Front elevation showing the new building and nearby houses
I watched the council's livestream of the Planning Committee earlier this week but the sound was so poor i could not hear the two presentations at the begining of the meeting. They just happened to be presentations against the controversial replacement proposals for the Victorian community centre in Hazel Road.
I tried the recording of the meeting but that was just as bad so I have asked the two speakers for copies of their presentation to publish. The public have a right to know what they said.
Unofficial impression of the current building and the new
Phil O’Shea’s spoke to the Planning
Committee on behalf of Kensal Green's Residents Association.
Good evening. I’m Phil O’Shea, speaking for Kensal Green Residents
Association. I live on Hazel Road.
There are clear reasons why this application has attracted 151[1]
objections.
Even the committee report acknowledges that this proposal falls short
of required standards. That alone means this is not the right development
for this site. Hazel Road is in a two-storey Victorian
neighbourhood.
Brent’s Historic Environment Strategy is clear. Once much-loved heritage
buildings like Harriet Tubman House are demolished, their value to the
community is lost forever.
The proposed glass and aluminium block is wholly out of
keeping with a brick Victorian neighbourhood. At four storeys, it would be over-dominant
and harmful to local character.
The committee report
misrepresents Brent Local Plan Policies which support contemporary
design - where it respects and complements historic character and
require development - to conserve and enhance heritage assets’.[2]
This proposal fails those tests.
The demolition of our Community Centre - which supports playgroups,
exercise classes, warm-space provision, counselling, arts, church groups,
community christmas lunches - means more than a halving – a loss of over 53% -
of dedicated community space – and once the new hallway and toilet are deducted
– we’re left with a space 10 by 11 metres.[3]
The suggestion that these groups can instead hire a training room, IT suite, or
roof terrace from Making the Leap - is simply not viable.
The report tries to suggest that
the scheme will improve local safety, yet the proposed Hazel Road frontage
includes a covered porch and alcoves that are likely to attract anti-social
behaviour after dark.
Residents opposite the proposed block would suffer up to a 36.5%
loss of daylight, including in homes occupied by some vulnerable people.
The daylight consultant did not visit number 31a. Users of the proposed roof
terrace would be able to look straight down through their skylight and onto
their bed.
A large part
of Hazel Road Open space will be lost during construction and - Making
the Leap - propose to “reclaim” an area of the parkland adjacent to the
children’s play area.
Network Rail
objected to this proposal in January last year because the Bakerloo and Lioness
lines run approximately five metres beneath the proposed development. That
objection was withdrawn last month - without any publicly available explanation
- and it is unclear what assurances or technical information were provided by
the applicant.
Taken
together, the proposal causes clear harm to heritage, amenity, safety and
community provision. For these reasons —residents believe this application
should not be approved.
Application 25/0041 – Philip Grant’s heritage presentation
to Planning Committee:
I only
have time to outline the heritage objections. Please ask me for details at the
end.
Part
e) of policy BHC1 is key to deciding this application. It says: “proposals
affecting heritage assets should … seek to avoid harm in the first
instance. Substantial harm or loss should be exceptional, especially where
the asset is of high significance.
Any
proposed … loss of a heritage asset … should require clear and convincing
justification, and can be outweighed by material planning considerations in
the form of public benefits, but only if these are sufficiently powerful.’
This
proposal would demolish a heritage asset, which my detailed February 2025 Alternative
Heritage Statement showed has high significance. It also explained why
the applicant’s main public benefit claim was no benefit at all!
I’d
shown the proposals failed the part e) test, but the Case Officer wanted the
application approved. He asked the agent to send a revised heritage statement,
and when that wasn’t good enough, he spelt out what it needed to say. Consultation
on this second revised version was invited on 10 June, but the document wasn’t
published until 9 July!
The
Heritage Officer’s November comments included a serious error, saying 28 Hazel
Road ‘was not considered to have reached the necessary threshold for local listing.'
If true, its significance score could be no more than five, and that was the
score he gave it.
I drew
this error to his attention, but the Committee Report still used the false
claim. Now the Supplementary Report tries to “spin” its correction, but all the
non-designated heritage assets identified in 2016 would have scored at least
six. I believe the true score is nine.
The
Report uses the agent’s claimed public benefits, but doesn’t mention my counter
views. The proposal cuts community space in half, to just 115sqm, but the agent
claims we should treat it as 450sqm. That includes training rooms which might occasionally
be hired out. The proposed Access Plan condition would only cover use of one small
community room.
The
heritage asset IS of high significance, and the public benefits are
NOT ‘sufficiently powerful’ to justify its demolition. The application
should be refused.
Philip Grant’s thoughts about the Planning
Committee consideration on Hazel Road:
I realise that I could be accused of bias, because I was at the meeting as an
objector, but I have tried to make my thoughts about it objective.
One
feature of how the case was handled by Planning Officers is that they did not
show any images, apart from the site plan, when introducing the application at
the meeting, and there were none apart from the site plan in the agenda pack
which members had. Committee members had apparently had a site visit, so would
have seen the existing street and building, but they had not seen any drawings
of the proposed building.
The
Development Management Area Manager (South Team), who introduced the
application, spoke mainly about what a good modern design the proposed building
was. He clearly had no feeling for heritage buildings, or the Victorian
character of the Hazel Road area!
Phil
O’Shea of Kensal Green Residents’ Association spoke about the application and
its effect on the Hazel Road neighbourhood, pointing out where it went against
several Brent planning policies. I presented the heritage case explaining why
the application failed the Local Plan heritage policy tests, so should be
refused, then answered several questions from committee members fully and honestly.
Two
Queen’s Park Ward councillors, Lesley Smith and Neil Nerva, then spoke against
the application, reinforcing the views of local residents that the proposed
building was not suitable for the scale and character of the area.
The
Chief Executive of Making the Leap then spoke in favour of the application,
emphasising the valuable work his charity does in training young people, mainly
from BAME backgrounds. He wanted them to be able to learn in a modern building,
like the ones they aspired to work at in Central London, rather than in one
that is now not up to standard. His planning agent and architect help answer
questions from committee members.
Committee
members then put questions to Council Officers. Among these, Brent’s new
Heritage Officer maintained his view that the former Victorian mission hall had
only low to medium significance, and in his opinion would not have qualified
for Local Listing.
The Development Management Manager for
the whole of Brent, who led the Planning Officers' response to members
questions, did her best to justify the application. She claim that the
four-storey building would not look out of place, as there were other buildings
of a similar height nearby on Harrow Road (the two Queens Park councillors
sitting beside me were shaking their heads in disbelief, as Harrow Road is
separated from Hazel Road by an open space and bank, and is at least five
metres lower down the slope).
She
also gave a long (and unnecessary) explanation of the different types of
heritage building for planning purposes, suggesting that even though 28 Hazel
Road was treated as a non-designated heritage asset, it did not mean it
deserved as much protection for planning purposes as Statutory Listed buildings
(I had never claimed that it did, only that it needed to be properly considered
in line with Brent’s policy BHC1).
Towards
the end of Officer questioning, Cllr. Iman Ahmadi Moghaddam
asked Officers to show some images of the existing street and the proposed
building. Because of delays in finding those pictures, the Chair said that they
would carry on with questions, and the images were only shown, for a few
seconds each, while members were dealing with other matters. The image below
was the only one, shown briefly, of the proposed building. This was on the bigscreen,
opposite Cllr. Robert Johnson, and he was the only member who I saw looking at
it.
The
front elevation of the proposed building and nearby homes in Hazel Road.
When
it came to a vote on whether members agreed with the Officers recommendation to
approve the application, Cllr. Johnson abstained, on the grounds that he was
concerned about the scale of the proposed building. You can see why! That may
be why Officers didn't want members to see it.
In
summing up the Officer’s comments, the Development Management Manager said that
what members needed to decide was whether the application did more good than
harm (and I’m sure she was not just referring to the heritage policy question).
She did not mention the different policies which objectors had pointed to as
reasons why the application should be refused, despite planning decisions
supposedly being based on planning policy!
The
”more good than harm” argument has been used before by Brent Planning Officers
to sway committee members’ decisions, when objectors have shown that the
application which Officers wish to see approved goes against Brent’s adopted
planning policies. One which immediately comes to mind is the 776/778 Harrow
Road (the Barham Park former park-keepers homes) case in 2023. After that I
challenged Brent’s then Head of Planning to show what planning policy contained
the ”more good than harm” principle, and did not get a straight answer.
As the
time was around 7.30pm, with two more applications still to be dealt with on
the agenda, the Chair, Cllr. Matt Kelcher, called for a decision on the
application, indicating that he thought the application had definite benefits.
He, and Vice Chair Cllr. Saqib Butt, voted to accept the Officers’
recommendation to approve the application, along with three other Labour
councillors (Akram, Begum and Chappell) and one Conservative (Cllr. Jayanti
Patel). Green Party member, Cllr. Iman Ahmadi Moghaddam, who had been the most
active questioner, voted against, and Labour’s Cllr. Robert Johnson abstained.
