on response to Thames Water’s announcement today that it will lift water restrictions tomorrow following an extraordinary amount of rain over the last few months said: “While we welcome Thames Water’s announcement about lifting the “˜hosepipe ban’, the prospect of another dry winter is a very real threat, and long-term strategies for dealing with water shortages need to be put in place.

“Just yesterday, we heard from London’s major water companies about some of the options they could make more use of, like transferring water from wetter areas, stopping leaks and using recycled water. Another issue is that some Londoners may not realise they are still bound by hosepipe restrictions because Veolia Water Central and Sutton & East Surrey Water, which supply parts of outer west, north-west and outer south London, have not yet lifted their bans. This could mean that people in one street can water their gardens, while their neighbours could be fined if they do so. Nevertheless, the overriding message is that although restrictions have been eased, all Londoners need to continue using water wisely to alleviate any shortages in the future.”

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Murad Qureshi AM, Chair of the London Assembly Health and Environment Committee said: "While we welcome Thames Water’s announcement about lifting the “˜hosepipe ban’, the prospect of another dry winter is a very real threat, and long-term strategies for dealing with water shortages need to be put in place.

"We heard from London’s major water companies about some of the options they could make more use of, like transferring water from wetter areas, stopping leaks and using recycled water.

"Another issue is that some Londoners may not realise they are still bound by hosepipe restrictions because Veolia Water Central and Sutton & East Surrey Water, which supply parts of outer west, north-west and outer south London, have not yet lifted their bans. This could mean that people in one street can water their gardens, while their neighbours could be fined if they do so.

"Nevertheless, the overriding message is that although restrictions have been eased, all Londoners need to continue using water wisely to alleviate any shortages in the future."

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The Mayor of London is meeting with the water companies on Friday. Labour’s Environment Spokesperson, Murad Qureshi, has written to the Mayor urging him to seize this opportunity and get the companies to trade water between themselves to end the patchwork hosepipe ban.

In Greater London there are four water companies providing Londoners with their water: Thames Water, Veolia Water Central, Essex & Suffolk Water and Sutton & East Surrey Water. Thames Water will be lifting its hosepipe ban, but Veolia Water Central and Sutton & East Surrey Water will not.  As a result large areas of London will still be subject to the ban (see attached map).

Labour’s Environment Spokesperson at City Hall, Murad Qureshi, said: “With the wettest drought on record now officially over we have to make sure that Londoners are not subjected to a post-code lottery when it comes to the hose pipe ban.”

“The Mayor is meeting with all the water companies on Friday, I am urgently asking him to use his position to stand up for Londoners and get the water companies to share their supplies so that we can resolve this situation. They need to trade water to avoid a postcode lottery in London”

“Most Londoners will have restrictions on water use lifted. However, parts of London covered by other water companies including Barnet, Hillingdon and Sutton will still face restrictions and could face fines. We will be in the ludicrous position where people living on neighbouring streets will get a different service.”

“Londoners shouldn’t be subject to a postcode lottery, the water companies should be working together to find a solution. One way forward would be for Thames Water and Veolia to “trade water” between themselves, so that areas dependent on groundwater supplies can also have the hose-pipe ban lifted. Some of this “˜water-trading’ already happens between water companies, why not do so again now?”

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With the wettest drought on record coming to an end tomorrow in the South, we have to make sure that Londoner’s are not subjected to a post-code lottery when it comes to the hose pipe ban.

In Greater London, there are actually four water companies providing Londoners with their water and not just Thames Water as commonly thought. The other three are Veolia Water Central covering a sizable area of outer West & North-West London; Essex & Suffolk Water covering a smaller area of outer East London; Sutton & East Surrey Water serving a small area of outer South London; and finally  Thames Water covering inner, North, South-East & South-West London.  Thames Water also supply all the sewerage services for the whole of London and beyond.

The reality is that while Thames Water will be ceasing its hosepipe ban tomorrow, Veolia Water Central won’t be along with Sutton and Easy Surrey Water.  As a result we’ll have some streets in London where one side of the street will have the ban, while the other side will see it lifted.

Now there may be some good hydrological reasons for that as Thames Water derives all its water from rivers and reseviors which has been filled by the recent down pour of rainwater.  Veolia, on the other hand depend on ground water levels which have not been quite replenished in the some way. Nevertheless, Londoners shouldn’t be subject to geographical inequalities if there are other ways around this.  One way forward would be for Thames Water and Veloia to “trade water” between themselves, so that areas dependent on groundwater supplies can also have the hose-pipe ban lifted tomorrow.  We heard yesterday at City Hall that some of this water trading already occurs between water companies. If thats the case already, why not in this instance?

Sewage map of London & South-East

At the risk of sounding very geeky l found myself glad to watch the Transit of Venus on NASA live wire links at the end of a very long Jubilee bank holiday weekend. This was truely a once in a century event as the next time Venus comes between Earth and the Sun is over a 100 years time.  In my view  a very different league in comparison with a 60th diamond jubilee celebration. As l’m pretty sure we’ll be celebrating another Jubilee celebration in a decade’s time, such is the health of the Queen!

Very unfortunately because of the weather and light pollution on the London skyline, we don’t often see the stars let alone Venus.  Many of us only seeing the stars at night when on holiday somewhere else in the world. Thats why l was sad to see the lose of  London planetarium along Marylebone Rd in 2006. It closed to become part of the Madame Tussaud’s empire next door to house its “star dome” show and so one could say the Planetarium got elipsed by the star culture prevalent today!

It was the inspiration of generations of school children to study astronomy as stargazing is not possibly in London, so the Planetarium was the next best thing and in someways much better.

 As a result it will be difficult for many to understand what inspired Captain Cook on his first vogage of discovery on the scientific expedition to the Pacific  to study and observe the 1769 transit of venus across the sun to enable the measurement of the distance from the Earth to the Sun. The scientific voyage was of course combined with a confidential mission to search the south Pacific for signs of the  “unknown southern land” continent, but there is no taking away from its scientific significance.

I understand we now only have one planetarium in London thats the Peter Harrison planetarium in Greenwich, South-East London. I wish it much success but there is no substitute to one in Central London as well.

Thames Barrier part of the GLC legacy to London

The Thames Barrier, owned and operated by the Environment Agency closes each month as a test to ensure that it is functioning properly, but once a year, a full test closure is performed over a high tide. The gates remain closed for several hours, to conduct several technical checks. Fortunately for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee River pageant this year the additional restrictions on normal river traffic (between 8am and midnight) resulting from the event and its preparations provides Thames Barrier staff  a unique opportunity to test the current engineering design in practice, without any additional disruption to river users.  The closure of the Barrier acts to cut the river’s tidal flow from 4-5 knots to less than a knot, making navigation simpler.

This should make it easier for the river pageant to go down the Thames tomorrow as the current and the wash will be alot less then usual but it appears the traditional rain we get over bank holidays will be putting a dampen on how things progress tomorrow.

Front entrance of the Nature Reserve, near to Chiswick Park tube

On wednesday l went along to visit Gunnersbury Triangle Nature Reserve to see for myself the threat of a looming development on its boundaries.

I saw first hand how one development has already encroached over the Nature Reserve almost immediately as you enter the Triangle and could well imagine how the Colonial Drive proposal would over shadow this small oasis of peace and quite between the rail tracks. It become clear to me how the development is to tall, and large, impacting badly on the flora and fauna of the triangle. For example creating light pollution at night as the building looms over the woodland habitat of bats and birds.

So l left feeling glad that l have visited the Reserve to see the potential problems first hand and the encroachment first hand. On the grounds that an environmental impact assessment of the development on the nature reserve as recommended by Natural England has not be done before the planning decision was passed by Ealing Council. Ands its strategic importance in London pertaining biodiversity has already been identified as a site of Metropolitan Importance(SMI) and site of Importance for Nature Conversation(SINC).

So l hope my small efforts at city hall help the Hands-off our Triangle (HOOT) campaign.

The threat of over-development around Gunnersbury Triangle already apparent above noticeboard.

An Emirates A380 landing at Heathrow

After a week of BAA propaganda last week in the pages of the Evening Standard (ES) you would be forgiven for thinking that Heathrow is not expanding – but it is!  It may not be by the number of flights coming in and out of Heathrow but it certainly is by passenger numbers.  You just have to see a double deck A380 land at Heathrow to appreciate this reality; when it off loads 500 plus passengers  from a single flight.  At present Heathrow turnsover 69 million passengers annually and once the redevelopment and construction of the five terminals are complete,  it will be able to cope with 90 million passengers a year.  This capacity is not something we hear about often but the fact is that Heathrow will be able to deal an extra  20 million  passengers annually!  This point is made well by Sarah Clayton in todays FT letters page under the header ” Forget a third runway – focus instead on filling existing Heathrow terminals “

We should rightly be concerned about the local environmental impact of this expanding capacity,  particularly in the West London suburbs in terms of levels of noise and poor air quality.  The answer of course is to improve surface transport access to Heathrow through adequate services levels on the the Piccadilly line with the tube upgrades and when the Crossrail finally delivers a service in 2018.  We also need to see new links with the airport developed through HS2 and Airtrack.  All of these improvements will make it more attractive for passengers and Heathrow employees to use public transport to travel to Heathrow instead of by car, which is often the worst leg of the journey for most Londoners anyway.

As for connections from Heathrow to the emerging economies of the Far East, the demand appears to be managed by airlines like the Emirates operating from Heathrow & Gatwick via Dubai, to get to destinations in South, East & South-East Asia.  So the demand for those destinations via Dubai appears to be satisfied at  present with packed double deck A380s and, I suspect, passengers quite happy to get to their far Eastern trips with a bit of shopping time inbetween flights.

Incidentally, it’s not just the Emirates but all the other Arab and Far Eastern airlines which are making similiar attractive offers.  If this wasn’t  a viable proposition for the airlines,  Emirates would not be investing in London’s infrastructure such as Arsenal’s home ground (Emirates Stadium) or the Mayor’s cable cars across the Thames also placing them on our iconic London tube map, as it markets its name to Londoners on our skyline and via football.

So, in short, it would be helpful for both passengers and for the wider industry if BAA  were a lot more truthful about what is actually happening at Heathrow.  The discussion should cease to be one way traffic all about lack of capacity and should instead focus on what is happening on the ground right now. Larger, planes, more passengers flying and room for more.

Residents of Queens Park celebrating the referendum victory last night

Last night l was texted by a friend the great result of the Queen’s Park Community Council Referendum, which with almost 70 per cent of the vote supported a new Parish(Community) Council in the Queen’s Park Ward in the City of Westminster. The official declaration of the result will tell you that 1100 voters were in favour of the proposal and 508 against it on a 20 per cent turnout.

Such referendums are permitted under the new Localism Bill 2012 and it can be said now that Queen’s Park residents are leading the way for the return of Parish Councils and the urban village in the local government map of the United Kingdom. Commentators like Harry Eyres have suggested before the result that such democracy at the local level has its pains, but it too delivers rewards. And it should not be forgotten that Parishes had delivered the local services many of us are accustom too for many hundreds of years before the advent of the present local councils in the 1960s. So in many ways this is back to the future. 

It still needs a full council meeting on the 25th of June to ratify it but the Tories would be foolish to turn down the formation of the Parish Council now the public will has been expressed in Queens Park ward. The first elections for the new Community Council since the 1960’s will then be undertaken in May 2014 and the budget of the Parish will be funded by a small precept, costing as little as a bottle of coca-cola a week. l would now expect others to be following them soon including other Wards in the City of Westminster covering areas like Mayfair and Marylebone. So its good to see a ward in the North of the City leading these other much wealthy wards in the South.

It should not be forgotten that the local councillors in Queens Park  – Cllr Barrie Taylor &  Cllr Patricia  McAllister- and their local Karen Buck MP have supported this move without feeling at all threaten by the formation of a community council.  Indeed Cllr Paul Dimoldenberg, leader of the Labour Group and also a councillor in the Ward had this to say on their behalf;

” This is a great result for the Queen’s Park community and well-deserved success for all the hard work put in by the campaign team over the past two years. We look forward to working closing with the new Community Council so that together we can make Queen’s Park an even better place to live.”

” We have worked closely with the Community Council campaign right from the start. We are confident that working with the new Community Council will enable us to get a good deal for local residents and better represents the interests of the Queen’s Park area and its residents”

Can  l also add my congratulations to this historic referendum result which heralds the return of the Parish Council in London.