Andrew Donald, Brent's Director of Regeneration and Mayor Projects, has told local campaigner Meg Howarth that the Brent police have passed information regarding the Kensal Rise Library Development fraudulent e-mails on to the Crown Prosecution service for their consideration.
It is not known when any further information will be available.
Fruadulent e-mails using the names and addresses of local people were submitted in support of Andrew Gillick's first planning application for the redevelopment of Kensal Rise Librray which was closed down by Brent Council.
Subsequently Brent Legal ruled that the police investigation was not something that the Brent Planning Committee could take into consideration in its decision making and Gillick's second planning application for the library site was approved.
The news comes just as the Guardian publishes a scathing article on the pressures on planning officers and local councillors from ruthless developers LINK:
It is not known when any further information will be available.
Fruadulent e-mails using the names and addresses of local people were submitted in support of Andrew Gillick's first planning application for the redevelopment of Kensal Rise Librray which was closed down by Brent Council.
Subsequently Brent Legal ruled that the police investigation was not something that the Brent Planning Committee could take into consideration in its decision making and Gillick's second planning application for the library site was approved.
The news comes just as the Guardian publishes a scathing article on the pressures on planning officers and local councillors from ruthless developers LINK:
One former planning officer is frank about the reality of the imbalance in our confrontational system. “If you throw enough resources at a planning application, you’re going to manage to tire everyone out,” he says. “The documentation gets more and more extensive, the phone calls get more frequent and more aggressive, the letters ever more litigious. The weight of stuff just bludgeons everyone aside, and the natural inclination is to say, ‘Oh yeah okay, I’ve had enough of this one,’ and just let it through. It’s like a war of attrition.”It is a long article but well worth reading for local residents interested in the Quintain-Wembley, Willesden Green Library , Queensbury, Bridge Park, Alperton developments and the failure to build genuinely affordable housing or achieve amenity gains for the community.
11 comments:
Thank you for providing the "link" to The Guardian article, Martin - very interesting. In the light of our experience over the redevelopment of Willesden Green Library Centre, the information about how developers manipulate viability assessments, and manage to keep them confidential, made sad reading.
Both Brent's own, and the GLA London Plan, planning policies meant that the residential development built on the 72% of the Willesden Green site given away to the developer by Brent in return for the new Cultural Centre should have included up to 50% affordable housing, and that 40% of that should have been family-sized units.
Instead the developer was allowed to build 95 one and two bedroom flats, now being marketed at prices between £339k and £550k, with no affordable housing on the grounds that the scheme WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN VIABLE otherwise. This is what the Brent Planning Officer's report said, when the application went to Planning Committee in March 2013:
'AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Affordable housing would normally have been sought for a development of this nature. However, the
applicants have supplied a financial appraisal which shows that the objective of delivering the WGCC has to be off-set against the normal affordable housing requirement. The viability information is provided in two forms with a summary that is public, that has been part of the information consulted upon, and more detailed information that the applicants consider should be kept confidential.
Viability is material to the planning process. Commercially sensitive financial information can be submitted in confidence by an applicant. The Council’s Director of Legal and Procurement has confirmed that she considers that this is a reasonable position for the Council to take.
The Council can take account of the benefits to the public of the provision of the WGCC against the lack of the provision of affordable housing, in accordance with normal planning policy where viability demonstrates that one off-sets the other, due to viability issues.
The GLA have considered the financial information and have confirmed their view that as the residential development is required to enable the redevelopment of the Cultural Centre which is of significant public benefit, at no cost to the Council, the applicant is not required to provide affordable housing.'
This is a sad indictment of how Brent, like many other Councils, is either unwilling or unable to stand up to the developers, and the consultants who are helping them find ways to maximise their profits at the expense of the people in housing need who cannot afford to own or rent the homes they are building in vast numbers across London.
Philip Grant.
Thank you for providing the "link" to The Guardian article, Martin - very interesting. In the light of our experience over the redevelopment of Willesden Green Library Centre, the information about how developers manipulate viability assessments, and manage to keep them confidential, made sad reading.
Both Brent's own, and the GLA London Plan, planning policies meant that the residential development built on the 72% of the Willesden Green site given away to the developer by Brent in return for the new Cultural Centre should have included up to 50% affordable housing, and that 40% of that should have been family-sized units.
Instead the developer was allowed to build 95 one and two bedroom flats, now being marketed at prices between £339k and £550k, with no affordable housing on the grounds that the scheme WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN VIABLE otherwise. This is what the Brent Planning Officer's report said, when the application went to Planning Committee in March 2013:
'AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Affordable housing would normally have been sought for a development of this nature. However, the
applicants have supplied a financial appraisal which shows that the objective of delivering the WGCC has to be off-set against the normal affordable housing requirement. The viability information is provided in two forms with a summary that is public, that has been part of the information consulted upon, and more detailed information that the applicants consider should be kept confidential.
Viability is material to the planning process. Commercially sensitive financial information can be submitted in confidence by an applicant. The Council’s Director of Legal and Procurement has confirmed that she considers that this is a reasonable position for the Council to take.
The Council can take account of the benefits to the public of the provision of the WGCC against the lack of the provision of affordable housing, in accordance with normal planning policy where viability demonstrates that one off-sets the other, due to viability issues.
The GLA have considered the financial information and have confirmed their view that as the residential development is required to enable the redevelopment of the Cultural Centre which is of significant public benefit, at no cost to the Council, the applicant is not required to provide affordable housing.'
This is a sad indictment of how Brent, like many other Councils, is either unwilling or unable to stand up to the developers, and the consultants who are helping them find ways to maximise their profits at the expense of the people in housing need who cannot afford to own or rent the homes they are building in vast numbers across London.
Philip Grant.
While no Labour politician is ever likely to repeat anything as crass as Mandelson's 'intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich' crap, Tory MPs still look as if they think they've come up with something racy and original when they announce that Britain is 'open for business'. What is described above, and at great length in the Guardian article, is what they (and Mandelson/Blair) mean by 'business'. The outcome of next year's election should depend on how far the effects of this concept of business are made clear to voters and how far the Labour party is prepared to distance itself decisively and convincingly from such 'openness'.
Mike Hine
I'd like to thank Meg Howarth for pursuing this when everyone else appeared to want to forget. Without her persistence, the affair - which Brent councillors would clearly have preferred to forget - might have been shelved. Well-done!
Yes, as the article says, developers keep grinding on and grinding people down. Sadly that includes planners too. Fortunately there are people like Meg and Save The Queensbury who are relentless and will not tire no matter how long it takes.
Pleased to see this latest development. It's been a long time coming. It was in August 2013 that fake emails were submitted via Brent Council's then-online planning portal. As one software expert commented at the time:
'It's not very clever of Brent to collect comments via a system that is this easy to spoof. Thy could easily take a few precautions, this kind of thing will only become more frequent'.
The system was fixed apparently within days - which begs the question as to why such a flawed set-up existed in the first instance. But it's taken 13 months and several U-turns - accompanied by sneering from one former Labour councillor and anonymous blog posts - for matters to reach the Crown Prosecution Service.
As the above software expert also said
'it's becoming common for unscrupulous companies and individuals to hire people in the third world to send recommending emails or post flattering comments to their web sites. It costs very little and doesn't require technical knowledge'.
The loosening of planning controls and the undermining of S106s/pressure on planning officers depicted in Oliver Wainwright's long but excellent piece should be a warning to local residents - stay vigilant. In Islington, a local church linked to a city academy has applied to overturn the S106s it agreed last year in return for an off-site development. A former development project-manager in his previous life, the vicar knows how to play the planning system. Without a hint of irony, here's what the case-officer - unfamiliar with the original application - admits:
'The applicants wished to secure the planning permission so signed the Section 106 Agreement. However, in retrospect they felt the Council were too restrictive'!
A God and mammon situation, one could say, particularly as residential properties in Islington's Grade 2-listed former coroner's court are involved. But residents are working hard to ensure God'll come down on the right side...
Thanks to Anon above for supportive comments.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the FKRL campaign hasn't posted this blog on either its Facebook or Twitter pages.
Why "unsurprising"? Why don't you say what you mean? It is on the Save Kensal Rise Library facebook page now.
But not posted by FKRL, and pushed down by a repeat of a previous link, albeit by a different poster who could easily have 'liked' the original. Nor has FKRL posted the blog on its Twitter feed. Doesn't it want its followers to learn of the CPS involvement?
FKRL still not updated its Twitter followers about CPS involvement in the email fraud about which it declaimed so loudly last year.
Spokesman for National Fraud and Investigation Bureau (NFIB) on today's BBC Radio 4 Money Matters: online fraud being taken increasingly seriously by local police forces as numbers of cases increase.
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