Please note that the meeting will be subject to a change of format if it falls within a General Election purdah period. Register for the meeting HERE
Monday 12 August 2019
Green Jobs for Now and for Tomorrow - Public Meeting at Bridge Park September 11th
Please note that the meeting will be subject to a change of format if it falls within a General Election purdah period. Register for the meeting HERE
Labels:
Brent Trades Council,
Bridge Park,
Green jobs,
Ian Hodson,
John McDonnell,
Muna Suleiman,
Roxanne Mashari
Friday 9 August 2019
Dawn Butler launches campaign against the overnight closure of Central Middlesex Hospital Urgent Care Centre
Wembley Matters reported on July 2nd that Brent Clinical Commissioing Group was proposing to Close the Central Middlesex Urgent Care Centre overnight (Midnight to 8am) citing lack of use. LINK
Dawn Butler MP (Brent Central) has now launched a Central Middlesex Hospital Campaign with a petition aimed at preventing the overnight closure LINK
Butler writes
Dawn Butler MP (Brent Central) has now launched a Central Middlesex Hospital Campaign with a petition aimed at preventing the overnight closure LINK
Butler writes
News has broken in recent weeks that Brent Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) are now intending to cut the hours of operation for the Urgent Care Centre at Central Middlesex Hospital entirely from midnight to 8am, making potential savings in the region of £450,000 per annum.
I have used the Urgent Care Centre late at night and know first-hand that there is an absolute need for this 24 hour service in Brent. I am entirely opposed to cutting the hours of operation and call on the CCG to think again and to put any future proposals to a full public consultation.
If the Urgent Care Centre were to close at night local residents without access to a car will have to travel for anywhere between 45 minutes and 1 hour 20 minutes on public transport in the dead of night.
I therefore call on you to join me in condemning the proposed closure by signing my petition below. I will also continue to keep you updated on the petition and my campaign to put a stop to this proposed closure.
The above link takes you to the petition.
Thursday 8 August 2019
Public meeting: making Brent a safer place to live - August 22nd 7-9pm
From Brent Council Neighbourhood Watch
We are writing to invite you to join Police and Council leaders for a community conversation about violent crime. It will be held at Roundwood Youth Centre in Harlesden on Thursday 22 August, 7-9pm.
Sadly, like many London boroughs, Brent has had its share of headlines for street violence in recent months.
In response to these events, we are hosting a Time to Talk event focused on making Brent safer. By attending, you will have the chance to talk about your concerns, put your questions to Police and Councillors, hear from young people in the borough, and work together to find solutions.
The event will also highlight the reality behind some of the headlines and tackle misconceptions. Despite a number of high profile incidents, police figures show knife crime incidents in Brent are far less frequent than they were 12 months ago. The number of crimes involving knives has dropped 31%.
Cllr Muhammed Butt, Leader of Brent Council, had this to say:
We’re working hard, with the Police, to address violence on our streets and make Brent an even safer place to live. But just as it takes a village to raise a child, we need the whole community to work together to put a stop to this behaviour.Headlines don’t always tell the full story, but they do focus minds. We want to harness the strong emotions people rightly feel about street violence and see if we can find solutions together.
So, we hope to see you at Roundwood Youth Centre in Harlesden on Thursday 22 August. The free event will run 7-9pm and light refreshments will be provided. To register your interest, please go to https://www.facebook.com/events/670868150045602/. Registration is not essential, but it will help us to make sure that everybody is catered for.
If you need to reply regarding this message, click on this email address: owl@brent.gov.uk
Labels:
Brent,
crime,
Roundwood Youth Centre,
Time to Talk
Wednesday 7 August 2019
Campaigners call for a 'NO' vote in South Kilburn regeneration ballot
There was a mixed reception at a consultation on South Kilburn regeneration for the leaflet below. Residents generally welcomed it but some leading councillors were not at all pleased with campaigners.
Residents of 17 blocks will have a Yes/No vote on whether the regeneration should go ahead.
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Residents of 17 blocks will have a Yes/No vote on whether the regeneration should go ahead.
Fix these problems first!
· Many of the new flats have had major
problems, with flammable cladding, leaking roofs, mould and much more.
· Rents will be higher in new flats and
rise more quickly than Council rents.
· Most people won’t remain Council tenants
but be transferred to a Housing Association (HA), which already have higher
rents. There have been many complaints about how unresponsive HAs are.
· Service charges have gone up considerably for
HA tenants.
· Not all new flats are as large as
current flats.
· Temporary tenants (some of whom have
been temporary for as long as 10 years) in South Kilburn, but they are being
offered worse tenancy agreements than those who are already secure tenants.
The ballot asks if regeneration should continue, without
addressing any of these problems. Balloting 17 blocks at the same time means
residents whose blocks only need refurbishing are pitched against residents
whose blocks should be demolished and replaced by better housing.
Both the local (Kilburn) Labour Party and the borough-wide Brent
Labour Party have called on the Council to suspend regeneration while these
issues are sorted out.
Vote NO and call on Brent Council to come back with proposals
which really address our housing problems.
This leaflet is produced by local
residents and activists. For information, contact theotherwiseclub@gmail.com
Labels:
ballot,
Brent Council,
Kilburn Labour Party,
regeneration,
South Kilburn
Tuesday 6 August 2019
Join the Conservation Day at the Welsh Harp Centre on Saturday August 17th
From Thames 21
|
UPDATED WITH COMMENTS The Welsh Harp Reservoir – a warning from Whaley Bridge
Guest post by Philip Grant
The Welsh Harp
Reservoir – a warning from Whaley Bridge
We know that Global Warming is causing more frequent extreme weather
conditions, such as record heat waves in summer, and more intense storms. In
the past few days, we have been watching (from a safe distance) the news about
a threatened dam collapse at Whaley Bridge, caused by the volume of water
flowing into the reservoir above the town after prolonged torrential rain. I
don’t want to cause alarm, but this should be a wake-up call about a reservoir
much closer to us.
The Toddbrook Reservoir in Derbyshire was built in the 1830’s, to
supply water along a “feeder” to the High Peak Canal. The embankment dam was
constructed of earth, around a central core of puddled clay.
The Kingsbury, or Brent, Reservoir (now better known as the Welsh
Harp) was built in 1834/35, to supply water along The Feeder (which still runs
through Neasden and Stonebridge) to the Paddington Branch of the Grand Junction
Canal. Its dam, using the same method of construction, was the work of a
Hammersmith contractor, William Hoof. The price for the work, which he agreed
with the Regent’s Canal Company, was £2,747 and six shillings!
William Hoof’s
letter of 18th October 1834, agreeing to build the reservoir and
embankment dam at Kingsbury.
Heavy rain, and a rapid thaw of snow, caused a partial collapse of the dam in January 1841.
A newspaper illustration of the flooding in Brentford, 1841.
The water
swept down the Brent valley, which was then just open farmland, and caused
major flood damage at the canal port of Brentford, where the river met the
Thames. Several people were drowned, and more than 100 boats were wrecked.
The dam had been repaired by 1843, and was enlarged ten years later as
the Regent’s Canal Company needed more water for its operations. A spillway was
added to the dam, allowing excess water to escape into the river below when the
reservoir was full. By late Victorian times, this had become a tourist
attraction for people visiting the local countryside from the crowded city.
The Kingsbury
“waterfall”, in a postcard from c.1900. [Brent
Archives online image 1341]
The land downstream of the reservoir remained as farmland until 1880,
when the Metropolitan Railway built a large engineering works at Neasden, on
the line they were building out from Baker Street. They also had to build homes
for the many people needed to run the works, and the first 100 houses in “A”
and “B” (now Quainton and Verney) Streets were occupied by 1882. If you want to
learn more about Neasden’s Railway Village, there is an illustrated article on
the Brent Archives website LINK .
Across Neasden Lane (North), suburban development in the 1930’s saw
new roads such as Braemar Avenue built right up to the foot of the dam, and a
new junior school, Wykeham Primary in Aboyne Road, to serve the area’s growing
population. Two more schools, Neasden High and St. Margaret Clitherow R.C.
Primary, were built in the early 1970’s, on the site of the former Neasden Power
Station, between the River Brent and The Feeder. When the High School closed,
as part of Brent’s cull of secondary schools in 1989, its site was redeveloped
as the Quainton Village housing scheme.
More housing developments were built near the reservoir in the late 20th
century. Runbury Circle nestles under the north-west edge of the dam, while
Harp Island Close lies between the river and The Feeder, near to where the
Brent emerges below the dam. This estate of 128 flats was built by Laings in
the 1980’s, and the view here is from its gardens (in 2009).
What had been the dam’s Victorian spillway was replaced in 1936 by
five siphons, designed to take water out of the reservoir if its level becomes
too high. These were installed as a safety measure, under changes introduced by
the Reservoir (Safety Provisions) Act in 1930. That law was introduced after 16
people were drowned in Dolgarrog, North Wales, in 1925, when floods coming down
a valley in the hills caused an embankment dam above the village to collapse.
Toddbrook Reservoir had been inspected, both by its owners and an
independent engineer, under the provisions of the current (1975!) Reservoirs
Act, as recently as November 2018, and found to be “safe”. In the light of the
near collapse of its dam, less than nine months later, and what we know about
more extreme weather events, as a result of Global Warming, we need to think
again about the safety of all of the country’s Canal Age dams, including the
one at the Welsh Harp.
Brent Council needs to work with the Canal and River Trust, and the
Environment Agency, to review all aspects of our local dam’s safety, both to
minimise the risk of a similar event to Whaley Bridge happening here, and to
ensure that plans are in place on how any such emergency would be dealt with.
If a similar spell of very wet weather hit North West London, as it
did North West England last week, the wide catchment areas of the Dollis Brook
/ River Brent and the Silk Stream would bring huge volumes of water into the
Welsh Harp. Not only the safety of the dam structure in such conditions needs
to be properly assessed, but also the ability of the siphons to cope with such
volumes.
If the reservoir had to shed large volumes of water, could the river
below the dam take that water away safely, without flooding low lying
residential areas and roads for several miles downstream. There have been
times, in living memory, when debris restricting the culvert which channels the
river under the Harrow Road has caused flooding in the Monks Park and St
Raphael’s Estate areas.
Are Brent’s own maps of areas at risk from flooding, if there were to
be a partial (or worse) failure of the dam up to date? Does the Council know
how many people currently live, work or go to school in these areas, and how it
would manage their evacuation if there were to be an emergency of the type
experienced at Whaley Bridge. The recent events there have been a warning which
must not be ignored.
Despite this warning, the Welsh Harp Reservoir is still a place to be
treasured and enjoyed, rather than to be feared, as long as its potential
dangers are properly considered, and the necessary action taken. If you want to
discover more about its history there is an article online LINK t, or for more of its fascinating story, beautifully illustrated, borrow a copy
of Geoffrey Hewlett’s “Welsh Harp Reservoir Through Time” from one of Brent’s
libraries. Better still, take a stroll beside it yourself!
Philip Grant.
Carolyn Downs, Brent Council CEO, has sent thos response to Philip Grant:
Dear Mr Grant,
Thank you for your email and attachment, on behalf of Carolyn Downs I acknowledge receipt.
Please be assured that the matter is being discussed by the relevant teams internally and we will seek to engage with the relevant external partners on this to provide you with a further response.
In the meantime, the council’s Flood Risk Management Strategy is publically available on the website*.
Kind regards,
Tom Welsh
Head of the Chief Executive’s Office'
* THIS IS A LINK TO BRENT'S FLOOD RISK MANAGEMENT STRATEGY document:
https://www.brent.gov.uk/media/16406897/flood-risk-strategy-sept-2015.pdf
Roger Wilson has sent in this comment:
Phil, I support your proposal to Brent Council that it take heed of the 'warning from Whaley Bridge' and review its emergency flood planning and the maintenance schedules of the Welsh Harp/ Brent reservoir Dam Wall and spillways have not slipped.
But as a regular user of this leisure facility, both as a sailor and for the enjoyment its wildlife, I'd be more than upset to see an overly cautious kneejerk response to your blog, such as dropping water levels in the reservoir. Your Blog would be a more worthy if it reported some of the some of the measures that HAVE been carried out in the more recent past along side the sensationalist historic events of the past.
So to redress the balance ...
A quick online search 'Brent Reservoir repairs/ upgrades' reveals that:
i) that the spillway was redesigned in the 1930's (at the same time as the expansion of Housing below the reservoir) and is of a more sophisticated design than that of Toddbrook Reservoir impacting Whaley Bridge.
ii) That Brent's residents are fortunate that the Brent reservoir Dam and Brent River rainfall catchment basin have been the subject of a number of academic specific case studies (published between 1990 and 2000. These case studies included reviews of mathematical modelling methods used to predict floods, and of the capacity and design of the of the Brent Reservoir spillways to safely disperse flood water.
iii) Possibly as a result of these studies, between 2005 and 2007, e.g. only 12 years ago, the height of the Brent reservoir Dam Wall was raised with a new Concrete Cap and earth bunds and concrete walls added to the north and south side of the Dam wall. This I believe was to meet revised estimates of flood water levels in the event of a 1 in 10,000 year extreme rainfall.
Yes Brent Council , the Canal and Riverboat Trust who manage the reservoir , and the Environment Agency should review, publicly report and act on any short comings in their Flood prevention and Emergency planning provisions but in the meantime I hope this response lets anyone concerned sleep a little more easily in their bed!
Roger Wilson
UPDATE: McDelivery at Wembley Asda: residents need more information to respond to planning application
McDelivery is common in some other countries and now spreading here. A planning application has been submitted for alterations to the Wembley Asda store which suggests such a service will be opening there. Unfortunately there is very little information on the application to enable residents to make a comment.
This is what I have written to Brent Council's Head of Planning, Amar Dave.
UPDATE This afternoon I received this prompt response from the North Area Development Management Team:Dear Mr Dave,I have been approached by residents regarding the above application. The information on the Planning Portal is very sparse referring only to ‘installation of a new sliding window with overhead glass canopy and associated works’ LINK .
The application is from McDonalds and the drawing features McDeliveries - a motorcycle courier delivery service that is often 24/7.There is no information on changes in the current Asda restaurant but it appears the delivery service will be run from these premises. The collection window is labelled ’Non-public’ so this is presumably where couriers will collect food to be delivered.Residents are concerned that if this is indeed a 24/7 service that they will be subject to a noise nuisance from the motorbikes/scooters. You will recall that the Council had to issue a noise-abatement order on Asda previously LINK and there were regular complaints about noise from the delivery service.In addition concerns were raised over road safety when a child was knocked down and killed on the crossing at the store entrance LINK.Could you please point me to any additional information about this application including proposed hours of operation and noise and traffic impact assessments.The dearth of information means that residents cannot make any meaningful comment on the proposals.
This application is currently under consideration by the Council, and the case officer is currently on annual leave, and will be back in the office on Monday. I am copying her into this email so she is aware of your correspondence, and logs it accordingly on the application file so that it is properly considered as part of her appraisal of the proposals.
The information on the public access system is all that has been submitted by the applicants for consideration – which constitutes a site location plan, elevations and an application form. However, I am aware that we have already sought additional information from the applicants with regard how the proposed alterations would be operated and what impact this would have on the overall operation of the superstore, and how this would impact the road and pedestrian access network (including pedestrian flow and disabled parking provision).
I can see the case officer has made a note on the application file that an email was sent to the applicants on the 1st of August. I will put a note in my diary to speak with her upon her return from leave, and will ask her to update you directly at the start of next week
Labels:
ASDA,
Brent Council,
McDelivery,
McDonalds,
wembley
Saturday 3 August 2019
Update on the Bobby Moore mural as fans pour into Wembley for the FA Community Shield
Guest update post by Philip Grant
Because of the crowds coming to the F.A. Community Shield match at Wembley
Stadium this week-end (Sunday 4th August), the barriers around the
work being carried out in the Bobby Moore Bridge subway have been removed. It
was possible to get a closer look at the work in progress, to cover up most of
the tile murals with illuminated advertising panels.
First, the good news! For the first time since October 2013, residents
and visitors can see the mural scene showing England footballers and the old
“twin towers” Wembley Stadium, including the plaque unveiled by Bobby Moore’s
widow, when the subway and murals were opened in September 1993.
This mural scene will continue to be on view in future. That was the
only concession which Quintain were willing to make, in response to the call
made jointly to them and Brent Council, by Wembley History Society in April
2018 LINK,
to put ALL of the tile murals back on permanent public display.
The work on the west wall of the subway has already put a permanent
covering over two thirds of the mural scenes, but two were visible on Saturday.
The scene of a pianist accompanying a concert singer, had already been partly
covered, so that it is difficult to identify who the female vocalist is
(possibly Shirley Bassey or Whitney Houston?). If anyone knows the answer, or has
another idea, please share it in a comment below!
At the south end of the subway’s west wall, the mural shows another
scene from the Olympic torch relay, this time with the flame which burned at
the Stadium throughout the 1948 Games. Together with the torchbearer and
Olympic flag scene at the entrance to the subway, they were designed to welcome
visitors to Olympic Way, the great “processional route” to the “Venue of
Legends” that is Wembley. Both scenes will soon be covered over with
illuminated advertising panels, perhaps never to be seen again.
As shown in the previous post (Wembley Park’s tile murals – now you see
them – soon you won’t! LINK), the work to fix the illuminated panels was not meant
to cause any damage to the tile murals. However, some of the electrical
equipment already fixed over the 1948 Olympic show jumping mural scene appears
to have damaged the tiles beneath. How much more of this heritage asset are we
going to lose, before Quintain have finished their work on OUR Bobby Moore
Bridge tile murals?
Philip Grant.
Labels:
Bobby Moore Bridge,
Brent Council,
Community Shield,
mural,
Quintain,
Wembley Park
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