EastSheenMatters

Heathrow is now crowing that complaints about noise and night flights have descreased. And putting that canard to good use in its advertising.

Reports | Heathrow

Well of course they have!

Who is going to make daily complaints as might well be justified?

Local residents may well feel that there is little purpose in complaining. Who will actually bother to read it? And even if they did it is highly improbable, given Heathrow’s determination to achieve their objectives at all costs, that they would take any notice or place any weight on complaints.

BUT numbers alone it seems will help the objectors’ cause.

Well advertised, useful work.

Why can’t Cadent be as sensible?

There is a new bench by the cricket pitch in Palewell Park. It is in memory of the late wife of Giles Browne. Giles writes: “We were together for 37 years (32 years in Sheen) of which I played cricket every Saturday and Sunday for at least 25 years, during which time Christine ended up making an awful lot of cricket teas. She did enjoy it as she loved baking cakes and she famously did the tea on Sheen Common for when the Middlesex Ladies U25 Team played the Japanese Ladies International Team, who were on tour celebrating 100 years of cricket in Japan. The Japanese Ladies next match after that was at Lords.”

Photo: Dick Barfield

The Sheen Park 1st & 2nd X1s play on Sheen Common and the 3rd X1 play at Palewell Park. They have been there for over 15 years now. Teas are now provided by Ranjeet in the Park Cafe. 

The position of the bench was very important as that is where the Sheen Park Team is situated on match days and they were desperately short of seating.

The Council cut the outfield but while the Club employ a professional cricket pitch expert to oversee the work on the square, a lot of the manual work is done by the Club Chairman Mike Ashbery.

Sheen Park Cricket Club, Fife Road, London SW14 7ER

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It may be the middle of August 2026, but we cannot lose sight of the present state of one of the major open spaces in the area and the lack of planning for the consquences. It is over ten years since the Singaporean based City Developments Ltd (CDL) bought the Stag Brewery site for £165 million. Their website now states ‘for Development and / or Resale’. This is a small part of their £1.27 bn revenue just announced.

The developers have mothballed their project, finding it too expensive. Well they should not have paid so much in the first place, and they with Richmond Council, should have paid closer attention to the expertise of the local community.

The residential part was excessive, but as has always been accepted locally, necessary to some degree. It required a greater proportion of affordable housing, and it was always doubtful whether the design and type of accommodation approved would actually have sold. Except perhaps to foreign investors.

The Leader of Richmond Council was recently reported as blaming the Mayor of London for the debacle. (Richmond Nub News 29/06/2026) Politically convenient but nonsense.

Mortlake has always been of secondary interest to Richmond Council, save potentially as a cash cow. So local residents have no reason to expect assistance from that source. The Council is dominated by interests on the other side of the river.

Indeed if there was a balanced borough wide view, there would be questions asked about who should carry the can for the disatrous outcome. If this was in Twickenham or Teddington there would be a genuine debate. But this is Mortlake.

The name of the Police Liaison Group is changing to East Sheen Ward Police Panel. 

The next meeting will be on Wednesday 2 September at 7pm, in their usual meeting place, East Sheen Baptist Church, Temple Sheen Road.

Adam’s Pond – Drier

Barn Wood Pond – Drier

Jubilee Pond – Driest

If you have been concerned about pollution that might be caused by Heathrow Expansion you should watch Buried by Michael Sheen. Episode 1 aired on BBC2 on Monday night and is now available on BBC IPlayer.

It’s a story about a massive cover-up by Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, of dumping carcinogenic chemicals, in which government and environmental agencies have been complicit.

One consequence has been that dumping of waste, when banned in Alabama in 1971, was moved to a dozen or so quarry sites in South Wales and one in Cheshire, some of which drain into local waterways. The key element is polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs), compounds of which are highly toxic. “The godfather of forever chemicals.” Their use was banned in the UK in 1987, but dumped waste remains a problem. Independent testing has been conducted showing that in one area toxicity is 2,000 times a safe level.

Terrifying as this story is in itself, it is not without relevance to Heathrow expansion. Profit is more important than people’s health and welfare, both to the companies involved and to government agencies. Principles for decisions are established which diminish the value of health and safety.

“We can’t afford to lose one dollar of profit.” “A little bit of the corporate brain was removed to not have to worry about the dangers of what they’re doing to people.”

Although the ‘surface upgrade’ gets a mention, it ought to be a priority concern for East Sheen and Mortlake. As everyone knows the area already has major road and rail problems. Imagine those problems being doubled in volume.

The Telegraph reports that Cambridgeshire County Council has introduced Britain’s first 15mph bike lane to tackle the scourge of speeding cyclists increasingly threatening the safety of pedestrians.

The council, a Lib Dem authority, said the move was in response to regular concerns from residents “including older people and families with young children” over cyclists travelling at excessive speeds. Permanent speed limits apply to two shared-use paths that run along the city’s 16-mile “guided busway”, which has already been mired in health and safety failings.

When The Telegraph visited Cambridge on Friday, locals welcomed the change, with one medical student who frequently cycles on the route saying he had seen around “half a dozen” accidents. Some were already defying the restrictions, claiming the council was penalising riders to limit its own liability following a string of casualties on the busway.  One exclaimed “good luck enforcing it” as he rode past. He added: “Look, I’m going 16mph.” Another shouted that the limit was “ridiculous” before speeding around the corner.

Cambridge is known as the nation’s cycling capital, in part because of a tradition established by the university city’s students but also because of “active travel” schemes that have given over more of the road network to riders.

Videos posted by hobby cyclists online – tracking their speed and heart rates as they cycle along the busway path – show individuals clocking up speeds of around 20mph, [we should be so lucky] swerving around dog walkers, elderly pedestrians and toddlers walking alongside their parents.

The restrictions will be enforced with the help of a dedicated police patrol, who – alongside a “busway safety team” – will use speed monitoring equipment to catch those “clearly exceeding the limit”. There are placards with QR codes to encourage locals to report “antisocial behaviour and criminality on the busway” to the police.

The city’s e-bikes – operated by Voi – are capped at 15mph but authorities have become increasingly concerned about rising antisocial behaviour along the route. This includes the use of e-bikes more broadly, particularly private e-bikes modified to far exceed their capped speeds. Anyone breaking the limit will be stopped by enforcement officers and advised to slow down, with repeat offenders expected to be met with harsher treatment such as fines.

A spokesman for Cambridgeshire Constabulary said: “Speeding in this area has been recognised as an issue and work is ongoing to tackle it for local residents. Officers are being given dedicated time to patrol the area in question and we are working with partners to tackle the issues and enforce the speed limit” .

If only…..