LETTER: Cllr Butt challenged over building on green space

 Dear Editor,

I am accusing the Leader of Brent Council, Cllr.Muhammed Butt (Lab Tokyington), of telling an untruth yesterday when he said that Brent Council was not building on green spaces at the end of Lidding Road HA30YF here in Kenton and the green land space next to it known as the Legion Hall site both of which are right next to a SINC (a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation) and the Wealdstone Brook. The approved Planning Application 21/3248 Lidding Road Garages, Lidding Road, Harrow, IS on green spaces and I challenge the leader of Brent Council, Cllr.Muhammed Butt to join me in inspecting the site and let us agree the facts.

 

 John Poole,

Kenton, Harrow, HA 0UT (L.B.of Brent)

[Full address supplied]

Latest updates from Thames Water on Wealdstone Brook pollution

 

Fuel Poverty Action: 75% of those polled support the right to free energy to meet basic needs

 From Fuel Poverty Action

 

The present energy pricing system is leaving thousands each year to die of cold  and despite a government hand-out millions are in fear of next winter.

 

Fuel Poverty Action has long been advocating a free band of energy to every household to cover basic needs like keeping the lights on, keeping warm, and running a fridge. This would be paid for by higher prices for people who use more than they need, by windfall taxes  while prices and profits are so high, and by a permanent end to the subsidies paid to fossil fuel corporations, now worth billions of pounds.

 

This plan has the support of over 400,000 signatories on a change.org petition.  

 

And now nationwide polling has found that three quarters of the population support the right to free energy to meet people’s basic needs.  Only 10% opposed it. The poll was conducted by ICM, with a representative sample of 2000 British adults,10th - 12th  June 2022.

 

An even higher number – 81% – support abolition of the standing charge – the daily charge of around 44p per day on every customer’s energy bill, which must be paid regardless of how much you use.  Only 8% want this charge to stay.  

 

FPA have written to Ofgem about the way the costs of failing suppliers have been loaded onto the standing charge - the part of the bill that nobody can avoid - which FPA says is a “grotesque injustice”. 

 

Fuel Poverty Action’s Ruth London says,

 

The standing charge is even higher in some parts of the country, and it mounts up frighteningly quickly.  People on prepayment meters are often forced to find money to pay this charge before they can even turn the lights on. People who cut their use down to the bone in a bedsit end up paying more per unit of energy than those who are heating a mansion.

 

Energy For All would reverse this perverse system that incentivises waste and clobbers the people who can least afford it. It would finally give energy security where we most need it - at home. And it would press the government to finally fix the UK’s notoriously badly insulated housing and turn to cheaper, more sustainable sources of energy, like solar power and wind.

 

 

 

Professor Chris Whitty et al: Sewage in water: a growing public health problem

It is not often I publish government press releases but this one LINK has not had much publcity. It is important in the light of the recent pollution of Wealdstone Brook and attempts to get local public health officers and their councils to sit up and take notice.. 

A joint opinion piece from Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England, Jonson Cox, Ofwat chair and Emma Howard Boyd, Environment Agency chair

 

One of the greatest public health triumphs of the last 200 years was separating human faeces from drinking water. People now take this for granted but it was the basis for preventing cholera, typhoid and other bacterial and viral diarrhoeal diseases that killed millions in major epidemics. Largely achieved through remarkable feats of engineering over 2 centuries, only vaccination matches it as a public health intervention for preventing infectious diseases. When bacteria from human faeces (coliforms) are ingested, it increases the risk of significant infections including antibiotic resistant bacteria. Keeping human faeces out of water people might ingest remains a public health priority.

 

Tap water in the UK is safe. No-one expects river water to be of drinking standard, but where people swim or children play they should not expect significant doses of human coliforms if they ingest water. Raw sewage from storm overflows and continuous discharge of waste containing viable organisms from sewage treatment works is an increasing problem. This is a serious public health issue for government and regulators and it is clear that the water companies are not doing enough. The public health dangers are in addition to the ecological and environmental impact which forms the basis for much regulation.

 

Use of our rivers for recreation and exercise is something to celebrate and encourage. Children have always played in waterways and always will, irrespective of what notices are put up next to them. People of all ages use freshwater waterways such as rivers for recreation including swimming and various forms of boating. During lockdown many people took to swimming in rivers and have continued since. Our rivers, seas and waterways should therefore be free from sewage to reduce risk to the public. There are 2 major issues to tackle. Both have solutions.

 

The first is raw sewage discharge from the sewage network and in particular storm overflows. As the name implies this should be exceptionally rare. The engineering logic of storm overflows is that if the sewerage system is at risk of being overwhelmed by storms or atypically intense rain, sewers get too full and can back up into homes or overflow into streets. To prevent that, storm overflows act as a safety release valve, but were intended only for exceptional circumstances when the public would be unlikely to be using rivers.

 

After the Environment Agency required the water industry to install monitors on overflows, data shows that their use is now not exceptional. In some cases, up to 200 discharges a year are occurring. This is obviously unacceptable on public health grounds. Whilst zero discharges are technically achievable the cost of this may not be justified; to reduce the frequency down to genuine storms should however be a minimum expectation. It certainly is the expectation of the great majority of the public, including those who do not themselves use rivers recreationally as measured by polling data. Nobody wants a child to ingest human faeces.

 

There are solutions to getting storm overflows back to only functioning only in very high rainfall conditions. These involve better operational management, innovation and investment. This is rightly seen as the job of water companies. As a start, 4 have recently agreed to reduce their overflows to an average of no more than 20 discharges a year by 2025 – but we need to go much further and Ofwat and the Environment Agency will hold companies to account for this delivery.

 

The second major issue is coliforms from the continuous normal discharge from sewage works. Whilst raw sewage is not discharged into waterways from these, viable bacteria and viruses are, as part of normal operations. Eliminating discharges of coliforms from sewage works upstream of popular recreational areas will go a long way to reducing human faecal infective organisms downstream. This has been achieved for seaside beaches at coastal works by use of ultraviolet treatment. Other forms of less energy-intensive treatment are in trial or development: these options need to be pushed forward by companies with urgency.

 

It will inevitably require investment to boost resilience and capacity in our sewerage system. But it is not just a question of money – it needs preventive engineering, better sewer management, innovation and commitment. We welcome recent initiatives by some companies, but a lot more needs to be done. Ofwat asked all companies to produce an action plan setting out how they will rapidly improve river health. As they finalise plans, they must demonstrate a commitment to public health that matches public expectation. We have 2 stretches of river in England and Wales with bathing water status. There are over 500 in France.

 

We recognise management of sewers is made more difficult by plastic wet wipes flushed down toilets which congeal together with fats poured down drains to form fatbergs that block sewers and cause avoidable use of the storm overflows. Ensuring all of us put wet wipes in bins or, better, that only rapidly biodegradable wet wipes are available would immediately assist in reducing avoidable outflow problems.

 

However, the principal public health responsibility for ensuring human faeces and viable human faecal bacteria do not get into waterways people might use recreationally, rest squarely with the water companies and their directors. Ministers have already signalled they want significant action, requiring companies to deliver a multi-billion pound programme to tackle storm sewage discharges. Companies should take the initiative and go faster. Regulators will hold companies to account. 

 

It is time for wastewater companies to act. It will be a matter of choice if they do not.

• Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England
• Jonson Cox, Chair, Ofwat
• Emma Howard Boyd, Chair, Environment Agency

 

More 'potential development opportunities' on Brent's council estates

Proposals for 'fill-in' development of the council's sites across the borough have sometimes been controversial, especially when current residents are opposed to densification, loss of light or the loss of green space.

The council respond that such proposals provide much needed council housing under the New Council Homes Programme (NCHP) and the balance of detriment versus gain is in favour of development. As we have learnt from the reallocation of new homes in Watling Gardens from London Affordable Rent to Shared Ownership things are not always straightforward in terms of genuine affordability.

A new map listing finished, current and potential developments has been issued to ward councilors today. Those on the map below in red  have been identified as 'potential development opportunities.' Ward councillors will be contacted by officers to discuss proposals in their wards.

Nearly a half of the 886 red projects in 'feasibility' are accounted  for by development on the St Raphael's Estate.

It is to be hoped that ward councillors, many of them new, will actively engage with estate residents  early in the process so that they are not presented with a fait accompli.

You should be able to enlarge this map  by clicking bottom right.

 

Good Law Project to sue the Metropolitan Police over failure to properly investigate the Prime Minister over Partygate.

 From the Good Law Project

 

Good Law Project is today issuing formal proceedings against the Metropolitan Police - a day after the force was placed into special measures - for its continued failure to properly investigate the Prime Minister’s attendance at Partygate gatherings and its refusal to answer legitimate questions about how these decisions were reached. 

 

It was only after the not-for-profit campaign organisation issued proceedings against the Met in January 2022 that it agreed to investigate at all. The Prime Minister was eventually fined for attending a lockdown gathering in June 2020. 

 

The Good Law Project case asks why the Met apparently failed to issue questionnaires to the Prime Minister about three other lockdown gatherings - in November and December 2020 and January 2021 - when some civil servants who attended received a questionnaire and, subsequently, a fixed penalty notice.

 

Good Law Project is bringing the case because it believes the public has a right to know the truth about the Partygate investigation. The Met’s actions have raised grave concerns about the deferential way in which it is policing those in power compared to how it policed ordinary people during lockdown.

 

Good Law Project has given the Met multiple opportunities to explain its position.  On 15 June, Good Law Project wrote to the Met for a final time asking it to fulfil its duty to be honest and upfront with the public.  It chose not to respond to the substantive issues raised in the case, and instead responded by denying Good Law Project had the right to bring the legal action (known as ‘standing’). When asked who would have standing to bring the challenge, it refused to answer.  

 

Good Law Project, along with our co-claimant former senior Met Officer Lord Paddick, strongly believe we have standing to represent the public interest on this matter. Due to the Met’s failure to engage with our questions, we have no option but to sue for a second time to seek the truth about the Prime Minister’s conduct during lockdown. 

 

Lord Paddick said:

"Members of the public will have seen Boris Johnson raising a glass at a party which he apparently hasn't been questioned about.  I thought, 'If that had been me, I would have been fined.'  We are determined that the Prime Minister should be held to the same standard as the rest of us." 

 

Jo Maugham, Director of Good Law Project said:

“It's appalling that the UK's biggest police force has been placed under special measures because of a litany of failures. We need the Met to be transparent about its actions and this challenge is grounded in a single, simple idea: for the law to have any meaning, it must apply equally to us all. The Met must explain their seeming lack of action regarding this matter. We won’t stop until the full story is uncovered.”

 

The public’s faith in the Met has been severely compromised this year - it has failed to hold the Prime Minister and those around him to account for their lockdown breaches, and there have also been shocking reports of institutional misogyny, discrimination and sexual harassment. This is its moment to finally begin repairing the damage created by the Met’s inaction and restore the public’s trust.

 

The Met has until 22nd July to respond.  

Bush Farm and Roe Green Walled Garden among groups to win NCIL funding

 

The barn at Bush Farm, badly in need of attention

My Aunt Muriel haymaking at Bush Farm 80 years ago,  Summer 1942

I was pleased to hear that both Barn Hill Conservation Group and the Bush Farm Collective whose Neighbourhood CIL bids were featured on Wembley Matters LINK LINK, succeeded in winning funding.

The Conservation Group will use the funding for infrastructure work at the Victorian Roe Green Walled Garden, including repairs to the barn that visitors will remember as housing an amazing selection of, well I am not too sure what to call them - bric-a-brac, curios, collectors' items?  Always fascinating.  

The Bush Farm Collective will also be using some of the money for restoration work  on its barn (see above) and fencing.  There are plans for a community garden, toilets and outdoor learning facilities. The Collective now has a farming licence and hope to have a small number of animals on site including sheep.

2021 Census data: Population change 2011-2021 for Brent and its neighbours