3 years ago 2 of us met in a cafe, for the first time, exasperated by the level of bad press Kilburn was receiving. As we love Kilburn, we wanted to change that by firstly promoting what is good about Kilburn and secondly by shaming the authorities into investing into Kilburn and sorting out major issues. That’s when we started Life In Kilburn, with a twitter account and a website.
Over the last 3 years we gained around 4200 Twitter followers, have a website that receives about 700 hits per week, have sent numerous newsletters. Sadly, Clea had to withdraw from Life In Kilburn last year due to work and family commitments and spending most of my time on running our Buddy-Up scheme since March 2020, newsletters have not been regular.
We have had some major victories:
-Estate Agents that thought Kilburn consisted exclusively of Kilburn High Road are now starting to market their properties as situated in Kilburn.
-The northern part of Kilburn High Road was resurfaced in December 2018 after a campaign to shame Brent council into action.
– Estate Agents boards were removed after we listed all Estate agent signs on the Brent side in 2019 and on the Camden side earlier this year
– We highlighted to Brent the shabbiness of some of the Kilburn High Road frontages. As a result Brent issued S215 notices that prompted landlords to clean up their frontages
– 2 phone boxes were removed from the High Road
– Camden Council ran an anti Flytipping campaign on their side of Kilburn. Not completely effective, but that’s a start
– We campaigned for the installation of measures to allow safe distancing on the High Road. We got the measures however the barriers are not maintained and are frankly useless.
– We input into the scheme around Kilburn station and as a result the scheme was vastly amended to take our recommendations into consideration.
We’ve attended hundreds of meetings and met hundreds of you. We have to thank especially Dick Weindling for writing these informative and fascinating stories about historical Kilburn. Hope you have learnt a bit more about the history of our wonderful neighbourhood.
We have met with numerous officials, and presented at 2 offical meetings, one for businesses led by Brent and one to Camden about the future of our High Road.
It is quite clear, that despite the great words of both Councils, that they are not interested in improving the lot of Kilburn. We were very excited in July 2019 when we attended a pre consultation meeting about improvements to the Kilburn High Road. The promise was to launch a consultation in September/October 2019 and to implement the full scheme by July 2020 in time for the street party. September, October, November, December……came and went. A consultation for the Southern Part of Kilburn High Road (the least busy part) took place without notice earlier this year and the scheme falls far short of what is needed.
Sadly Kilburn will never get the investment it deserves until it has a VOICE that cannot be ignored anymore. There is a great opportunity for businesses, residents and regular visitors to Kilburn to organise. This could take the form of a Civic Society that encompasses Businesses, residents and frequent visitors. Watch this space….
In the meantime, please let me know if you would be interested in helping out, or if you would like to write a story, or improve our website.
Looking forward to our wonderful businesses reopening.
Hope to hear from you news@lifeinkilburn.com.
Life In Kilburn
What's happening in and around Kilburn