RSVP

We know that we have a loyal and regular readership on this blog but we have hitherto not allowed comments from our readers.The simple reason for this is that the editor is chronically ill and has insuffiicient energy to read and moderate comments. He can just about manage to keep the blog updated with regular input to keep you all interested. However, this doesn’t mean that we don’t care what you’re all thinking, or that we don’t want to hear from you. So, if you’ve got anything you want to say to us, positive or negative, please email us at either of these two addresses:

eddiegrenfell@hotmail.co.uk

citizen_-_smith@hotmail.co.uk

Bad Air Days At Shepherd’s Bush Roundabout

The Grenfell Action Group has continued to lobby hard on the question of air pollution in the vicinity of the Westway Sports Centre, following the loss of our much-loved and well-used football pitches at Lancaster Green. We recently received the email below from Councillor Emma Dent Coad. We reproduce it verbatim here, with her permission, and without any additional comment from us:

I’m not sure what you hope to gain by writing to us all individually. It simply wastes our time; we are all working on this. We are also working on a mountain of casework that is difficult, time-consuming and often heart-breaking, so please be patient. We are just nine out of 54 Councillors, we are not full-timers like some of the Cabinet Members, but are pursuing this as much as we can in the face of the apparent determination of the Council to be unhelpful.

Our problem, as has been explained is that, despite the very clear commitment to pollution monitoring on site that was made at the planning meeting, we are now told there is no legal obligation to do this. I was sitting on the committee and supported Cllr Prof Coates (he is a doctor) in his insistence this should be done. I then voted against the development on the strongest grounds I could find, which was overdevelopment from the private housing development that is unnecessary and uses precious open space.

Here is what I have done re pollution monitoring:

• contacted Clean Air for London to see if they would be willing to bring their portable monitoring gear to Western Cross Route. Unfortunately their highly expensive kit is out of action and I can’t find out when or indeed if it will be fixed.

• spoken to the team at Imperial College who do the monitoring for the DEFRA site. However they only run the existing units that we know about and have no means to do additional testing.

• discovered that at the Edward Woods estate which is next to Shepherd’s Bush roundabout, that has just been totally refurbished and recladded (to what I hope would be a similar standard that will be achieved at Grenfell Tower), part of the objective was to protect the homes from air pollution

• discovered that at the monitoring station at Shepherd’s Bush roundabout, which is one of the worst sites in London, airborne pollution reached a staggering ’10’ for particulates during one episode earlier in the year.

All this adds up to a great deal of concern. The problem is to find evidence that this situation prevails at the relocated MUGAs. By a quirk of atmospheric pressure I am told that the area directly underneath the Westway does not have very bad air quality, as the pollution ‘drifts’. However I have no evidence of this either. It has recently been proved that air pollution is carcinogenic. The only issue is that we have to provide SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE of similar pollution at the precise location of the MUGAs, which at the moment we cannot. To make the point we must find a way to do this, otherwise it is simply conjecture.

Please add this link to a relevant recent blog where I make similar comments, and where a representation of the ‘Bad Air Day’ at Shepherd’s Bush roundabout is shown.

http://emmadentcoad.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/nolympic-legacy-beware-twinkling-shard.html

Until and unless the Council changes its mind, or we can find some funds to carry out a longish term monitoring process (as of course on a given day the pollution might be ‘not too bad at all’), we are somewhat stumped. However we have not forgotten and are still considering how to persuade the Council to honour its commitments. We have several ideas. We will not give up.

kind regards

Emma Dent Coad
Councillor, Golborne Ward
Deputy Leader, Opposition Labour Group
RB Kensington and Chelsea

Ho-Hum

Two weeks ago we sent the query below to Cllr Terence Buxton, Chair of the Major Planning Development Committee that approved the KALC planning application without bothering to refer it to the Mayor of London for his approval.

We copied our email to Jonathan Bore, Executive Director for Planning, and To Edward George, the senior planning officer who had handled the application on the Council’s behalf. To date we have received no reply.

From: Grenfell Action Group
To: Councillor Terence Buxton
Cc: Jonathan Bore, Edward George
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2012 3:12 PM
Subject: KALC planning decision

Dear Cllr Buxton,

Having appealed to the Mayor of London to call-in your planning decision on the KALC development, we received a response from Emma Williamson at the GLA advising us that RBKC should have referred the planning decision to the Mayor’s office but neglected to do.

The decision has now been belatedly referred to the Mayor and is awaiting his determination.

Meanwhile, Leadbitters contractors this week began ripping up the car-park and MUGA on the site with heavy machinery. Should they not hold back to await the Mayor’s decision on this, and if so who’s responsibility would it be to so order them?

Respectfully,

Grenfell Action Group

It’s interesting to note that Terence Buxton sits on the board of the Westway Development Trust which stands to make significant financial gains gains from the KALC project because the Westway Sports Centre will now be the chief provider of outdoor sports facilities in North Kensington. Indeed Westway has already been paid £75,000 by the Council to upgrade some of their facilities as so-called ‘re-provision’ of the well used MUGA at Lancaster Green.

The fact that the children of Lancaster West will never use these ‘re-provided’ facilities clearly matters little to RBKC councillors.

Buxton also has private interests in a property management company at Arundel Gardens W11 just a stone’s throw from the KALC site.

Unfortunately we were advised that the clear conflict of interest between these directorships and his position as Chair of the Council’s Major Planning Development Committee were insufficient grounds to require him to recuse himself from the KALC planning decision, even though he may well stand to gain financially, although indirectly, from the development.

What will it take to stop these pompous and arrogant toffs from riding roughshod over the rest of us, by exploiting every last loophole in a system designed to provide them with such loopholes?

Answers on a rizla please.

A Leafless Land

“Give me a land of boughs in leaf.

A land of trees that stand;

Where trees are fallen there is grief;

I love no leafless land.”

– A.E. Housman

Screaming Trees

These are dark days for the lovers of Lancaster Green. During the past week or so the Council’s contractors have been busy tearing the ground up with heavy machinery,  preparing the site for the construction works that will start in the new year.

They have been making lots of noise of course, driving us all mad, those of us unlucky enough to live close-by. They have also been busy murdering our trees. I’m sure I can hear their anguished screams sometimes. I certainly hear them in my dreams.

I searched for and found this poem which speaks more eloquently than I ever could.

“I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree
A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair
Upon whose bosom snow has lain
Who intimately lives with rain
Poems are made by fools like me
But only God can make a tree”

Joyce Kilmer. 1886–1918

(illustration courtesy of kbwallpapers.blogspot.co.uk)

Is It A Bird? Is It A Plane?

We queried that little Stage I – Stage II conundrum with our contact at the GLA and received the following response:

“The way the consultation process with the GLA works is that when an application is submitted to the Council and validated, if it is a strategic application (as defined by the Mayor of London Order 2008) it should be referred to the GLA for a consultation response (Stage I).

Following deterimination of the application by the Council, the Council is then required to refer the application back to the GLA, and upon receipt the Mayor has 14 days to decide whether to allow the Council’s decision to stand, to refuse the application, or to take it over for his own consideration.

In a scenario, as here, when the application has not been referred at Stage I, as it should have been, a combined Stage I and Stage II report is prepared.”

In the meantime, the Council’s construction contractors have suddenly got busy ripping up the car park and muga – just over the last week actually – and have done a fair bit of damage already. Could this be a cynical attempt to pre-empt any possible Boris intervention by creating irreversible facts on the ground? Perhaps Pooter has advisors from the despised IDF on his staff  – We wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

Check out the link below for more info on the Mayor’s role and his powers of intervention:

http://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/planning/strategic-planning-applications

Watch Out Pooter – It Just Might Be A Surgical Strike By Superman Boris!

One Way Or Another We’ll All Know Soon Enough