Documents for meeting today with GLA officer
1) This is the link to our 44 page submission sent to Redbridge before the 22nd May planning meeting
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w4S5sk4e9kvjatd9vHCMtINSCSyTD5zk/view
2)- This is taken from a Redbridge Council September 2021 cabinet paper
“Surplus Sites for Additional School Places” The key information is at paragraph 3:10:
“The emerging housing development in the borough will partly limit the scale of the decline in demand for pupil places”
It begs the question of why build the new high rise slums at the Tesco Toxic Towers and elsewhere when people don’t want to live in Redbridge.
The main extract is below:
"From 2018 onwards however, the demand for pupil places has fallen across the
borough and across London. In Redbridge, between 2017 and the end of the
2020-21 academic year, there was an average of 7% of surplus places. In 2018-19
for example, there were almost 300 surplus places across the borough in the
primary sector, which is the equivalent of almost 10 empty classes.
3.5 The number of spaces in Reception classes for the start of the new 21-22
academic year suggests that the trend of a surplus of places is continuing. For the
start of the new school year in September 2021 there will be almost 300 spare
Reception places borough wide.
3.6 Although school popularity means that some schools remain oversubscribed, the number of schools with spare capacity has also been increasing since 2017. In the Autumn of 2017, there were twelve primary schools starting the year with more than 10 spare places, and of those, two schools had more than thirty places spare.
By comparison, current numbers suggest that there will be eleven schools with
more than 10 spare places in 2021, and of those at least 4 of them will have more
than 30 places spare.
3.7 The decline in overall demand is partly linked to a reduction in the number of
‘Redbridge live births’ who are no longer resident in the borough by the time their child reaches statutory school age. At present, by the time they reach the age of
4, around 12% of children born in Redbridge have moved out of the borough.
3.8 As the number of Redbridge resident four and five-year-olds going to schools
outside of Redbridge has remained static at around 3.5% over the last 4 years,
our analysis indicates that the drop is caused by issues such as: families moving
to access affordable housing before their first child reaches statutory school age;
the impact of Brexit on both inward migration into the borough and outward
migration from Redbridge to other EU countries; a decline in inward migration of
families with school age children to Redbridge from other parts of London and
the UK; and a decline in inward migration of families with school age children to
Redbridge from countries outside of the EU.
3.9 The ‘live birth rate’ in the borough has been declining since 2016 so we have
factored those falling birth rates, reducing inward migration numbers, and
increasing outward migration numbers into the projections for the next few
years.
3.10 We have also factored in the impact of both housing development and
anticipated demand for places for refugee families. The emerging housing
development in the borough will partly limit the scale of the decline in demand
for pupil places. However, based on the current and planned scheme details, and
on pupil yield numbers from developments, we project that new housing alone
will not be sufficient to replace all the demand which will be ‘lost’ through the
falling birth rates and changing migration patterns.
3.11 Placing refugee families in borough will lead to a very small increase in demand
for places and will not be at a level that will impact on overall provision of places.
3.12 The net effect of the changes outlined at paragraphs 3.8 and 3.9 mean that by
2031, there could be as many as twenty-four primary schools carrying more than
10 surplus places, and as many as twelve of those schools may be carrying more
than 30 spare places by the end of the decade."
3)
Redbridge School Streets taken from
https://www.redbridge.gov.uk/roads-and-pavements/redbridge-school-streets/
"We have introduced Redbridge School Streets as part of our plans for a safer and greener Redbridge. We want to:
- reduce levels of air pollution around our schools
- help protect children from traffic at the school gate
- encourage more children to walk and cycle to school
Redbridge School Streets mean vehicle traffic is banned from entering School Street zones and travelling past schools at the schools' start and finish times, during term time only. Vehicles within the School Streets zone can exit the School Streets zone without penalty, at any time, even during the restricted period.
Early results show that the existing Redbridge pilots have been successful at reducing traffic at the school gate, making the area safer for children and encouraging them to walk, scoot and cycle to school.
A number of recent reports have also demonstrated the benefits of School Streets.
Residents and businesses within the School Streets zone can apply to the Council for a free exemption meaning that they can enter and travel through the area during the restricted times.
Existing School Streets
Exemptions
Residents and businesses that are located, or have their property vehicle access located within the Redbridge School Street zone can apply for a free vehicle exemption from the Council. See FAQs for further details of exemptions.
Electric or hybrid electric vehicles are not exempt from the Redbridge school street as the aim is to reduce all traffic at the school gates and to encourage more children to walk and cycle to school.
Enforcement
School Streets zones are identified with signs and enforced using Traffic Enforcement Cameras.
Penalty charge notices will be issued for any vehicle that unlawfully enters the School Streets zone. The penalty charge is £130. A 50% discount is applied if payment is made within 14 days reducing the charge to £65.
Contact
For more information about Redbridge School Streets please email the team at schoolstreets@redbridge.gov.uk or write to School Streets Team, 10th Floor Front, Lynton House, 255-259 High Road, Ilford, IG1 1NY."
This appears to show a double standard, the rich north gets their school protected from air pollution, the poor south gets three high rise developments with construction HGVs causing pollution for more than five years.
4) BHRUT freedom of information request dated 14th July 2021
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/information_on_child_cancers_oth?unfold=1#incoming-1773505
1- No developer should be allowed to build at a site surrounded by high child death and hospital admission rates. Redbridge Council has been negligent in failing to prevent this happening by refusing to collect child death and illness statistics for the postcodes surrounding the Tesco and Homebase sites.
2 – A recent city hall report found Redbridge schools had the 11th worst air pollution in England. It seems almost certain that the surrounding postcodes to the two sites will be in the top 25% for child deaths and being admitted to hospital. National Institute of Clinical Excellence Quality Standard 181 advises local authorities not to build schools by busy roads. QS 181 has no benchmarks to stop councils building by schools The absence of such benchmarks is why the Mayor should call in these two applications with to recommending the Secretary of State call in these application and reform planning law to provide transparent benchmarks.
3 – The freedom of information request to BHRUT hospitals at https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/information_on_child_cancers_oth?unfold=1#incoming-1853589 is copied below.
Dear Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust,
Three major high rise developments are planned in Ilford: at Tesco Goodmayes, Homebase and the Seven Kings Car park. All of them are between a busy road and Crossrail. A school is proposed at the Tesco site.
It is welcome that BHRUT have supplied stats relating to asthma and eye disease which will form part of a submission to Redbridge Council. This request seeks further information about child cancer and other illnesses as follows.
i) The full postcodes of patients, both in patients and out patients aged under 18 who have been are/receiving treatment for the following conditions
a) Cancer with a breakdown of types, for example
Leukemia
Brain and spinal cord tumour
Neuroblastoma
Wilms tumour
Lymphoma (including both Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin)
Rhabdomyosarcoma
Retinoblastoma
Bone cancer
b) Otitis media
c) All Acute lower respiratory infections, such as pneumonia and bronchiolitis.
d) Meningitis
For the following periods:
23rd March 2020 to 22nd March 2021
23rd March 2019 to 22nd March 2020
These dates tie in with the lockdown period.
ii) Children who have died in your care either in hospital or at home as out-patients aged under 18 for the same time periods and same conditions with the full postcodes set out in 1 above. It is accepted there are confidentiality issues here, but when Councils are planning substantial housing developments close to roads it must be right to discover if there is a health risk to building homes in these locations.
This information may be over the usual cost limits, but it is the public interest for the it to be published. Information relating to the slight risk of blood clots from the astrazeneca vacine has led to changes in the use of the vaccine.
They are many articles linking child illness pollution one at
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41416-0…
says
“A meta-analysis by Boothe et al.31 assessing childhood leukaemia in relation to multiple pollutants found an increased risk for post-natal exposure but no association with pre-natal exposure. Most studies found an association with childhood leukaemia overall, but the association tended to be stronger when examining just acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) or acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) for specific pollutants32. “
Which suggests a correlation with the illnesses above will be found as was a correlation found between asthma and living by roads in an earlier Freedom of Information request sent to me.
The reply from BHRUT shows a starting reduction between child deaths and hospital admissions before and after lockdown. This BHRUT evidence requires further work to determine
- the full postcode of the death and hospital admission
- further work to compare similar child health stats across London & England
- A large study to discover if child deaths are linked to living close to roads
- Any such study to confirm if a exists link to frequent hospital admissions and eventual deaths
- If a pattern of deaths, frequent admissions and closeness to roads exists
- If this pattern exists then the NHS & or council write to parents suggesting they move home
- Any such study to inform benchmarks for when schools and housing not to be built by roads
3 – Sadiq Khan recently won election on a platform of cleaning up London’s “toxic” air.. His press release dated 14th May 2021 before the Redbridge Council planning meeting of 14th May 2021 is cut and pasted at the end of this blog.
4 – Earlier this year, Gemma Cameron took Manchester Council (the defendant cited below) to court be won. The key paragraph is cited below: 
5 – This process is not fair because the stage 2 referral letter is not sent to objectors. How can residents make meaningful objections to the Mayor if this key document is secret?
Cut and paste article from GLA site below:
Sadiq pushes ahead with the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone
- Re-elected Mayor pledges to be the greenest ever and says he has a mandate from Londoners to put environment and climate policies at the heart of his second term.
- The central London ULEZ has already cleaned up toxic nitrogen dioxide by nearly half – now an estimated 3.8 million people living in the expanded zone set to benefit directly from the scheme and knock-on benefits across the whole city.
- Londoners will start to see new ULEZ expansion zone signs which are being put up around the North and South Circular.
The newly re-elected Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, today commits to putting a green recovery and policies to improve London’s air and halt the climate emergency at the heart of his second term.
As one of his first acts as the re-elected Mayor he has today recommitted to expanding the world’s first Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in October this year to reduce toxic air pollution and protect public health.
The expanded ULEZ will cover an area 18 times larger than the central London Ultra Low Emission Zone and will affect older, more polluting vehicles that don’t comply with strict emission standards. Although around 80 per cent of cars are already thought to be compliant, it is estimated that 100,000 cars, 35,000 vans and 3,000 lorries could be affected by the expanded zone and tighter standards every day.
The central London ULEZ has been transformational since its introduction in April 2019, helping to reduce roadside concentrations of the poisonous gas nitrogen dioxide in the central zone by nearly half. Expansion will extend these benefits to millions of Londoners, both inside and outside the expanded zone.
While significant progress has been made, with a substantial reduction in the number of Londoners living in areas exceeding legal limits for NO2, tens of thousands of Londoners still breathe illegally polluted air and 99 per cent of Londoners live in areas exceeding the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended guidelines for PM2.5, which are much tighter than the legal standards.
Research shows that those exposed to the worst air pollution are more likely to be deprived Londoners and from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities. There is also emerging evidence linking air pollution with an increased vulnerability to the most severe impacts of COVID.
World-leading measures, including the central London ULEZ, introduced by the Mayor in his first term had already cut the number of state schools with illegal levels of pollution by 97 per cent – from 455 schools in 2016 to just 14 in 2019, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The ULEZ expansion is not only vital to achieving compliance with legal limits for air pollution but is also a key step towards meeting the more stringent health-driven World Health Organization guidelines for toxic particulate pollution by 2030.
These are challenging targets, and to meet them we need to tackle all sources of pollution. The ULEZ is therefore an important part of a wider suite of world-leading measures to improve London’s air quality. Other action includes cleaning up London’s bus and taxi fleet, reducing emissions from construction and action to promote the uptake of zero emission vehicles.
These bold measures will deliver a major improvement to Londoners’ health by reducing the toxic air pollution that is currently responsible for thousands of premature deaths and other serious conditions. A recent poll shows that it is not just the Mayor who thinks this is the right approach, with 68 per cent of people polled supporting charges to discourage the most polluting vehicles and only 18 per cent opposed*.
Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “I pledge to be the greenest Mayor London’s ever had with a mandate from Londoners to put the environment and climate policies at the heart of my second term in office. Today I am reaffirming my commitment to speed up the cleaning of London’s toxic air.
“In central London, the Ultra Low Emission Zone has already helped cut toxic roadside nitrogen dioxide pollution by nearly half and led to reductions that are five times greater than the national average. But pollution isn’t just a central London problem, which is why expanding the ULEZ later this year will benefit Londoners across the whole of the city and is a crucial step in London’s green recovery. There is no time to waste. We know pollution hits the poorest Londoners the hardest which is why I’m doing everything I can to improve the health for all Londoners.”
Jemima Hartshorn, Founder of Mums for Lungs, said: “Mums for Lungs has campaigned for an expansion of the ULEZ for over three years now, so we are glad that this scheme will be implemented very soon. The ULEZ in central London has really reduced NO2-pollution across the area, and more children will benefit from ULEZ expansion. But more is needed to ensure that London meets World Health Organization guidelines, so we call on the Mayor, national government, councils and business to work together to ensure breathing no longer harms the health of London’s children.”
NOTES TO EDITORS
* A recent poll by YouGov for the environmental law charity ClientEarth, found 68 per cent believed higher-polluting vehicles should pay more to drive through London, with 18 per cent opposed: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/mayor/drivers-polluting-vehicles-charged-drive-london-poll-ulez-north-south-circular-roads-b932381.html
- From 25 October 2021 the ULEZ will expand to operate up to the north and south circular roads. It will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year except Christmas Day (25 December). Together with the new vehicle standards for the Londonwide Low Emission Zone for large and heavy vehicles, introduced early this year, these schemes will set London firmly on track for achieving compliance with legal limits by 2025 at the latest.
- The Mayor is determined to continue to do more to tackle poor air quality for Londoners, particularly around schools, which stunts the growth of children’s lungs and worsens chronic illness, such as asthma, lung and heart disease and expanding the ULEZ is a critical step. A study by researchers from Imperial College London’s Environmental Research Group, commissioned by City Hall, has found that the Mayor’s air quality policies and wider improvements in air pollution will increase the average life expectancy of a child born in London in 2013 by six months
- Air pollution is often more concentrated close to the source of emissions, such as traffic. This means that exposure and its health impacts are not distributed evenly across London: Independent research into the effects of the Mayor’s air quality programme shows that by 2030 the exposure gap between the most and least deprived areas will be reduced by 71 per cent and the exposure gap between areas with the highest and lowest proportion of BAME residents will be reduced by up to 85 per cent. The ULEZ expansion will deliver the most benefit in the areas that currently have the worst pollution.
- Thousands of motorists have already started to prepare for the expanded ULEZ by switching to cleaner transport alternatives including walking or cycling, and public transport or switching to less polluting vehicles. A major awareness campaign has been underway for more than three years to ensure drivers and businesses are ready for the expanded ULEZ, with TfL’s online vehicle checker being used more than 12 million times during this period.
5 BHRUT health stats have continued to be amongst in England. The BHRUT AGM papers reveal a shortfall of 100 beds, large scale high rise such as Tesco, Homebase etc will make it worse.
6 - Air pollution news since May 22nd shows a trend of evidence stating air pollution is a greater threat to health than previously thought.
This is a September 2021 BMJ article https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1904
This is the BBC September 2021 report on WHO saying air pollution worse than previously thought.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58657224
7 - On climate change the BBC reports at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58600723 at September 2021 the world is still on target to over heat. Redbridge has not taken into account that low rise construction elsewhere would be less CO2 emitting.
Comments
Post a Comment