To ask Ocado customers to stand in solidarity with parents at a north London Primary school?

[Thesunrising]

Ocado has submitted plans to build a diesel refuelling depot for delivery vans adjacent to a primary school in Islington - literally metres away from their playground.

Prolonged exposure to diesel fumes containing deadly toxins like benzene and from the lorry tailpipe emissions - nox and particulates - is proven to triggering asthma, stunting lung growth and brain development and in the long-term associated with stroke, heart disease, COPD, dementia and other life-threatening diseases. Sites like this should be nowhere near a school.

I don’t live in London but I’m an Ocado customer with children, one of who has respiratory problems. I would be furious if this was happening next to my own child’s school and I am furious on behalf of the families whose children go to this school.

If you shop with Ocado and feel this is a terrible plan on their part, you can:

• watch a video made by the parents which shows the insanity of this plan twitter.com/andygrieveair/status/1218084229898297345?s=21

• contact Ocado customer services - [email protected] to register your concern and/or tell them you will not be using their company again until they withdraw the planning application (due for decision by the council at the end of this month)

• sign the petition set up by the school’s parents on change.org www.change.org/p/islington-council-stop-ocado-building-a-diesel-delivery-depot-next-to-our-school

• follow the parents’ campaign on Twitter using the hashtag #nocado

If you wouldn’t want this depot next to your child’s school, then please stand in solidarity with other parents to help them successfully challenge Ocado and get them to change their minds.

About air pollution generally i mean

Hmm, I can see your point OP, but as many others have pointed out air quality in much of London is not great. I don't think this will be a popular view but perhaps parents should consider moving to an area with better air for their children, rather than trying to control the businesses around them.

I live in a shitty area, so if this was being built next to my children;s school the national newspaper would not have covered it.

Signed! I worked in another Islington primary school on a very busy road and the air pollution was horrendous some days, even for adults. FWIW, I would say literally a handful of parents drove to/from school. Highly uncommon at our school to drive so no, not caused by hundreds of idling parents in 4x4s.

How many of the parents sit in the school car park, engines idling, giving not a shit about particulates poisoning the air around a school

Yes a nationwide problem. I agree parents need to get out of their SUVs.

However, the air quality in London can be particularly bad (not always and not in all areas) and it's ludicrous to plan something like this near a school. Hopefully the local council will reject it pronto.

I have no connection to the school. I live on the other side of the country. I am currently trying hard in my own community and with my children’s school to raise awareness about the dangers of air pollution and its sources.

I have a child that has had three chronic respiratory incidences, resulting in him being hospitalised twice. For four days he had to be fed through a tube as he did not have enough energy to eat and breathe at the same time.

His schools reception playground is adjacent to a major road with a bus stop within 5 metres where 14 year old diesel double deckers pull up every 10 minutes.

I worry about the effect of poor air quality on all children and am therefore very happy to support these parents in a different part of the country.

I wouldn’t want a refuelling depot alongside my own child’s school and I support the right of every other family and school to not have it alongside theirs.

I can’t object to the planning application as I am not a resident in Islington. I can withdraw my custom from Ocado and raise awareness of the madness of this plan.

Just because it's a bad situation doesnt mean we should make it worse 🤔

London roads are dead quiet in school holidays. The air world improve dramatically if kids walked to bloody school!

Improving the air quality in the local area near schools can be done in very polluted cities. Thats what schemes like school streets are about - stopping traffic from entering the street - stopping this depot would benefit the kids at the school.

MrsAmaro yes. That's certainly 100 percent true in our part of London. The roads are beyond mad during the school run.
The borough of Camden (where I live) has apparently issued exactly NO fines for engine idling to school parents and other offenders over the past year, despite many many people in our neighbourhood making official complaints. Hopeless.
My children are also asthmatic btw. So I fully understand this issue. But parents in every part of the country need to make a great deal more noise about it.

I’m sure to get planning there’ll be stringent air quality checks.

The school drop off crowd are the real pollutants

"I live in a shitty area, so if this was being built next to my children;s school the national newspaper would not have covered it."

I agree, Yerbury is very sought after and has a tiny catchment, and the parents will be very influential as there will be many who work in or know people who work in the media. A five bed family house in the catchment costs £1.7m so the pupils aren't poor children trapped on estates who have no option but to live there.

I agree OP children shouldn’t be subject to extra pollution.
Unfortunately cars and lorries are God these days. There are many parents also who will seek a better school further away and not think about the extra traffic they’re generating.
I don’t think there are any easy answers. We live in a world where people value their freedom regardless if it impinges on others freedom.

Hi there, @Thesunrising - we're just bobbing on here to say we've moved your thread to the Petitions topic. Thanks.

I agree there are no easy answers and there is a much bigger challenge to tackle the menace and misery of air pollution which is responsible for more than 40,000 premature deaths in the U.K. Challenging Ocado on this specific issue is not going to save the world.

But just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean I shan’t try. A lot of people do not yet appreciate the omnipresent dangers that air pollution creates and raising awareness is key so that more people understand the links between, for example, exposure to benzene and rates of childhood leukaemia.

And neither is this about what is happening to ‘other’ people in rich areas or poorer neighbourhoods. It affects everyone and everyone needs to be rethinking the way we all travel and challenging large organisations & governments to be more radical in delivering services that are not causing harm as well as good.

Not a customer of theirs but I'll sign.

I know how it feels to have stuff built in your area that you're objecting to.

The NIMBYism aspect is that the parents of children at this school who, as others point out will likely live very close by, are very much the Ocado demographic, not to mention the 'doing our basement and creating dust and noise pollution from 8am in the morning six days a week for several months'' brigade.

There are several growing campaigns - one of which is Clean Air in London - where parents are joining up to campaign for the rights of all children to not breathe toxic fumes all day which they could be supporting to campaign against Ocado having a depot anywhere in this densely populated area.

I’m Camden too phpolly they are dire aren’t they! The road leading up to Hampstead from Swiss Cottage is always rammed due to all the small private schools up there.

Yes Mrs Amaro! Finchley Road and Fitzjohns are just a nightmare both directions, particularly during the school run in both mornings and afternoons. I think we must be breathing diesel particulate all day long. :(