The second phase of a joint project with Keep Britain Tidy and Recycle for London is underway. The project aims to see if the use of an independent team identifying contamination in recycling bins prior to their collection, is a more effective way of educating residents and ensuring that residents are using the recycling service correctly. The second phase of the project will last until Easter.
Work is progressing on the new tennis courts at Gladstone Park; being project managed by colleagues in the Sports Team. The new tennis courts are due to be completed by the end of May and a tender is being developed for the management of the courts and the provision of an enhanced tennis coaching scheme. This will be a first for the borough with regards to a floodlit court facility offering first class tennis facilities for all users across the borough.
Neighbourhood Managers
The Neighbourhood Manager community skip / community clean-up programme has re-launched this year as planned with events also now aligned to Keep Britain Tidy’s Great British Spring Clean. Recent events include a community litter pick with councillors along the canal tow path in Alperton and another litter pick by volunteers from the Lycee Churchill School in Forty Avenue.
Community skip / clean-ups were also recently conducted in Braemar Avenue, Eton Grove and in Sudbury Town. New approaches this year include additional vehicle support by Veolia to remove surpluses so that nobody gets turned away, greater efforts to promote and encourage re-use of unwanted items and the introduction of assisted support to help less able persons to carry items from nearby homes to the skip.
Neighbourhood Managers also continue to drive forward the recently relaunched Community Payback programme with a number of alleyway clearance works undertaken recently in Ridge Close and Wood Close.
Trees, Light and Parking
We have secured £143k grant funding from DEFRA and the GLA to plant and maintain more than 300 new street trees over the next two winters. Brent Planning resources will increase this funding. New trees will be focused on wards with low levels of tree cover, high deprivation and high levels of air pollution. The first tranche of 200 trees has been reserved and locations are being finalised.
Latest data shows that we are on target to reduce electricity consumption and carbon emissions from street lighting by two thirds from 2020. This will produce £95k of savings and reduce emissions by 4,000 tonnes of CO2.
Parking permit prices will increase by around 1.8% from April 2020, to cover inflation. In addition, the diesel permit surcharge will increase from £50 p.a. to £75 p.a.
Highways
Winter Resilience Road Maintenance Programme
A programme of patching on A roads has started with the first batch of £84,000 being carried out by ConwayAecom. A further £120,000 of work is being issued via the Framework Agreement for Highway Footway Improvement Works and Capital Projects. The aim is to get the work done by the end of March. The injection patching programme is due to start up again in April and we plan to carry out an innovative full-borough video survey, which will quickly identify pothole priorities for the programme.
Footway Investment Programme
Progress is going well with twenty-six schemes completed.
Air Quality
Officers are considering the Public Realm Scrutiny Committee report ‘Brent Breathes’ and measures that can be introduced to promote greener travel and improve air quality in the borough. Officers have also made good progress in working towards an application to the GLA for Cleaner Air Borough status. We anticipate that an application will be made to the GLA by June this year. The Clean Air Borough status scheme recognises local authorities’ progress and also provides opportunities to identify areas for further improvement.
The ‘Breath Clean’ schools project for 2019/20 has been a success with air monitoring and air quality assemblies introduced at 56 primary schools and 10 secondary schools in the borough. There are now plans to extend the scheme to infant schools and we aim to have all schools included in project by the end of 2020
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