council initiatives to combat air pollution including measures to increase awareness about the dangers of idling, and a piloting of School Streets.   She said that “air quality has become a high priority in the council.”

Cllr Thomas Stephens who is currently chairing a Scrutiny Committee Air Quality Task Group said:

Air pollution is an invisible killer.  It’s hard to persuade people to take action when you cannot see it.  For example there’s a perception that people are safer inside a car, when this is not the case. We need to do a lot and need to do it quickly.

Mark Falcon, Chair of Clean Air for Brent, which is taking part in the Air Quality Task Group said:

Brent contains 4 out of 10 of London’s most polluted roads (1).  We believe the time has come for traffic control measures in the worst pollution hotspots, particularly those near schools. We urge Brent Council and Transport for London to take bold action now to protect our children’s health.