Westway Air Pollution Scandal – Shocking New Revelations!

The Kensington Academy and Leisure Centre development necessitated the destruction of the popular and much used sports pitches at Lancaster Green, which were replaced by additional sports pitches provided at the Westway Sports Centre, on a site between the Westway flyover and one of its’ exit ramps, which we in the Grenfell Action Group considered to be an unsuitable location, due partly to concerns we had about air quality at the site. At the meeting at which planning permission was granted for the KALC development, in September 2012, we voiced our concerns with support from local Labour Councillors and one Tory Councillor, Professor Sir Anthony Coates. As a result of this combined lobbying planning permission was granted on condition that air pollution levels would subsequently be monitored at the site. We had previously been told that there was no air quality monitoring at the Westway Sports Centre.

According to the Kensington Labour website the Council immediately reneged on this commitment which they deemed to be ‘non-binding’ and the monitoring never took place.

http://kensingtonlabour.com/2014/10/13/its-official-westway-sports-pitch-breaches-eu-air-pollution-safety-levels/

The Labour website continues;

“Kensington Labour Councillors and community groups tried to get the pollution levels (independently) tested, but it is a specialist task and it proved complex and expensive to undertake. Finally, a Citizen Science project, ‘Clean Up London Air’, led by a concerned local resident undertook the work, under the guidance of ‘Mapping for Change’ an academic project at University College London.”

The Grenfell Action Group was actively involved in this project which involved a ‘guerilla monitoring exercise’ using clandestinely installed diffusion tubes to record nitrogen dioxide levels at the site of the new MUGA’s during the month of July 2014. The data collected was then sent for analysis which revealed that the average nitrogen dioxide reading for July alone was 52.46µg/m3. This breached the average monthly level allowed by European law which is 40µg/m3 per month.

RBKC Labour Group Leader Cllr Emma Dent Coad commented thus on these findings:

“This research confirms all our worst fears; air pollution near the sports pitch beside the Western Cross Route breaches EU safety levels by a wide margin. We cannot and dare not ignore this. We will be demanding immediate mitigation with green walls, as well as restating our commitment to a range of measures to improve air quality long-term, including the establishment of an Ultra Low Emission Zone in the borough. The Council cannot ignore such a serious health hazard, we need action now, and a plan for the future.”

Councillor Dent Coad, who had been assured by Council officers that “by a quirk of atmospheric pressure the area directly underneath the Westway does not have very bad air quality, as the pollution ‘drifts’ elsewhere” further remarked on her own personal blog that;

“K&C is insistent in its denial that locating sports pitches from the site of the new Kensington Academy to another next to West Cross Route will have any effect whatever on the health of our children.”

IMAGINE OUR CONSTERNATION, therefore, when we discovered recently, via a Freedom of Information request, that RBKC had secretly installed diffusion tubes to measure nitrogen dioxide levels at the replacement MUGA’s in the middle of 2013, and had been regularly collecting air quality data from that time onwards until late in 2014. This data revealed that the levels measured throughout this period breached the legal limits in every month, and frequently by a greater margin than the 52.46µg/m3 reported for July 2014 in the Mapping for Change study reported by ourselves and by Councillor Dent Coad.

Furthermore they had been negotiating with the Westway Trust since early 2013 in apparently fruitless attempts to reach agreement on the installation of ‘green screens’ to offer some measure of protection to users of the new MUGA’s. A number of stumbling blocks had bedevilled these negotiations, including an apparent reluctance to fund the project from either RBKC or Westway Trust coffers, and the Trust’s ambitions to build a new indoor complex in the same vicinity, right where the ‘green screens’ would need to be located. It is noteworthy also that only the provision of temporary ‘green screens’ was considered at the time, partly because only one year’s funding had been secured from the GLA, early in 2013, and partly because the Westway Trust were opposed to the installation of permanent screens. It is also worth noting that the funding streams that RBKC were attempting to exploit were intended solely for short term pilot projects the aims of which were to determine whether or not ‘green screens’ could significantly mitigate the health hazards from tailpipe emissions at hotspots on London’s road network.

As far as we are aware, despite the receipt of temporary GLA funding for the tax year 2013/2014, the ‘green screen’ plan was never implemented during the period in question, and appears now to have stalled indefinitely. It is also clear from the correspondence that neither RBKC nor Westway Trust had any intention of providing the necessary funding themselves, and RBKC were instead exploring the possibility of securing funding from the GLA and/or the Department for Transport.

That, it seems, is how little either organisation cared about the health and welfare of the school parties amd other young people using the MUGA’s.

Meanwhile, it seems that everyone who was not privy to the extensive communications between RBKC and the Westway Trust, was deliberately and cynically misled into believing that there had been no air quality monitoring at the Westway Sports Centre, because the Council believed such monitoring to be unnecessary, and also believed there were no significant air quality issues at the site.

We know that the Grenfell Action group was misled and deceived in this way whenever we raised our concerns on the issue, and it seems very clear that the Labour Group on the Council was similarly misled. Even the Tories own colleague, Councillor Professor Sir Anthony Coates, the only Tory councillor to express concerns about air quality on the site, appears to have been kept out of the loop and fed the same bullshit as the rest of us.

In fact a special report (ie fob-off) was prepared for his his benefit by the Head of Residential Services in Environmental Health. This report was clearly intended to minimise any suggestion of an air pollution problem at the site. It neglected to reproduce the actual data the Council had collected at the MUGA’s in question, and made no reference to the voluminous email exchanges with the Westway Trust throughout 2013/2014 documenting ongoing attempts to negotiate the provision of ‘green screens’ to partially protect the site, which the Council perversely continued to assert posed no health risk to its’ users, including the many school parties and other young people regularly using the new MUGA’s.

This sorry episode is strongly indicative of a serious lack of candour, transparency and integrity at both RBKC and the Westway Trust. Council officers insisted repeatedly that there was no air pollution problem at the new MUGA’s, although it is very clear from the documents in our possession that they didn’t really know, but strongly suspected, that there might well be air pollution issues. As a result they secretly conducted a testing programmme which clearly showed that the legal NO2 limits were continually breached over a lengthy period. They then made no attempt to publish these findings. Meanwhile, and even before the test data was available, they had begun a protracted correspondence with the Westway Trust and others, in an attempt to negotiate the provision of protective measures to mitigate the effects of these supposedly non-existent airborne pollutants. This in itself strongly suggests that they suspected, or even knew, all along that there was probably a significant risk to human health from air pollution at this site.

We are all left wondering what happened to truth, transparency and integrity at the Royal Borough and what kind of lying deceitful toads are we governed by in this Most Rotten of Boroughs

A final word to any of our detractors who might be inclined to criticise or contradict the content of this post – they should be mindful that we have in our possession all the documentation, provided by RBKC, on which the content of this piece is based.

Day Of Housing Activism – A Call to Arms

It is a source of deep regret to us that the recent fast growing network of housing activist groups simply did not exist in our early days when we fought so hard against the Kensington Academy development, and the longer term  ‘regeneration’ of our community of which it was the spearhead. We lost that first battle, but we are now beginning to see the power of collective resistance as similarly threatened communities across London join together to resist the heartless ‘social cleansing’ policies of local authorities and social housing trusts throughout the capital.

THIS WEEK  – Thursday, January 22 at 2pm

AN AFTERNOON OF HOUSING ACTIVISM WITH ‘OUR WEST HENDON’.

2-4 pm Come and hear the Focus E15 Mothers talk about their campaign.

Marsh Drive Community Centre Marsh Drive NW9 7QE

Nearest station – Hendon Overground, on Thames Link 15 min from Kings Cross
or
Hendon Central Tube – northern line then 83 bus to Hendon Broadway

buses 32, 83, 142, 183, 632, 642

– THEN

4 – 5 pm
join us for some hot Home made soup and rolls while we drop our ginormous banner

– AND THEN

5 pm
March from the estate to the Public Inquiry at Hendon Town Hall

6 pm
Outside Hendon Town Hall The Burroughs NW4 4AX – nearest station Hendon Central, Northern Line )
buses 143, 183, 362

We will be joined by the Women from The New Era campaign, speakers from the Our West Hendon Group, Radical Housing Network , Unite The Union and other estates in Barnet, when we will make a noise and voice our objections to the social cleansing of West Hendon and London wide.

https://www.facebook.com/events/704493809666039/704495809665839/?notif_t=like

FOOTNOTE: Our use of the expression ‘a call to arms’ in the title of this post should not be interpreted as a call to violence. The housing activist movement with which we are proud to associate ourselves, and on behalf of which we speak today, is a peaceful protest movement which does not advocate violent action. The expression ‘a call to arms’ is used here only as a call to concerted mass action.

Urgent “call out” from Focus E15

The Grenfell Action Group has just received word of an urgent “housing action” call out from our fellow Radical Housing Network members, Focus E15.

The venue for the action is Bridge House  which is just 5 minutes walk from Stratford’s main station and can be readily accessed from Notting Hill on the Central Line.

 Urgent call out for Monday 19 January at 9am

at Bridge House

320 High Street, Stratford, London E15 1EP

Please see below the press release regarding a homeless single mother and three children resisting social cleansing from Newham.

This brave woman stood up to Newham council trying to send her out of London and was forced to sleep in a police station with her three children, aged 6 years and under.

We stand with her and say SOCIAL HOUSING NOT SOCIAL CLEANSING

 Focus E15 campaign helps homeless Newham Council employee and her three children left in police station lobby overnight 

On Friday morning, Zineb, a single mother of three who works part-time for Newham Council was evicted by a private landlord, leaving the family with nowhere to go.

Zineb went to Newham Council’s Bridge House at 11am to declare the family homeless at which point she was offered temporary accommodation two hours outside of London. Upon rejecting the offer because of what it would mean for her job and her eldest daughter’s school, she was deemed to have made herself intentionally homeless.

She refused to leave Bridge House and council workers called the police, who took her to Forest Gate police station where the family had no choice but to stay overnight, in the lobby, sleeping on the floor. The next day she came to the Focus E15 campaign stall and asked for help. We immediately put a message out to our networks and were able to find emergency accommodation in Newham for the weekend.

On Monday 19 January people from Focus E15 campaign will be accompanying Zineb and her children to Bridge House and expect Newham Council to find accommodation for this mother and Newham employee in reasonable reach of work and school.

Join us on Monday 19 January at 9am at Bridge House, 320 High Street, Stratford, London E15 1EP

The message is clear – NO TO SOCIAL CLEANSING

Contact:
FocusE15london@gmail.com

—————-

Ombudsman To Investigate Closure of Station Walk

The Grenfell Action Group is pleased to announce that the Local Government Ombudsman has agreed to investigate the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea over their actions in closing our much loved right-of-way, Station Walk, in late 2012.

We know that RBKC will hate and fear the fact that their shady process of closing Station Walk will now be investigated by an independent body, and not by their own Monitoring Officer, and that they will not be able to control the outcome of the Ombudsman’s findings.

It is a pity that the Ombudsmans’ remit only allows them to investigate the “process” of how RBKC abused their power in closing Station Walk and will, therefore, not be able to comment on the individual actions of Councillors Blakeman and Coleridge. The Grenfell Action Group believes that even a perfunctory investigation of the individual actions of Councillors Blakeman and Coleridge would find that they abused their political power in order to close Station Walk so that the start of the Kensington Aldridge Academy project (KALC) would not be delayed.

However, we are confident that the Ombudsman intends to examine the process in detail and, we hope, will find that the legal process of closing Station Walk was violated on a number of occasions by the actions of RBKC Councillors and Officers. We believe that an investigation into the facts will show that the process used by the Council to close Station Walk was carried out, at times, without proper legal authority, and involved putting undue pressure on one community member to withdraw a formal objection to the closure of Station Walk that he had lodged with the Secretary of State.

We believe that instead of allowing the objection lodged with the Secretary of State to proceed to its’ natural conclusion, both Councillors and Officers from RBKC abused their powers by putting pressure on this man, one of our senior citizens, to withdraw his legitimate objection to the closure of Station Walk. This point is crucial to our argument that the proper “process” of closing Station Walk was not followed by RBKC who decided that it would be easier to lie and deceive the local community rather than follow proper legal process.

We hope that the Ombudsman will conclude that the promises made in order that Station Walk could be speedily closed so as not delay the construction of the Kensington Academy were not made in good faith. We also believe that the Ombudsman will find that RBKC has done next to nothing to facilitate the re-opening of this much loved right-of-way since the false promises were made by Blakeman and Coleridge in December 2012 that Station Walk would stay open “in perpetuity”.

We welcome the Local Government Ombudsman’s investigation and we hope it will bring to light the facts behind this sordid affair.

Let us see what kind of excuses our Councillors use to get out of this one!

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

The Grenfell Action Group does not always enjoy a harmonious relationship with the RBKC Labour Group. In fact quite the contrary as we are often severely critical of them. However, we would like to draw the attention of our readers to a most excellent blog recently posted by the Labour Group’s Leader, Councillor Emma Dent Coad, whose indulgence we beg for reproducing a sizable portion of her blog without first seeking her permission.

http://emmadentcoad.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/shambolic-2-rbkc-confuses-want-with-need.html

The blog highlights very well the machiavellian behaviour of the neo-cons in Hornton St who clearly believe that funding Holland Park Opera is more important than providing vital services for the vulnerable and excluded in this most rotten of boroughs.

THE FOLLOWING, FROM COUNCILLOR DENT COAD’S BLOG, SHOULD SHAME THOSE RESPONSIBLE AND HORRIFY ANY RIGHT THINKING PERSON:

“The ‘richest borough in the universe’ is CUTTING £150,000 from its homelessness prevention scheme this year.

Yes, the Council that can justify handing over, no strings attached, £5m to a loss-making business, Opera Holland Park, that some say has cost us cc£20m since inception – a ‘business’ that loses up to £125,000 per week on its eight-week summer run – is CUTTING the price of a week of opera (if you add in the cost of renting the location at Holland House, which is given free), for a year of homelessness prevention.

As we go about our rounds, we find the message of financial incompetence and tortured priorities by the Council is getting through. So, for the sake of absolute clarity and accuracy, here are some figures to feed your outrage this wintry season. So, when you are wondering how a civilised society and ‘fabulously’ rich Council can walk by someone sleeping on a pavement in below-zero temperatures, this is how:

‘SQUEEZING THE VULNERABLE TO FUND INDULGENCE’

Any organisation that has been run inefficiently for years can make savings through better planning and tightening up on costs.

But RBKC has taken this to a new level. While bleating ‘austerity’ and ‘tough decisions’ they have cut back on services, particularly focussed on the most vulnerable who cannot speak for themselves.

And yet, most of this is simply unnecessary. Here’s why. Below you will see a table of government funding cuts to RBKC since 2010 (cuts = savings). In the third column is the total of UNDERSPENDING across the Council in the same year. All these sums have been taken from the Council’s own documentation:

A large chunk of the underspends every year are put into the Capital Reserve, to fund major projects such as the cc£100m Holland Park School.

The ‘usable Reserves’ from which capital and other projects are funded look like this:

10/11 – £206m
11/12 – £224m
12/13 – £241m
13/14 – £267m
at September 2014 – £283m

You would think that having large Reserves means you would get some interest on that to ‘soften the blow’ of savings; in fact Council policy states precisely that. You would be wrong.

These Reserves are kept almost entirely in the Debt Management Office (very safe but can be accessed quickly), whose return on investments is .25%pa. Given that inflation has been cc2.5%, the loss on say £100m of these Reserves (the sum the Council states they have not earmarked for capital projects) is cc£4-5m/yr. So we are actually LOSING money. If that £100m was invested, we could GAIN cc£4-5m/yr. So you could say that we are forgoing cc£10m/yr.

Now let’s look at some of the Council’s PRIORITIES. In 2010/11 (election year) £4.2m was spent on an ‘efficiency dividend’ of £50 each to all registered for Council Tax. In 2013/14 (election year) £7.5m was spent on an ‘efficiency dividend’ of £100 each to all Council Tax PAYERS (ie not in receipt of Housing Benefit).

Here are some more ‘priorities’:

Opera Holland Park                               underwriting loss of cc£1m/yr
Leighton House                                       this year alone £2.6m refurb costs
National Army Museum                       ‘loan’ of £2.5m for refurb
Kensington Academy artwork            £150k
Holland Park Academy artwork        £120k

In the past six years, the Council has spent an incredible £1m on Pre-Raphaelite art:
– Clytie (lady in a nightie)
– Cimabue’s Madonna ( lady in a nightie)
– Nymphs in a Landscape (shockingly, ladies without nighties)

Now let’s look at ‘underspends’ in services, using 2013/14 as an example:

Adult Social Care                 £6.4m
Children’s Services              £641k
Env Leisur and Res             £2.3m
Housing                                 £638k
Libr, Arch, Heritage           £238k
Planning, boro devt            £1.6k
Transp & Techn                   £6.4m
Corp Servi                             £3.8m
Adult, Family Learning     £44k

As you can see for yourself, ‘tough decisions’ are in truth IDEOLOGICAL.

If the Tories get into government again and are allowed to kick off their destructive ‘deficit balancing’ budget, make no mistake, people will die.

Which is why, given that RBKC is a microcosm of all that is very wrong in the country at present, we need to understand how our Tories in RBKC make their decisions, where the money is, and just how the process is driven by wrong-headedness, incompetence and ideology.”

We will be writing to Emma Dent Coad to ask what the RBKC Labour Party actually intends to do to try and change the fact that RBKC Tory Councillors find it acceptable to put £5 million into Holland Park Opera while cutting vital services.

It is our genuine and heartfelt wish that the RBKC Labour Group demonstrate more fight and resistance in opposition, and we challenge them to organise a protest outside the opening night of Holland Park Opera, on June 2nd 2015, so that residents can show their disgust that subsidising art for the more privileged is considered more important in RBKC than providing for the basic human needs of the Borough’s most vulnerable.

It is high time that RBKC Labour stood up to be counted, and their response to our request to organise a protest will tell us all we need to know about their true will to resist the warped values and despicable behaviour of the ruling tories!

NO SURRENDER – ‘OUR WEST HENDON’

The Grenfell Action Group would like to share a campaign video put together by our neighbours and fellow Radical Housing Network members, ‘Our West Hendon’, highlighting their fight to protect their community from the threat of “social cleansing”.

We congratulate ‘Our West Hendon’ for their video that we believe captures the passion and emotion that fuels their campaign, and we warn residents of Lancaster West that we may well need to mount similar style resistance when Councillor Feilding-Mellen decides to “regenerate” our own community for the benefit of the rich and powerful.

‘Our West Hendon’ have no choice but to fight as the consequences of not doing so will result in the loss of their residencies and the displacement of their community. We at the Grenfell Action Group salute the fighting spirit of ‘Our West Hendon’  and their refusal to surrender their homes and their way of life.