‘Havering’s children in Rainham and beyond deserve much better than this.’

By Ruth Kettle-Frisby – Guest Writer and Community Activist

Ruth is passionate about fostering positive change within the local community and regularly contributes insights and stories to The Havering Daily.

Havering’s pitifully overdue Air Quality Action Plan is somewhat predictably weak and lacking in quantifiable substance, with conspicuously absent metrics for accountability.

This is perhaps unsurprising given that Clear the Air in Havering needed to push Havering Council to designate the vast, smoking illegal land on Launders Lane in Rainham as contaminated. 

Havering is one of the most polluted boroughs in London, and clearly extremely car-centric and congested.

Havering children in Rainham and beyond deserve much better than this. They deserve to be able to walk, wheel and cycle safely. 

Breathing clean air is a basic need and a human right. We all deserve to live and breathe in a clean and healthy environment. 

This document, as far as I can see, lacks vision as well as measurable strategy, and will do very little to proactively tackle the health crisis represented by toxic air. On the contrary, both its style and content exemplify and risk exacerbating the current crisis in statutory accountability. 

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