Tuesday 5 October 2021

Brent’s “secret” Council Housing projects: Gauntlett Court, Sudbury. 'Airspace' explained

 Guest post, by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 


Entrance to the Gauntlett Court estate, Harrow Road, Sudbury, February 2015.

 

At the end of August, I wrote an article about Brent Council’s “secret” plans for adding more homes to some of its existing housing estates. That guest blog was mainly about estates in Fryent Ward, but I did also mention that Gauntlett Court in Sudbury was shown as a project ‘not yet in public domain’. This was on a map prepared for a Cabinet meeting in July, with a figure of 120 new homes shown beside it.

 

Two weeks ago, Martin published the response I’d received to that article from Brent’s Lead Member for Housing, Cllr. Eleanor Southwood. She said that everything shown in that map ‘is not a secret’ (although Brent has done nothing to publicise it!). One of the main themes of my article was that ‘the people affected by these proposed schemes should be consulted before the projects get “firmed-up” any further, and their views taken into account.’ Commenting on that Cllr. Southwood also said:

 

‘I absolutely agree that Brent Council must work with residents to shape housing development projects,’ and, 

 

I agree that working with residents is key and this will continue to be a core part of developing any proposals for new housing, balanced with the needs of residents who are currently homeless and the requirements of planning policy.’

 

You can judge for yourself how far Brent Council is living up to those words, from this further information which has reached me about Gauntlett Court from various sources. I am grateful to Paul Lorber, for letting me see a reply he received from Brent’s Strategic Director for Community Wellbeing, which I will quote from below.

 

The Strategic Director’s report to Cabinet in July 2021, about Brent’s New Affordable Homes Programme, did include Gauntlett Court in a list of sites undergoing feasibility assessment. This showed the number of predicted new homes there as 5. He has recently apologised, saying that this was an old figure, which should have been updated.

 

The five new homes were bungalows, proposed to be built where there are currently garages. At least until recently, this was the only “infill” housing project at Gauntlett Court which one of the backbench Sudbury Ward councillors was aware of. Martin has let me have a photograph of a similar project underway at the Council flats in Kings Drive [readers of a similar age to me may remember Pete Seeger’s 1963 song “Little Boxes”].

 


New Brent Council bungalows under construction at Kings Drive, Wembley Park.

 

The Strategic Director has now clarified the position, saying that for Gauntlett Court: 

 

the current feasibility relates to a potential 120 units on the same site as the existing Gauntlett Court. The Council is considering a mix of airspace (building over existing blocks) and infill development in and around that site.’

 

He made it clear that: ‘feasibility assessments for sites under consideration.  In other words, they are early assessments of what might be possible, these numbers change as projects do or don’t progress.’ Yet they are there in the report to Cabinet, as predictions of what the Council’s Housing Supply and Partnerships (“HSP”) team expects to be able to deliver.

 

“Airspace” may be a new term to you (it was to me!). The July report to Cabinet said that one of the methods by which the HSP team would deliver 700 new homes by 2026 (using funding from the Mayor of London’s Affordable Homes Programme) was: ‘Airspace development using an offsite Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) solution.’ This appears to mean using modules built in a specialist factory, then delivered to the site on the back of a lorry and lowered into place by crane.

 


 

A factory building housing modules, and a module being lowered by crane. (Images from the internet)

 

The term “Modern Methods of Construction” covers a variety of pre-prepared materials delivered to building sites (such as panels used to clad the walls of buildings constructed on wooden, steel or concrete frames). Lowering new home units onto supports placed across the flat roofs of existing blocks appears to be the one which they have in mind for Gauntlett Court (and probably also for Campbell and Elvin Courts in Fryent Ward). 

 

I’m amused that this is considered a modern method of construction. It is what was being used to supply temporary factory-made bungalows, or “prefabs”, after the Second World War! If you’d like to discover more about local prefab homes, you can see the slides from an illustrated talk that I gave at Kingsbury Library, a couple of years ago, here.

 

 

Section of a prefab home being lowered into place by crane, 1946. (Image from the internet)

 

As well as “airspace” homes on the roofs of the existing 1950s brick-built three and four storey blocks, Brent’s HSP team are also looking to add “infill” homes. This would have to be on land that is currently grassy open space, with mature trees, or areas currently used for parking residents’ cars, or both.

 

What do the residents think?  Gauntlett Court has its own Residents’ Association, which meets regularly with local councillors and the Council’s housing management officers. One of the Association’s committee members said, as of two weeks ago, they had not been informed of or consulted about the HSP team’s proposals. Yet, a few days later, the Strategic Director wrote:

 

As I said above, these are early assessments, they will evolve as costs, site considerations and planning issues emerge.   All of this work will be done with local residents and councillors.’

 

I don’t think that it is right for such schemes to be kept “secret” until Council Officers have decided what they propose to do, in terms of method and numbers, on existing Council-owned estates. If they are to prepare plans that ‘work for everyone’ (to quote Cllr. Southwood’s promise to residents objecting to the plans for Kilburn Square), they need to discuss what could be acceptable at Gauntlett Court, or any other estate they are considering, from a very early stage. Surely they can see that, from the storm they caused at Kilburn Square, when they ploughed on with unacceptable plans for nearly a year before being willing to listen to what residents were telling them!

 

 

Harrow Road blocks on the Gauntlett Court estate, with a central green space beyond, February 2015.

 

The residents at Gauntlett Court are not all Council tenants. One estimate I’ve seen puts the number of leaseholders at around 50%, as a result of “right to buy”. You probably think that this was a “Thatcher-years” policy from the 1980s, but Winston Churchill’s Conservative government introduced a similar scheme in the 1950s. The Borough of Wembley Municipal Housing Handbook for 1960 records that this ‘Sale of Council Houses” scheme had caused them to sell 318 homes since December 1952.

 

Will these leaseholders want their green space built over, or new Council homes put on their roofs (with the associated building work and potential effect on the value of their own property)? What if there are subsequently problems with defects to these new homes - will they be indemnified from having to meet a share of the costs of remediation work? Such defects problems are not unknown, as we’ve seen very recently! Or will Brent Council, as freeholder, just ignore their concerns, or over-ride their “third party rights”? I sincerely hope not. 

 

Brent Council’s HSP team should let all the residents at Gauntlet Court know, in writing and without delay, what their current thoughts are about how the estate might be altered to provide more of the Council homes which the borough undoubtedly needs. It should then begin meetings with them, to discuss those ideas, and listen to the thoughts and ideas of the residents, to seek a reasonable compromise about plans going forward.

 

That is only fair and reasonable. It is also what Brent’s Lead Member for Housing, and Strategic Director for Community Wellbeing, appear to have said is the Council’s approach. The Council Officers actually dealing with these matters, day-to-day, need to put that “working with residents” approach into practice. 


Philip Grant.

 

 

 

 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

There doesn't seem to be any reason to be disparaging about the "little boxes", which presumably satisfy a known category of housing need in Brent.

And it is all very well saying that prefabs are an old idea. The fact remains they were not then built, or their designs improved, for about fifty years, so they can be reasonably called a modern solution.

However, liability for defects is a valid concern. That will include giving access to new, higher floors in existing blocks and also providing new lifts.

Philip Grant said...

Dear Anonymous at 11:13,

My mention of "Little Boxes" was simply because that song immediately started playing in my head when I saw Martin's photograph. The bungalows themselves may prove to be comfortable homes.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that the prefabs I pictured were not built. This was a temporary programme, launched in 1944, which aimed to build a quarter of a million homes to meet the urgent post-war housing shortage, until more permanent homes, like Gauntlett Court, could be constructed.

Around 156,000 of these prefabs were erected between 1945 and 1949 nationwide, including 344 in Wembley, and around 800 in Willesden. Several styles were produced by different manufacturers, with the most advanced being the "Airoh", designed and built from aluminium by former wartime aircraft factories.

Anonymous said...

It says that after that period when prefabs were built, post-WW2, there were essentially no more built, or their designs improved, for fifty years.