Fiona Mulaisho

Member since 16 November 2022

All input submitted by this participant

There are 2 projects available.

Trending ideas have loaded.

Fiona Mulaisho 3 years ago Air pollution can negatively affect human health, with long-term accumulated exposure (over years to decades) considered to cause the greatest harm. Traffic on our streets is one of the greatest sources of air pollution, pumping noxious fumes into the air we breathe and our homes.During the successive lockdowns, the take up of cycling and walking amongst children, the young and old increased, as out streets felt safer because they were not dominated by traffic. And the air we breathed was cleaner.Air pollution is responsible for tens of thousands of early deaths in London and across England. In fact, air related deaths far outweigh the numbers of those killed on England’s roads, and even the numbers of deaths we saw reported in the early days of the Covid 19 pandemic. Yet we continue to ignore air pollution - one of the biggest and established silent deadly killers in our midst. As with Covid 19, those adversely impacted the most by air pollution tend to be the poorest ranks of society. Brent continues to be in the top five of poorest inner London boroughs.During the first lockdown, Brent had the worst death rate of any local authority in England and Wales per 100,000 population, with 490 deaths to the end of July 2020, including 36 deaths alone in one of its most deprived neighbourhoods, Church End.Child Poverty rates in Brent - the percentage of children living in poverty (after housing costs) was 40% in 2019/204 (the 12th highest in London). The cost of air pollution on children is not factored into this percentage. Children suffer the most from air pollution – asthma, stunted lung growth and other respiratory problems. Doing little to address air pollution in Brent will have huge health, financial, economic, social and environmental cost for tomorrow’s future – today’s children. Starting with providing healthier environments – less traffic dominated streets – must be the Council’s priority, its prerogative going forward. And this is not an idea; rather a fact that must be actioned.

Fiona Mulaisho 3 years ago Front gardens play a variety of roles. They can be a place to play, to relax or park a car. They also affect how houses and streets look, provide homes for local wildlife and soak up rainwater. Unfortunately, in Brent, a considerable number of homeowners have paved over their front gardens and continue to do so to make space for cars and this causes problems with drainage as well as loss of nature.Having a guaranteed place to park (driveway) probably means that such homeowners use their cars for short journeys, which can be walked or conducted by public transport. Such journeys aggravate congestion on our roads and add to the already chronic levels of pollution experienced across the borough.As part of its commitments to a Climate Emergency, the council should be encouraging homeowners to think differently about their front gardens and if they need to park a car on it think about how to do that in a way which doesn’t make local flooding worse and which can also be good for nature.Everyone can play a part in tackling Climate Change. Front gardens can help to limit Climate Change by retaining trees and plants which help soak up carbon. They also help us be more resilient to dealing with hotter and wetter weather.Many of the drains in Brent were built a long time ago and were not designed to cope with the increased rainfall that climate change brings. It is helpful to avoid as much water as possible from entering the drains and gardens play a role in that because they soak water up.Many residents don’t realise that paving one or two gardens would make a difference but as the trend continues there is an overall combined pressure being placed on our infrastructure and this can lead to more incidences of localised flooding.But paving over front gardens is also about being resilient to climate change and helping the natural environment. Trees and plants not only absorb carbon, but they also lower the surrounding temperature because it catches the suns rays whereas asphalt raises the surrounding temperature because the sun’s rays bounce off it. This is called the ‘urban heat island effect’ and the more green space that we have in our urban areas the more resilient we will be to higher temperatures.Somethings that the council could do to prevent the loss of front gardens to hard landscaping are as follows:1) Limit / reduce the number of allowable parking permits per household, currently three. Less permits = less pressure to convert front gardens into driveways.2) Increase the charges for a ‘dropped kerb’ and introduce an annual charge for this. Currently, it is a one-off charge and not prohibitively costly;3) Impose an annual fee where sections of the highway have become out of bounds to other residents because of the single yellow lines that have to be painted either side of a dropped kerb to facilitate the easy access of the homeowner to his / her driveway; 4) Retrospectively fine homeowners who have failed to adhere to the council’s 50% greenery policy; and5) Encourage homeowners that need to make space for cars in front of their homes to think of greener design solutions, where attractive planting and parking can be combined. Hold competitions for such.