Category: Streetscape

  • Queen’s Park gets its first school street

    From 14 September Kempe Road (from Peploe to Chamberlayne) will be designated a “School Street”. It will be one of 30 such Streets in Brent, brought in as a response to the opportunities for improving air quality and road safety as a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic. TfL are behind the plan.

    The aim is to make the street motor vehicle free (with limited exemptions) during the hours of 8.15 to 9.15am and 2.30 to 4pm Monday to Friday during term time. These are the normal drop off and pick up times for parents of children at Ark Franklin school who use their cars to deliver and collect them.

    Important exemptions from the rules are emergency and residents’ vehicles (including bona fide visitors and deliveries). However the scheme will work best if movements by exempted vehicles are kept to a minimum.

    Brent have made emergency orders under the Road Traffic Regulation Act, which do not require prior consultation. Despite this QPARA has established a dialogue with the Brent team about details of the scheme since the relevant road signs were spotted by an eagle-eyed Street Rep in August.

    You can find all the details available to the general public at this link on Brent’s website: https://consultation.brent.gov.uk/highways-and-infrastructure/ark-franklin-emergency-schools-streets-zone/ . This includes the letter sent to individual residents. It will be for the school staff to operate the temporary barriers across the street during the restricted hours.

    There will be a running consultation on the scheme during the next 6 months, but QPARA plans to see how it goes before formulating conclusions. Meanwhile we wish the school and the residents well. For a number of years we have been working to see the end of pick up/drop off by car at primary schools in the area for safety and air quality reasons. This scheme has some loose ends, but that is inevitable considering the speed of its introduction.

    More generally we want to support all our local schools as they manage the return of pupils after the lockdown. This is by far the most challenging aspect of the next phase of living with the pandemic given the constraints and the numbers involved.

    QPARA Streetscape Group

  • Keslake Pocket Park: Proposed improvements to the Chamberlayne Road end of Keslake Road

    In July 2019 Brent Council led a consultation on the Kensal Corridor Improvements Scheme focussed on Chamberlayne Road. Following this process there has been much discussion on redesign of Keslake Pocket Park in response to some local crime and anti-social behaviour issues and as such alternative designs have been explored in a joint working group of Keslake residents, QPARA, senior council officers and local councillors. The emerging preferred layout and design are featured in the leaflet (link here) and we seek further comments on this from the community by Friday 31 July via the online survey link (removed) in the leaflet. Implementation depends on community support and securing funding, this design will form the basis of a bid via QPARA for Brent’s Neighbourhood Community Infrastucture Levy (NCIL) funding in late 2020.

    All Keslake residents have received a letter from local councillors drawing attention to the consultation and inviting them to comment. QPARA’s Street Reps in adjacent roads are being alerted to the consultation and the leaflet is on our Keslake notice board.

    An update to this post can be found here.

  • More trees for Queen’s Park streets this Autumn

    Street trees are an important local amenity, providing clean air, shade, a home for wildlife. Well-maintained trees make our streets attractive, helping to enhance community pride and to reduce anti-social behaviour, but they don’t last for ever and there are currently some streets in the Queen’s Park area with large gaps where trees have been removed. QPARA members have voted to donate £4,000 to Brent Council to replace many of them, close to their original locations. We have also been granted £4,000 for the project from the neighbourhood Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL). This will enable us to fund a total of 32 street trees around our conservation area and Brent Council’s contractors will start planting them in October.

    In addition to the QPARA donation and CIL money, some residents are clubbing together to pay for trees on their streets. Each tree has a one-off cost of £250; if you would like to discuss having a tree planted in your road at the same time as the QPARA street trees project is being delivered, please email hussain@khan.cc, the QPARA street tree lead.

    Click here more more information on the street tree project and the proposed locations for the QPARA sponsored trees.