Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity
Legal Notice from the “Brent & Kilburn Times”, 19 March 2026.
My guest post on 1 January opened with an image like this one, giving notice of a Magistrates’
Court hearing on 22 January at which Brent Council would be applying to stop-up
(that is, to extinguish the right of pedestrians and vehicles to pass across)
two areas of highway near Engineers Way, and close to the Olympic Steps at
Wembley Park. An update to a subsequent article, Does Brent Council really want to embarrass
itself in Court?, reported that the Council
had asked for that hearing to be adjourned.
Hopes that common sense would prevail were dashed when a Council Officer
informed me, a couple of weeks ago, of a new hearing date on 16 April. I waited
until the formal notice (above) had appeared in our local newspaper, before
responding to it:
‘I have seen the Notice in yesterday's "Brent
& Kilburn Times" about the new hearing date of 16 April at 2pm for the
Council's Section 116 application. As requested in the Notice, I am writing to
formally advise you that I intend to appear at this Willesden Magistrates'
Court hearing, to object to the application for a stopping-up Order.
The grounds for my objection are that the
application under Section 116 is wrong in law, because the two areas of highway
shown on the Plan are not "unnecessary".
I will use the illustrations in the document
"Brent Council’s proposed Engineers Way S.116 Stopping-up Order areas in
pictures", which I supplied you with a copy of on 12 January 2026, as
evidence that it is necessary for pedestrians and vehicles to pass across the
areas of highway which the Council seeks to stop-up. You should ensure that
whoever will be representing Brent Council at the hearing has a copy of that
document.
Even at this late stage, it would be possible for
the Council to withdraw its application, as you must realise that it has little
hope of success, on the basis of the facts and law. Please let me know, as soon
as possible, if the application is withdrawn. Thank you.’
I received two brief responses from Council Officers:
‘Thank you for letting me know of your intention to
attend the stopping up order court hearing. I can confirm, as explained in our
previous correspondences, the Council is intending to request the magistrate to
approve this order under section 116 of the Highways Act 1980.’
‘I can confirm that we have a copy of your
submission from 12th January "Brent Council’s proposed Engineers Way S.116
Stopping-up Order areas in pictures" and will ensure our barrister has
sight of the document prior to the hearing.’
So not only are the Council going ahead with the application, they will
be represented in Court by a barrister (I will be representing myself!).
Hopefully, Quintain Ltd will be paying the barrister’s fee, as apparently, they
were the ones who asked Brent to make the application in the first place.
View from the Olympic Steps, showing that one
of the areas Brent seeks to stop-up (in red) would block the entrance to Olympic Way East, and impede pedestrians from
using the Engineers Way crossing between Olympic Way and the Olympic Steps.
You only need to look at the areas the proposed stopping-up order would
apply to, as shown by even one of the images (above) in the evidence document I
supplied in January, to see that it is necessary for pedestrians and/or
vehicles to pass across them. Yet Council Officers and an important Council
committee are supposed to have considered the details before agreeing that an
application for a Section 116 Order should be made to the Court.
The committee involved was Brent’s General Purposes Committee, at a
meeting as long ago as 7 March 2022. This is one example, of many possibles,
which illustrates how the decision-making processes at Brent Council have deteriorated
over the past decade or so. This can lead to ill-considered decisions, which often
end up wasting money (sometimes £millions) and to poor services. In this case,
it was obvious to me as soon as I saw the plan showing the areas involved that
they were not “unnecessary”, so why was it not obvious to the decision-makers?
I wrote in October 2016 about the way in which Brent’s General Purposes
Committee, which used to be a strong group of senior “backbench” councillors, had
been “hijacked”. The title of that article was: Does Councillor Butt have too much power?. Here is an extract from it:
‘[Brent’s] Constitution (in its own words) ‘…sets
out how the Council operates, how decisions are made and the procedures which
are followed to ensure that decision making is efficient, transparent and
accountable to local people. Some of the procedures are required by law, while
others are a matter for the Council.’
“Responsibility for Functions” is an important area,
which should mean that there are “checks and balances” to ensure that power is
shared across the Council, so that no single person or group within it has too
much (to guard against that power being abused). The Constitution gives the
Leader, or the Leader together with the Cabinet, considerable powers, but there
are also ‘functions which cannot be exercised by the Cabinet’, ‘functions not
to be the sole responsibility of the Cabinet’ and ‘functions that may only be
exercised by Full Council’.
One area of particular concern is the General
Purposes Committee, which ‘carries out a number of functions on which the
Cabinet cannot take decisions, including public rights of way, setting the
Council Tax base and approving staffing matters’. The committee has eight members, and the
Constitution used to say that at least one of these must be a member of the
Executive (the previous title for the Cabinet). That proviso, which gave a very
strong hint that most of the committee should be made up of back-bench councillors,
has been removed, and for the past few years seven of the eight members have
been Cabinet members, with the official Opposition Leader as the eighth.
Cllr. Butt is Chair of the General Purposes
Committee, and of its Senior Staff Appointments Sub-Committee.
This has given him considerable influence over the Council’s senior staffing
structure, who is appointed to the Senior Officer posts, and the terms on which
they are appointed.’
Whereas the General Purposes Committee used to hold “full length” meetings,
when councillors would discus and decide matters publicly and transparently,
they now start just half an hour before the Monday morning Cabinet meetings. There were six substantive items on its agenda
for the meeting on 22 March 2022. The minutes show that it began at 9.30am, and record that ‘the meeting closed at 9.49am’!
I did follow-up my October 2016 guest post with an email to Brent’s then
Chief Executive, who chaired the Council’s Constitutional Working Group (of
which the Council Leader is also a member), suggesting that it:
‘should consider ways to ensure that the functions
of the General Purposes Committee and its sub-committees are carried out
independently of the Council Leader and the Cabinet. This is not just something
which affects the present personnel, or situation on Brent Council, but a
question of good governance.
The Leader and Cabinet already have considerable
powers in those roles, and yet there are more than fifty other elected
councillors whose knowledge and experience could contribute to the functions
carried out by General Purposes Committee, if the majority of seats on that
committee, and its Chair, were to be reserved under the Constitution for
members who are not in the Cabinet. I believe that this would also ensure a
better balance of power within the Council as a whole.’
The reply I received to my detailed email was short:
'Dear Mr Grant
Thank you for your email. The Chief Executive notes
your concerns about the constitution of the General Purposes Committee. The
Chief Executive and I consider that the composition of the Committee is
satisfactory from both a legal and operational perspective.
Best wishes,
Chief Legal Officer'
Both the Chief Executive and Chief Legal Officer at that time had been chosen
by the Senior Staff Appointments Sub-Committee, chaired by ………. you’ve guessed who.
Would a properly (in my view) constituted General Purposes Committee,
which could spend more time considering reports presented to them by Officers,
and would have had time to look at the plan which was one of the appendices to
the Stopping-up Order Report, have agreed the recommendation ‘to approve the
submission of an application to the Magistrate Court’? I can’t be sure, but I
believe it was an avoidable error, which has wasted a lot of Council Officer
time.
Willesden Magistrates’ Court. (Image from the Courts
Service website)
We will find out whether it really was a bad decision when I see Brent
Council in Court, on the afternoon of Thursday 16 April!
Philip Grant.
