Dear Editor,
The leader of Brent Council Muhammed Butt and his
Cabinet have been accused of “treating voters with contempt” and “turning
neighbours against each other” in Kilburn, with a completely farcical
‘consultation’ aimed at banning dogs being walked off leash in one of the few
green spaces in that part of Brent.
Paddington Old Cemetery – a Grade II listed
historic green space and graveyard - which was landscaped by Westminster
Council in the 1980s – has been an increasingly popular location for dog owners
(who make up nearly half of the local population based on London dog ownership
figures) in recent years. The cemetery is a wonderful open space for local
residents walking their dogs. There are large spaces with no graves where dogs
can exercise without troubling anyone.
It is also a vital source of bio-diversity, with
many rare species living there as well as thriving bee hives. Growing visitor
numbers have driven away the drug dealers who used to plague the cemetery, and
residents living nearby say that dog walkers have made their homes safer.
Things changed when management of the cemetery
passed from Brent’s Parks Department to the Cemeteries team, who seem
determined to extract as much money from the site as they can, regardless of
the consequences to the community. Getting rid of dogs completely is being seen
as the first step in that process.
Brent has amended its borough-wide Public Spaces
Protection Order (PSPO) to force dogs to be on the leash in the cemetery
without discussing it with community groups, and without telling anyone until
two weeks before it was due to take effect on 1 October. Following a strong
push-back from local residents, Cllr Butt announced an eleventh-hour u-turn and
paused the implementation of the new regulations pending a consultation. Nearly
450 residents have signed an ePetition calling on Brent to ensure that
this consultation is “fair, open, transparent and balanced”.
However, those hopes were dashed when the Brent
Council’s survey went live last Friday. Marketing expert, dog owner and founder
of the group Dogs of Paddington Old Cemetery (DoPOC) Eleni Chalmers described
it as “one of the worst surveys I have ever seen in my life”.
Chalmers said: “The questions are leading and
designed to gather evidence to support removing the freedom of off-lead dog
walking in the cemetery, rather than being an authentic request for community
input. The survey options are unbalanced and the language is loaded, such as
options to ‘agree' with ‘dogs urinating and defecating on graves’. Most
questions have a simple default option of ‘I don’t agree with dogs in the
cemetery’. Further outrage has been caused by Brent’s edict that only one
person in a household can fill in the survey and barring anyone who responded
to the first after it was amended in the middle of the consultation. It simply
breaks all rules of effective research. It’s clearly designed to get
the outcome Brent wants - which is to remove all access to this rare community
green space to dog owners.”
Brent has now taken the unprecedented step of
sending letters by first-class post to residents in Kilburn and Queen’s Park to
publicise the survey. This letter again uses loaded, heavily biased language,
talking about increasing complaints about dogs “causing distress to visitors”
and “causing disturbance to burial services” without providing any evidence to
support this.
Residents have been left wondering what the cost of
this exercise has been to a borough that consistently pleads poverty and has
cut street cleaning in Kilburn to the minimum.
“This was a missed opportunity to have a genuine
dialogue with all cemetery users about how to manage the
increasing popularity of the cemetery,” said Cordelia Uys, a local dog owner
and DPOC member.
“Responsible dog owners recognise that there are
things we need to do to ensure that dogs and people visiting graves can
co-exist, like reducing the number of dogs professional walkers can bring in
and stopping people driving long distances to the cemetery to exercise dogs.
This is what the consultation should have explored. Instead, they are using a
sledgehammer to crack a nut.”
Chris Maggs walks her dog daily in the cemetery and
also visits the graves of her great-grandparents there.
Maggs said: “It’s also important to remember that
nearly half of the people who visit graves own dogs themselves and they often
want to bring their pets with them. It’s simply false to try to pretend that
dog owners and grave visitors are two completely different sets of people”
Brent’s Cemeteries team hit the headlines a few
years ago when they dumped asbestos-ridden waste in the cemetery in a bid to
create an artificial-raised section in which to dig new graves. [Editor: See LINK] As a result of
the delays to that project they allowed the use of destroyed historic paths,
and other unused areas in the cemetery, for burials. Michael Bond, the creator
of Paddington Bear, is buried in one such pathway area and his tombstone is
already leaning. After heavy rainfall his grave is often left temporarily
underwater.
Why are Brent pursuing this path for a green space
that is full to capacity with an estimated 200,000 bodies in marked and
unmarked graves? Residents and visitors to the cemetery strongly suspect that
once dogs are banned, the Council’s next step will be to investigate whether it
can dig-up old graves and re-sell the plots.
Local residents including the Friends of Paddington
Old Cemetery (FoPOC) and its dog loving counterpart DoPOC, want a permanent
joint consultation committee with Brent on the future of POC in order to save
it - for all members of the community.
Brent resident and dog owner
