Pollution (Horn Lane, Acton)

Baroness Bray of Coln Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Benton. The Horn lane industrial site sits on a busy single carriageway in my constituency, connecting the Uxbridge road with the north of the constituency, which is home to the Park Royal industrial and business park and through which runs the A40. The purpose of bringing that part of the world to your attention is to highlight a long-standing problem that shows no signs of abating: the unacceptable pollution levels emanating from the Horn lane industrial site and the palpable failure of any agency to enforce legal pollution limits in the area.

It is local residents who have really upped the ante on the issue by putting it firmly on the agenda and starting to campaign for genuine action and, hopefully, an end to the pollution plight that menaces their daily lives. Ably led by a former Acton Central councillor, Vlod Barchuk, and local activist, Rosco White, SHLAP—Stop Horn Lane Pollution—has attracted considerable support from a community that, understandably, wants to hear less about monitoring pollution levels and more about active policing and enforcement.

Having consulted the Environment Agency and corresponded with the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the matter, I am still a little unclear on how best to move forward and achieve genuine action on the matter. The site is the problem, because it sits uncomfortably, slap bang in the middle of a large residential community. It is surrounded on three sides by residential properties that are supported by a parade of shops and local businesses, all directly alongside the industrial site. Despite living and working along a busy road, a real sense of community exists among local residents, who feel that they are living in an area with great potential and already benefit from Acton’s excellent transport links and the easy access it offers to central London.

That ease of access makes it obvious why Horn lane was chosen to house an industrial site in the first place. It has first-rate rail links and is right on the doorstep of the Park Royal estate. The A40 is to the north and the Uxbridge road is to the south. That made sense in the past, when Horn lane was home to factories, rather than flats and houses as it is now. It must seem odd to those who work on the site that they drive their lorries, unload their skips and transfer their waste right in the heart of a residential community. To local residents, it is ridiculous that their quality of life is being impaired by that throwback, which produces literally sky-high levels of pollution.

Incidentally, although we are looking at air pollution today, the noise pollution from some of those units is also intolerable. The beeping of lorries backing up to empty their loads, the clanking of skips being unloaded and reloaded, and the general din of deafening noise produced by large vehicles moving back and forth in a confined space is also pretty awful for residents. There is no doubt that a more modern and enclosed site would limit both air and noise pollution and increase efficiency. Those units are way behind their times, another reason why they are so unsuitable for the area they remain in.

However, it is the high levels of small, carcinogenic PM1O particles that produce the really serious health problems. They are produced when the units transfer aggregates and building materials from rail to road and engage in their waste-transfer activities. PMIO particles are proven to have a range of effects on health, including effects on the respiratory and cardiovascular systems, asthma and mortality. As the evidence that I will share shows, PM1O levels originating from the Horn lane site have consistently overshot the maximum permitted from any one location. That that is allowed to continue in a heavily populated residential area is just not on.

Monitoring of pollution levels at the Horn lane site is already in place. The Environment Agency is now comparing readings from all three of the monitoring devices at the site in the hope that the sources of the PM1O can be more precisely located. However, residents who complain about the unacceptably high levels of pollution have for years heard the familiar refrain from the Environment Agency that it is monitoring pollution from the site and will take action if the industrial units exceed the limits agreed under their operating licences. Indeed the monitoring equipment takes readings every 15 minutes, which allows pollution patterns to be identified. The readings show that both measures for pollution levels—the daily and annual average readings—far exceed the maximum levels permitted.

The European Commission has set a target that no location should have an annual average of more than 40 micrograms of PM1O particles per cubic metre. So far this year, the Horn lane site has averaged 42 micrograms per cubic metre. The EU states that in any one location there should be no more than 35 days a year when PMIO levels average more than 50 micrograms per cubic metre. That happened on 96 days in 2008, 73 days in 2009 and on 91 days so far this year. Based on those readings, in the last three years pollution levels have been more than double the agreed acceptable levels. Where is the enforcement? What is the point of all the monitoring if it does not actually lead to anything?

The lack of enforcement brings about cynicism of the worst sort among the public. Residents are told that there are acceptable levels of pollution and that anything beyond those limits incurs a penalty, but in reality those levels are breached with frightening regularity and nothing is ever done. For instance, a bell has been installed at one of the units on the Horn lane site to ring when levels rise above a certain point. At that point, all activity at the unit is supposed to cease immediately until the level drops back down. Residents say that they cannot hear the bell because there is so much noise, but the figures reveal that pollution was above the acceptable level, and yet no one has ever seen activity stopped for any period whatsoever during a working day. It is no good being told after the event that pollution levels were too high if nothing is done at the time to rectify the situation. People will just ask, “What is the point?”

In the meeting that I organised in Parliament between the Environment Agency and SHLAP, the agency’s representatives explained the great difficulties that they face in enforcing the legal pollution limits set out in the industrial units’ licensing agreements. My understanding is that the principal problem with that enforcement is that one has to go to court and prove that an individual unit is exclusively responsible for the pollution, but that is clearly impossible in the case of the Horn lane site, because a number of different potential polluters operate there at the same time. What are we to do? The public simply cannot continue to be told that there is unacceptable pollution at the site and then be informed that nothing can be done about it or that no agency is prepared to do anything about it.

The added problem at Horn lane is that it is not just the Environment Agency that is responsible for enforcing pollution levels, as some of the units come under the remit of the local authority, Ealing borough council. I am not making a partisan point, because both main parties have run the council and neither have managed to get to grips with the problem. It will always be difficult when two separate authorities are responsible for different units at the same place and when it is necessary to prove that an individual site is at fault. The situation is just too confusing.

The operators have not always been entirely open to positive discussions with their neighbours, which is unfortunate. Some residents have at times felt noticeable hostility when they have been “too active in making complaints”. It might be fair to say that since the arrival of SHLAP there is a growing recognition by those companies that the residents are now much more united and determined to get things done. For that reason, we have noticed certain improvements at the industrial site, such as proper wetting of the ground, which captures the dust before it flies into the air. It seems that that is now being done on a more regular basis, but my point is that residents should not need to dedicate their lives to the cause of getting genuine action on enforcing legal pollution limits.

The Environment Agency will be on schedule 7 of the Public Bodies Bill currently going through Parliament. If the Bill becomes law, it will be subject to review on a regular basis, and we are hoping that that will help to sharpen its approach.

Also going through Parliament is the Localism Bill, which is about returning power to the local level. It includes a general power of competence that would allow local authorities to do anything that is not specifically prohibited by law. It may well provide an opportunity for the local authority to take a more proactive approach to the problem emanating from the Horn lane site. It should be noted that the local authority did take a more proactive approach in 2006, when it brought a prosecution under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. That was effective in improving the unit’s performance, albeit only in moving pollution levels down from the outrageous to the unacceptable. Broadly speaking, focus and leadership have been seriously lacking in the past. The Localism Bill coupled with regular reviews of the Environment Agency’s approach might just get things going.

The real long-term answer to the problem must be to shift this small industrial remnant and to rezone the area for residential and office use. The problem has existed for too long—it is absolutely time to sort it out. The arrival of Crossrail at Acton mainline station, which is now guaranteed in the comprehensive spending review, cannot come soon enough. It will provide the perfect opportunity for complete rezoning of the area. There will be great demand for offices and residential units, and they would surely be a much more suitable way to use land in what could become an appealing location.

There have also been growing calls for Network Rail to sell off some of its valuable land assets, bearing in mind the public purse in these times of austerity. When Crossrail finally comes to Acton with a brand new station, the surrounding land owned by Network Rail will increase considerably in value. That is yet another argument for rezoning the area.

Obviously, I am not trying to put people out of business. The last thing that I want to do is to close the industrial units down, as such—I just want to move them a little. In fact, there is a perfectly sensible alternative. The Park Royal business and industrial estate is, literally, just up the road. It offers excellent access to the A40, there is still plenty of free space, and there is easy access to rail links from the estate. Surely that would be a better location for this kind of industrial activity than a heavily populated residential area.

But, of course, that is for the future. Crossrail is not due to open for business much before 2018 or 2019, and we have a problem that has to be dealt with here and now. That is why I have focused my attention today on the current needs of the Acton residents who live along Horn lane, alongside the industrial site. They need action now, not endless monitoring and statistics.

I recognise that the agencies I have spoken to want solutions, but, as I said earlier, this is about focus and leadership, and a determination to act on the information, rather than to provide all kinds of reasons for why nothing can be done. My constituents deserve much better than that, and I hope that the Minister will provide us with some helpful thoughts on a meaningful way forward. I thank him, and you, Mr Benton, for listening to our case this morning.