Morland Gardens – Update on Brent’s proposals (now with added SEND!)

    Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity.

The former Brent Start college at 1 Morland Gardens in October 2023.

 

In a comment under my 6 October guest post, Morland Gardens – Brent responds to my query over “Why no progress?”, I listed two follow-up questions I’d asked Brent’s Head of Capital Delivery. Here is the first of those questions, and the answer I received:

 

Q: I hope that Brent Council can get some funding from the GLA's SAHP programme to help finance genuinely affordable homes to rent for local people in housing need, but I was concerned to read that your bid for 1 Morland Gardens has included '65 social rent homes, the same number as was proposed for the previous scheme at the site.' The failed "previous scheme" included construction of a block of flats on land outside 1 Morland Gardens (the Harlesden City Challenge Community Garden) which Brent did not have the legal right to build on, and the demolition of the Victorian heritage building. Please explain why, in these circumstances, a figure of 65 homes at 1 Morland Gardens was chosen for inclusion in the Council's submission to the GLA.

 

A: The council chose this as an arbitrary figure to include in the GLA SAHP funding application. This figure happens to be the figure that was from the previous scheme. The actual number of homes on the site will be dependent on the suggested quantity of housing the feasibility work identifies is achievable based on the options that are being looked into.

 

Arbitrary? An English dictionary definition of that word is: ‘based on chance rather than being planned or based on reason.’ I wondered whether that figure of 65 homes was also what the Council was seeking from the consultants, Mott MacDonald, who they’d commissioned to carry out a feasibility study, so I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request. I’ve now received the information (everything I had requested, unlike some where Council Officers seek to hide things they don’t want you to know, claiming that it is not ‘in the public interest’ to disclose that information!), and here is my update on Brent’s Morland Gardens project.

 

Brent’s initial approach to Mott MacDonald to carry out the feasibility study.

 

Brent’s initial approach about the study was on 12 May (above), just after the local elections, and you will see from the final line that Mott MacDonald (“MM”) were already the Council’s consultants for its Bridge Park proposals. MM submitted their response as a ‘Feasibility Stage Fee Proposal’ on 24 June, with the amount of fees redacted but with the billing provision: ‘Monthly drawdown sums to be agreed prior to contract execution / start of appointment.’ (I will mention some actual fee payments at the end.) Agreement must have been reached, as a “Kick-off Meeting” between Council Officers and the MM team took place on 19 August.

 

Extract of key points from MM’s notes of the 19 August 2026 “Kick-off Meeting”.

 

The study would look at the feasibility of three design options, with the first retaining and reusing the locally listed Victorian villa (“Altamira”), and the other two based on its demolition. All three options include ‘residential accommodation of up to 65 units’, with point 4.7 of the notes stating ‘additional homes may be possible if building heights are increased’!

 

The youth facilities note at 4.8 discloses that the youth organisation Brent is working with here is the Young Brent Foundation (it was suggested last year that the Barham Park Trust may wrongly have allowed this organisation to occupy part of the former Brent library building at Barham Park rent free for four years). They apparently wish to use part of the Morland Gardens buildings for ‘educational and life skills activities, including technology, financial literacy and cooking.’

 

When Brent’s Cabinet agreed the future use of 1 Morland Gardens in June 2025, it was for affordable housing and a youth facility. There was no mention of any change from that use in the Bridge Park (with brief mentions of the other “Hillside Corridor” sites) Report to the July 2026 Cabinet meeting. But now the proposals also include a SEND (“Special Educational Needs and Disabilities”) facility. Note 4.9 above showed separate spaces for both primary and secondary pupils, but that was soon reduced to a facility for 15 primary pupils with SEMH (Social, Emotional and Mental Health) needs.

 

MM’s schedule of accommodation details and space requirements for the 15 primary pupil facility.

 

The schedule above does not include the rooms for staff use and offices, or circulation space. The total internal floor area needed for the proposed SEND facility at Morland Gardens is calculated as 871 square metres, plus a minimum of 450 square metres of outdoor space. The sympathetic classroom extension to the north side of the restored Victorian villa, when it was converted to become Brent’s adult education college in the mid-1990s, seen beyond the tree in the photograph below, is an excellent example of how this could be done, with the open area in front of it providing the outdoor space (fenced off for the safety and security of the students).

 

The Victorian villa, with 1990s classroom extension to its right, pictured in June 2023.

 

If that suggestion was followed, and the heritage building retained, the rooms in the main part of the Victorian villa, as adapted for the college in the 1990s, would provide the necessary space for the proposed youth facility needs. But the site would still need to provide ‘up to 65 homes’! When Brent’s Head of Capital Delivery replied to my first question on 9 October he wrote: ‘The actual number of homes on the site will be dependent on the suggested quantity of housing the feasibility work identifies is achievable ….’

 

Email from Brent to MM on 1 September 2026.

 

However, in an email to MM on 1 September, referring to Option 1, the same Council Officer wrote that Option 1 was: ‘retain the locally listed building for SEND and youth facilities and build the 65 homes around the locally listed building.’ This suggests that 65 homes is not just an “arbitrary” or an “up to” figure, but what the Council actually wants delivered on the 1 Morland Gardens site. If that is the case, the findings from the Mott MacDonald study will say that Option 1, retaining the Victorian villa, is NOT feasible.

 

Providing that many homes at 1 Morland Gardens while retaining the Victorian villa is unlikely to have been feasible even when affordable homes plus a youth facility was the proposal. Adding a special educational needs facility to the mix has made it virtually impossible. I hope I’m wrong, but trying to squeeze too much onto the site was the mistake which Brent made in 2019, which led to the flawed 2020 scheme. That scheme failed. Are they going to make the same mistake again, nearly eight years later?

Philip Grant.

 

P.S. I said I would mention fee payments at the end. As work began on the feasibility study in August, I expected to see at least some fees included on Brent’s July to September 2026 payments Excel spreadsheet, which can be viewed under “Transparency” on the Council’s website. The two payments shown for Mott MacDonald Ltd in that quarter include £4,222 charged to “SEND expansion”, which probably relates to work on the Morland Gardens study. It could be that the non-SEND work is being included in MM’s payments for their services in the “Bridge Park” category. MM received £83,838 from Brent in the quarter under that heading.

 

 

Revised plans for 7-8 Watkin Road, now with 365 student beds in up to 18 storey building, now on Brent Council Planning Portal

 

From this....

 ...to this.

 

The fragments of light industry workshops  around Wembley Stadium are rapidly being demolished and replaced by high rise blocks. The latest proposals for 7-8 Watkin Road are now on Brent Council's Planning Portal (Ref 25/1759) and open for comment LINK.

The proposal is for an 18 storey student accommodation block with the accommodation increased to 365 beds and the original industrial provision drastically reduced:

It is worth going back to a discussion that took place during the last Labour administration of in its Planning Committee, then chaired by Cllr Kelcher, about the need to slow down the amount of purpose built student accommodation (PBSA) because of potential impact on community cohesion and the continuing need for housing.  See:     Student accommodation wins narrowly over local housing need at Brent Planning Committee

 The GLA was moved to issue guidance on the subject LINK

 

I am hearing that there are concerns from residents of nearby blocks about the dominance of the proposed building and the impact of high density and loss of light on their homes, although there are no comments record yet on the planning portal.

In the light of the recent Scrutiny debate on flooding preparation it is interesting to note that the Environment Agency had concerns. The Wealdstone Brook runs behind the site.

 The site is marked in red. The trees indicate the passage of the brook.

The developer in an Addendum notes;       

The Environment Agency (EA) raised objections to the original scheme. In the original EA consultation response dated 12 November 2025, it stated that the applicant should submit a revised FRA (Flood Risk assessment)  which addresses these points:

 

“Flood storage compensation

 

• Demonstrate that adequate flood storage compensation will be provided for the loss in floodplain storage capacity due to the increase in built footprint. The best way to compensate for flood storage loss is to recreate an area of floodplain that mimics the area, shape and volume of the section of floodplain that has been lost by the development.

 

Raised finished floor levels

 

• The applicant should submit evidence to demonstrate that the proposal will not pose a risk to life and/or property. This can be achieved through demonstrating that raised finished flood levels, as outlined above, can be provided to prevent internal flooding of the development and damage to people and property.”

 

To resolve the “flood storage compensation” element the following design changes have been made:

 

• The proposed basement included in previous proposals has been omitted.

• The proposed building footprint at ground floor level has been reduced such that the new building is no larger than the existing building footprint and there is therefore no reduction in floodplain storage.

 

To resolve the “Raised finished floor levels” issue, the following is proposed:

 

• A limited non-habitable internal area (forming a cycle store with level access to external areas) is provided at 31.00m AOD. The area is not proposed to be flood plain compensation as it sits within the existing building footprint, however, does sit nominally below the maximum flood level and will therefore be managed and constructed using flood resilient techniques.

 

The Addendum addresses the reduction in replacement industrial floor space was 1.032sqm to a token 99sqm and claims the site is not in a 'traditional industrial location':   

It is noted that the Site has locational constraints particularly noting its location near to Wembley Stadium. Resultantly, the Site is impacted by road closures arising from event days, which softens its appeal for larger format industrial spaces. The proposed development at 7-8 Watkin Road is not considered to fall within this Grade A market, as it is not in a traditional industrial location, does not comprise easy access for larger vehicles and suffers with event days restrictions at Wembley Stadium

 

The proposed 99 sqm of industrial floor space will provide a smaller, high-quality and genuinely occupiable industrial space, allowing the marketing of the unit to be targeted towards SMEs, creative industries and maker-space occupiers. This is as opposed to a larger quantum of floorspace of which may struggle to attract occupiers or remain occupied in the long term as ar esult of the Site's physical and operational constraints as outlined above and further detailed within the Revised Industrial Floorspace Report prepared by Levy Real Estate.

The impact on local views of the stadium, views that are supposed to be protected, can be seen from this example from Chalkhill Park, on the other side of the railway tracks:

 Current view

 Post-build, most of the arch disappears 

Anyone expecting to be able to sunbathe in Union Park North  has another think coming.  Pipeline proposals (black) and 7-8 Watkin Road (blue) that show a circle of tall builds that will limit sunlight.

 Engineers Way

Residents of the pleasant low rise flats in Empire Way will have a new neighbour with more to come:

View from Empire Court

 

All 171 documents for this application can be found HERE plus a tab on which you can comment.  Neighbourhood Consultation ends on 12th November 2026. 

BREAKING: Brent Council opposition groups unite to fight sale of 42 acres of Northwick Park public open space

 

The red line encloses the freehold under threat

 

In a unique move Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Greens have joined forces to challenge Brent Council’s decision to sell the freehold of Northwick Park Golf Centre, despite 205 objections and representations.

 

Brent’s three opposition groups have united in opposition to the Council’s controversial decision to sell its freehold interest in 42 acres of public open space at Northwick Park Golf Centre.

 

Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Green councillors are demanding greater transparency and accountability over the proposed disposal, raising serious concerns about the loss of public ownership, the financial justification for the sale and the long-term future of one of Brent’s significant green spaces.

 

The council approved the disposal on October 12, despite receiving 205 objections and representations during the consultation process. The decision authorises officers to market the freehold interest in the site at 280 Watford Road, which is currently subject to a long-term lease.

 

The three opposition groups believe the Council has yet to demonstrate why selling an income-generating public asset is preferable to retaining it for future generations. They are calling-in the decision for scrutiny.

 

The cross-party challenge brings together councillors from across Brent who are calling the for the decision to be reconsidered and for residents’ concerns to be properly addressed.

 

Cllr Keith Perrin, Councillor for Northwick Park Ward, leading the call-in said:

 

The Golf Centre on the A404 Watford Road forms part of an important Public Open Space with a long history of recreational use by the community. It was originally purchased in 1913 by public subscription to protect the area from development and has remained an important part and lung of North Wembley since then.

 

As a ward councillor who has followed this site since 1995, I have serious concerns about selling the freehold, especially while questions remain around the existing lease’s powers, the income the Council receives and outstanding enforcement matters relating to unlicensed waste.

 

If the freehold is sold Brent Council could easily lose control of this green space’s future. It’s designation of Metropolitan Open Land, Site of Importance for Nature Conservation and Public Open Space, along with its public footpaths could all disappear.

 

This is why I believe the decision to sell deserves proper scrutiny, and ultimately, reversal.

 

Cllr Suresh Kansagra, leader of the Brent Conservative Group, said:

 

We do not believe selling this site is the right decision for Brent. The Council already receives rental income from the land, while retaining the freehold also preserves its long-term value for future generations.

 

Once the asset is sold, that opportunity is gone.  But this is not just about money. This is a large area of green and

recreational land which has been part of the local community for generations and brings real value to the surrounding neighbourhood.

 

We are using every formal route available within the Council to ensure this decision is properly examined and every opportunity for it to be reconsidered is exhausted.

 

Residents also have an important role to play. We want people who care about the future of this site to make their views known and show the Council how strongly the community feels about what happens next.

 

The council should be able to demonstrate clearly why selling is better than keeping an income-producing asset with long-term value. We do not believe that case has yet been made.

​

Cllr Anton Georgiou, leader of the Brent Liberal Democrat Group,

said:

 

The Labour council’s decision to sell this important piece of public land without proper consultation sets a dangerous precedence. The administration is opening the door for potential developers to have free reign over what this open space will be replaced with.

 

The interest of our community isn’t typically the primary concern of developers and there is a risk that this decision will allow the expansion of high-density tower blocks into the area.

 

The reason I am speaking out and supporting the cross-party call-in, despite it not being in my ward, is to help get greater transparency of the deal for residents and prevent this same opaque tactic from being used in our other green spaces. Residents deserve to have a say when these kinds of major changes are proposed on their doorstep.

 

Cllr Mary Mitchell, Leader of the Brent Green Group, said:

 

Northwick Park Golf Course is far more than a commercial asset on a balance sheet. It is one of Brent's most important green spaces, providing vital wildlife habitat, absorbing carbon, helping to reduce flood risk, and offering an invaluable sense of openness in an increasingly built-up borough.

 

As a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation and public open space, it plays a crucial role in both the ecological health of our area and the wellbeing of local residents. The proposed freehold sale risks removing a key layer of public protection and stewardship from a site that has been held for public benefit for nearly one hundred years. Once public land is sold, it is extraordinarily difficult to recover.

 

Residents are right to ask why Brent would relinquish control of such a significant environmental and public health asset at a time when access to green space, biodiversity recovery and climate resilience are more important than ever. We should be protecting this space, not putting its future at risk

 

The three opposition groups are calling on Brent Council to fully explain the financial case for the disposal, address outstanding questions surrounding the existing lease and the site’s management, and reconsider whether surrendering the freehold is in the long-term interests of residents.

 

Cllr Matt Kelcher: 'There is no better builder in London than Brent' - your comments invited.

 Press Release from Brent Council published unedited but Wembley Matters readers may wish to comment below.

 

Brent Council, which completed more homes than any other local authority in the UK this year, has welcomed the Mayor of London’s Draft London Plan and urged City Hall to support its ongoing efforts to tackle the housing crisis.

It backs the Plan’s ambitions for more housing including affordable options, sustainable growth, climate resilience and high street renewal, but warns that boroughs cannot deliver London’s growth ambitions without investment.

 

From the CityUK (not Brent Council)

 

Cllr Matt Kelcher, Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Planning and Growth, said: 

"We know the difference that a safe, secure and genuinely affordable home can make to a family's life. As the leading housebuilding authority, Brent has consistently shown that it is prepared to play its part in delivering the homes, jobs and infrastructure Londoners need.

"We support the ambitions of the Draft London Plan and stand ready to continue delivering new homes, including affordable homes. However, if London is serious about tackling the housing crisis, we need to be clear that boroughs cannot do it alone. Future growth must be supported by investment which backs the builders not the blockers, and there is no better builder in London than Brent.”

Having already delivered more than 20,000 homes over the last decade, major regeneration schemes continue across the borough of Brent. In South Kilburn, one of London's largest estate renewal programmes is delivering new homes, parks and community facilities, while the Bridge Park development will bring forward a new leisure centre, community facilities, public spaces and more than 1,000 new homes.

In its response to the London Plan consultation, the council is particularly supportive of City Hall’s proposals to recognise Staples Corner as a key growth location, as well as to upgrade Wembley to Metropolitan Town Centre status in recognition of the area’s growing national and international significance.

Brent also suggests an alternative to proposals to remove the current carbon offset funding mechanism for new developments, which could reduce the funding available to improve the energy efficiency of existing homes and buildings. Instead, it proposes a hybrid model that combines tougher on-site energy performance standards with a more limited financial contribution for unavoidable emissions.

Black History Month event: Learn from the Grunwick strike! Wednesday, October 28, 2026 at 7:00 PM ONLINE

 

 

Black History Month event: Learn from the Grunwick strike!  

Wednesday, October 28, 2026 at 7:00 PM

August 2026 was 50 years since the start of the Grunwick strike, a major struggle for workplace and trade union rights by predominantly female, migrant, South Asian film processing workers. It was a tumultuous two-year battle that, in the face of employer aggression, media demonisation and brutal police violence, saw widespread solidarity from other workers in the area and far beyond, but grossly inadequate support from the top of the labour movement - and ultimately defeat. What is the story of the Grunwick strike, why is it so important and what are its lessons for the workers' movement and left today?

For Black History Month 2026, the Green Party Trade Union Group and Brent Greens are hosting a meeting with Sundari Anitha, author with Ruth Pearson of Striking Women: Struggles and Strategies of South Asian Women Workers from Grunwick to Gate Gourmet, a book built around interviews with the strikers themselves.

 

BOOK YOUR PLACE HERE 

St Andrew's Church, Kingsbury, glows in autumn sunshine

 

The landmark horse chestnut tree next to St Andrew's Church, Kingsbury

 

Walking home through the churchyard of St Andrew's churches (old and new) from a day on my allotment at Birchen Grove I was struck by the beauty of the church and its surrounding's  in the late afternoon autumn light. Not for the first time I gave quiet thanks for the genius and enterprise of the generation that took  on the challenge of transferring the church from Wells Street in central London to suburban Kingsbury and chose such an ideal location on a hillock at a bend in Church Lane, near the 12th century Grade 1 listed Old St Andrew's church, now hidden amongst the mature yew trees.

 

 The grass has returned to a vibrant green after the parched brown of this summer's drought

 

 Glowing in the sunshine

 

From the St Andrew's website LINK

   

St. Andrews is one of London's finest Victorian churches, containing some of the finest sculpture and craftsmanship of the nineteenth century. Its own history is quite unique, and symbolizes the very essence of the Christian religion: death and re-birth.

St. Andrews was originally built in the heart of the West End, in the middle of the nineteenth century (in Wells Street near the present-day busy shopping area of Oxford Street). It was consecrated on the 2nd February, 1847, and soon became one of London's best known and fashionable churches, famous for its fine architecture and sculptures and items of craftsmanship. The services at St. Andrews were noted for their outstanding music - finer it was said than at many English cathedrals. The congregation included many of the leading figures of the day. The Prime Minister, William Gladstone, was an occasional worshipper.  However by the turn of the century the area around St. Andrews had changed dramatically. Houses had given way to warehouses and commercial property. The congregation had fallen away and the church was declared redundant. It closed its doors in the West End on Easter Sunday 1931.

The Church looked set to be demolished but there was an outcry at the idea of destroying such a beautiful building containing so many items of outstanding craftsmanship. Surely it could be put to some use? Other suburbs needed churches to serve their growing populations. A proposal was made to move St. Andrews from the West End to the fast growing area of Wembley and Kingsbury, served by the new Metropolitan Line.

St. Andrews was demolished stone by stone - each piece carefully labelled and numbered and transported the ten miles to southern Kingsbury which urgently needed a bigger church. The rebuild took three years - a project dubbed by one newspaper "the biggest jigsaw in the world".  Finally St. Andrews was reborn and reconsecrated on October 13th, 1934 by Arthur Foley Winnington Ingram, Bishop of London from 1901-39.

The church was designed by Dawkes and contains work by some of the top sculptors and craftsmen of the day. It is mentioned in Nicholas Pevsner's noted series The Buildings of England.

 

Do you have Willesden ancestors who were killed in the First World War? Rededication of the Dudden Hill School war memorial on 10 November.

Guest post by local historian Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Poppy from the Royal British Legion annual appeal.

 

If you have relatives who died in the First World War, particularly if they went to Dudden Hill School in Willesden and are named on the memorial pictured below, you will be very welcome to attend a short ceremony at Willesden Green Library on Tuesday 10 November.  Please pass on this information to any friends who may be interested, so that they also have the opportunity to take part.

 

The restored memorial, on the first floor landing at Willesden Green Library.

 

Many of you will know that 11 November (Remembrance Day) this year marks the 109^th anniversary of the Armistice which ended the awful “Great War”, now known as the First World War because of the second global conflict of the 20^th century between 1939 and 1945. Willesden’s School Board had opened Dudden Hill as an elementary school in 1897, and more than five hundred of its former pupils answered the call to go and fight “For King and Country” between 1914 and 1918. Eighty-six of them, and one teacher, died in that conflict.

 

Dudden Hill School’s headmaster, John Kelly (who had such a well-respected educational career in Willesden that Boys’ and Girls’ secondary schools were later named after him), kept a record of all the former pupils who had died. At a meeting of the school’s Old Boys’ Association in 1921, it was decided to create a memorial to their fellow students whose lives had been lost in the war, and the money for it was promptly raised. The memorial to “Our Glorious Dead” was unveiled in the school hall a year later, on 4 October 1922.

 

Programme for the unveiling of the Memorial in 1922,
by Sir James Yoxall, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers.

 

The memorial was central to the school’s Remembrance Day commemorations each November, until its infants/primary department was transferred to the newly built Northview Primary School in 1960, and the remaining secondary school closed in 1964. The building was then used by Willesden Technical College for a few years, before being sold off to a developer and converted into flats.

 

The former Dudden Hill School building in Dudden Hill Lane. (Photo by Irina Porter)

 

Sadly, no respect for the former school’s memorial was shown by those carrying out work on the building. The wooden surround around the WW1 plaque, on which the names of former pupils who’d died during the Second World War had been added, and a casket beneath it, with a complete record by headmaster John Kelly of the actions during which the former pupils had been killed, were lost or destroyed. Luckily, the copper plaque itself, with the names engraved on it, was rescued from a builders skip by Bill Martindale, a lecturer at Willesden Tech. 

 

Mr Martindale realised the historic importance of the memorial, and took it home for safekeeping. Years later, Paul Mitchell, who’d known the memorial when he was a pupil at Dudden Hill School, was trying to find out what happened to it, and came across photographs of the battered plaque on the War Memorials Trust website. Its location then was shown to be Wembley, but it had actually moved to Cumbria, when Bill Martindale retired there. Paul’s further efforts put him in touch with the Cumbria Western Front Association (“CWFA”), and in September 2022 one of Bill’s CWFA colleagues, Richard Preston, brought the plaque back to Willesden.

 

 

 Paul Mitchell (left) and Richard Preston handing over the memorial plaque
 at Brent Archives on 23 September 2022. (Photo by John Bunn)

 

Brent Museum and Archives agreed that the memorial deserved to be put back on public display, once it had been cleaned and restored. With the help of a grant from the War Memorials Trust in 2025, that has now happened. The copper plaque with a new wooden frame, and its 87 names of the fallen picked out in black, now has a permanent pride of place in Willesden Green Library.

 

The ceremony at the library, on Tuesday 10 November from 10.40am, will be a Civic rededication and official unveiling of the war memorial by the Deputy Mayor of Brent, Councillor Kanta Mistry. A bugler and standard bearer from the Royal British Legion will be there as well, for an act of remembrance, and residents who wish to attend, in memory of those who have died in war at any time, are welcome to do so. You can reserve your free place at this event HERE.

 

Philip Grant.

 

I gratefully acknowledge Paul Mitchell’s article “Quest for Remembrance: A Personal Story of Dudden Hill School” (Willesden Local History Society Journal No. 56, Winter 2022/23) as the source for much of the information used in this article.