A polluted high street

One of the main reasons Putney High Street is an unpleasant shopping environment is the amount of traffic running through it, and the pollution that is created as a result.

The Council has just been given a government grant to measure the scale of this pollution over a year - and because the High Street is narrow and enclosed by relatively high buildings I expect the findings to be...well, less than healthy.

I support getting the hard facts to substantiate the fairly obvious truth that Putney High Street is congested and polluted - pollution which in turn leads to extra grime in the town centre. But the real question I ask of the council is: "And then what?"

And then what will they do once they have this evidence? All that the Councillor responsible for the environment has said it will do is encourage car drivers to test the fumes their vehicles omit and, bizarrely, fund "environmental theatre", whatever that might be. Neither will improve, let alone transform our town centre.

Yet again, given an opportunity to lead on a plan for Putney, the Conservatives duck it.

They have allowed our town centre to decay; their planning policies have failed to control traffic in Putney; and their failure to invest in the High Street, while our neighbours in Fulham, Kensington and Kingston have sorted out their town centres, is one of the key reasons why Putney is being hit harder by the recession.

So let's have the pollution monitoring. But let's also have a clear path along the lines I've been arguing for since 2005 to a cleaner, smarter, healthier and less congested Putney please.