Letter to John Denham

Letter to John Denham, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, calling ofr a public enquiry into the Brent Cross Cricklewood scheme

8 March 2010

Re: The London Borough of Barnet Brent Cross Cricklewood Outline planning Application no. C/17559/08

Dear Mr Denham,

I am writing on behalf of Brent Cyclists, the Brent borough group of the London Cycling Campaign.

Brent Cyclists represents the (roughly 200) members of the London Cycling Campaign who live in the borough of Brent. The London Cycling Campaign is the voice of cycling in London, with over 10,000 members, the largest urban cycling campaign in the world.

We have grave concerns about the Brent Cross Cricklewood Outline Planning Application that was approved by the London Borough of Barnet on 19 November 2009, not only on cycling, but also on general transport, environmental, sustainable development, and democratic grounds.

We therefore request you to call this application in for a public inquiry. The reasons for our request are given in more detail below.

1. Cycling

The plans will eliminate, or make far more dangerous, the main cycle route from the NW London suburbs to central London on the A5. The rebuilding of the Staples Corner West intersection will make it impossible for cyclists to follow the current line of the road from north to south at ground level, but will divert them, with other traffic, into a new motorway-style intersection with the M1 to the east of the London Midland railway line and then back, lengthening their journey and making it far more dangerous. The only alternative to this will be to risk cycling on the A5 flyover, with its merging lanes of high-speed traffic. The cycle route alternatives being offered by the developer are inefficient, unattractive and inadequate, and represent a total misunderstanding of cycling as a mode of transport. We fear that the scheme will have a highly detrimental impact on cycling over the whole of NW London, and may cause cyclist deaths.

This area of London is, as it is, highly impermeable to cycling, with cycle routes blocked by the major roads, the M1, A41 and A406. We would be in favour of a redevelopment of this area that sorted these problems out and created practical and attractive routes for cyclists and pedestrians, but unfortunately these plans do not do this.

The development plans for Staples Corner West will destroy the Mayor of London’s “Cycle Superhighway 11”, which is supposed to encourage cycle commuting along the A5, only a couple of years after it is supposed to be created. This will represent maladministration, with different authorities working against one another.

2. Transport

The transport provisions in the plans on more general grounds are serious cause for concern. They are dominated by catering for private car users. They can only increase, probably greatly, traffic and pollution in NW London. There is no useful new rail provision in the scheme. The proposed new station on the Thameslink line is unnecessary and would not solve the orbital public transport problem in this part of London – the issue that all the routes still go into the centre. A great deal of new car traffic will inevitably be created on the residential streets of Brent, close to the redevelopment area. The car parking is going to be moved closer to the shopping centre and the bus station will be moved further away. It will be necessary for bus passengers to use a shuttle-bus service between the new bus station and the shopping centre itself. This can only discourage bus use and increase car use.

A major development here needs serious public transport infrastructure that addresses the existing gaps in the infrastructure of outer north London. There is a clear opportunity here for developing an orbital rail system for outer north London, but this opportunity will be destroyed by the scheme as it stands, which will build over the obvious route for such a link.

3. Environment and sustainable development

The plans do little towards creating a sustainable development that will help London or the UK meet targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The housing that is proposed is of an insufficient environmental standard. The plans are staged in a way that makes it doubtful whether the more pro-environmental elements, such as the new station, will ever be built. If they are, they will come too late to alter the motor-dominated usage patterns that the development will create. The new road schemes will increase community severance and urban blight and work against sustainable transport. The plans contain insufficient provision of low-cost housing. The public benefits that are claimed for the scheme, in particular, the rebuilding of three schools, are in fact unnecessary developments. The driver for the rebuilding of the schools is the desire of the developers to shift them, to make land available for commercial development.

The expanded shopping centre will further damage local high streets and shops. Government planning and environmental policies are against the creation of new out-of-town shopping centres, or the expansion of existing ones. These proposals drive a coach and horses through this. The principal of extending Brent Cross Shopping Centre was rejected by a public enquiry in 1999. These proposals are largely a way of bringing this back under the guise of a specious argument that what is being created is a “new town centre”. This site can clearly never be a town centre, dominated as it is by the intersection of three motorway-style roads.

4. Democracy

Barnet Council has been working on these development plans for many years with the developer. They are “hand-in-glove” with the developer and are not in a position to rule impartially, and in the public interest, on this scheme. The environmental impacts of the scheme will fall on the residents of the boroughs of Brent, Harrow, and Camden as much as, or more than, they will fall on the residents of Barnet. Barnet Council, from this point of view, is therefore not the appropriate body to rule on the application. Brent Council, Harrow Council and Camden Council have all formally objected to the proposals. Therefore the situation is one of a conflict between local authorities, which must be resolved at a public enquiry.

Yours,

David Arditti (for Brent Cyclists)