Guest blog by Philip Grant in a personal capacity:-
Council housing at Cecil Avenue – a reply from Cllr. Muhammed Butt
At Monday’s Cabinet Meeting, Kilburn Village Residents’ Association presented a petition expressing their opposition to the “infill” housing plans which the Council seems determined to push through for Kilburn Square, and dissolution with the consultation process, in which residents views had been ignored.
After watching the webcast for this item, I was struck by the way in which the Council Leader, and Chair of the meeting, seemed to dismiss the residents’ concerns. The most important thing for him was to build the Council homes that families in temporary accommodation urgently need, and he made no excuse (or apology?) for building them.
Architect’s diagrammatic view of Brent’s planned Cecil Avenue development
That struck a chord with me, because for the past six months I’ve been trying to find out why Brent’s Cabinet decided, in August 2021, that 152 of the 250 homes the Council plan to build, on land they own at Cecil Avenue in Wembley, would be for a developer to sell at a profit, and not for people in urgent housing need on the Council’s waiting list.
I sent an email to the Council Leader, Cllr. Muhammed Butt, referring to the passion he had expressed in Cabinet for building Council homes, then asking about Cecil Avenue:-
‘Let me ask you a straight question, and ask you for a straight reply to it:-
What excuse are you making for not building all of the 250 homes on Brent Council's Cecil Avenue site in Wembley as affordable Council homes for rent, and only using 98 of the 250 as Council homes for Brent people in housing need?
Cecil Avenue is a vacant, Council-owned site. Full planning permission for the 250-home development on that site was given a year ago, and the Council could by now have a contractor building those much-needed homes there.
Instead, your Cabinet resolved last August to adopt a "developer partner" option, under which the contractor who would be appointed, and paid by Brent Council to build those 250 homes (plus 54 at the Ujima House site across the High Road), would be allowed to purchase 152 of the 250 homes at Cecil Avenue and sell them for profit.
People in the borough, including those in temporary accommodation that you spoke so passionately about, deserve to know why. I look forward to receiving your response, and sharing it publicly. Thank you.’
To his credit, Cllr. Butt sent me a reply at lunchtime today (Wednesday 9 February), and agreed that I could publish it, as long as it was unedited. That is what Martin has agreed to do, and you can read it in full below.
You will see that much of it has been written in the form of a party political speech for the Local Council elections in May, but there are parts which relate directly to my question about the Cecil Avenue development. I will give my response to those – readers can comment on his other claims, should they wish to.
I do appreciate that the Cecil Avenue site is part of Brent’s Wembley Housing Zone scheme. I made that clear in my very first “guest blog” about this issue, last August.
In case it leads to confusion, I should clarify that when Cllr. Butt says: ‘This site intends to deliver 100% affordable housing and a target of 50% across both sites’, the site with 100% affordable housing is Ujima House. This still only has outline planning permission, and will need to be demolished before a ten-story block of 54 homes (only 8 of them family-sized) can be built on the site, above affordable workspace on the ground floor.
Outline plan for Ujima House, currently an office block on the High Road.
The key answer given by Cllr. Butt, to justify the planned “giveaway” of 152 homes at Cecil Avenue to a developer, is this: ‘The Council needs to ensure the entire programme is financially viable within the GLA grant made available by the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, hence the requirement for a mixed tenure development in order to subsidise the delivery of the affordable elements.’
That may be Brent’s “excuse”, but Cecil Avenue is a Council housing development on Council-owned land. Brent Council will be borrowing the money, at low interest rates, to build the homes there, just as it would for any other Council housing scheme within its Housing Revenue Account, to provide homes for rent to Council tenants. Why does it need to sell 152 of those homes to a private developer, at a pre-agreed fixed price, rather than using them to house local people in housing need? I still don’t understand that.
After all, it appears
to be acceptable, to the Council and its Cabinet, to borrow at least £48m,
charged to the Housing Revenue Account, to purchase 155 leasehold
flats in an Alperton tower block, from a secretive “Asset Special Purpose
Vehicle”! I’m still waiting for an answer on that.
Artist’s impression of the courtyard garden at the Cecil Avenue site.
My final comment on Cllr. Butt’s reply is his reference to ‘a new publicly accessible open space’. The approved plans for the Cecil Avenue site include a courtyard garden square. This would mainly be for the benefit of residents, but there would be public access to it, through an archway from Wembley High Road.
This shared public open space makes the Cecil Avenue site much more desirable than the 100% affordable Ujima House site, where the flats will just have tiny balconies (plus a play area on the flat roof of the block). 152 of the Cecil Avenue homes would be for private sale, and 61 of the remaining 98 “affordable” Council homes would be either for shared ownership or intermediate rent, leaving only 37 of the 250 for affordable rent to Council tenants.
I’ve had my say, but please read what Cllr. Butt has said, and make up your own minds. This is his reply to my question above, in full and unedited:
‘Dear Mr Grant
Thank you for watching the live stream, and for your comments.
I hope that you can appreciate that the Cecil Avenue site is part of a wider development in the Wembley Housing Zones Programme and includes the adjacent site Ujima House - which is being used for affordable workspace so that it remains in use until things have been finalised.
This site forms part of our New Council Homes Programme to deliver at least 5,000 affordable homes with partners and at least 1,700 council homes directly ourselves, by 2024. Brent is one of a handful of councils that is meeting its targets, that means people desperately in need of housing get safe secure housing, something that surely not even you can be against.
This site intends to deliver 100% affordable housing and a target of 50% across both sites. We have always strived to achieve the best that we can on any given site – it is the responsible thing to do, to deliver homes today not years down the line. What this means in plain English, is that a mixed development at Cecil Avenue will enable the Ujima House site to be 100% affordable housing.
Our vision is for a development that will also include workspace to support job creation and growth in the local economy, a community space for everyone, highways and public realm improvements. I hope that you will have seen some of the works for the public realm improvements have already started on Wembley High Road, aiding the local economy, footfall and turbo-charging our recovery from Covid-19. We also want to include a new publicly accessible open space during this latest development. A positive outcome for the residents of Brent.
This is the commitment that we gave about making improvements for the residents of Brent and Wembley and this is what we are delivering, this is what a responsible Labour council can do, focussing on action and outcomes for today, to bring the future forward faster.
The Council needs to ensure the entire programme is financially viable within the GLA grant made available by the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, hence the requirement for a mixed tenure development in order to subsidise the delivery of the affordable elements. Your suggestion would jeopardise any affordable homes that are needed today; and would mean the people who desperately need those homes we are planning to build, would remain in poor quality accommodation, surely you would not want anyone to remain in poor quality accommodation?
As you point out, I care passionately about the people who need help to get a roof over their head; it is what I come to work for, to make a real difference to people’s lives. Creating the opportunities for people to upskill themselves through Brent start and Brent works.
Making sure that we work with all our schools to reach point today where about 97% of our schools are rated good or outstanding.
Investing in our high streets to create the strong local economy.
Our commitment to the green agenda with our climate emergency strategy and not forgetting the changes and improvements we are making to engage and interact with the good citizens of Brent with our new portal Citizen lab.
There is so much more that this Brent Labour administration has achieved and will absolutely strive to do more, despite what the Lib Dem and Tory coalition started and this party gate Tory government has taken away from us in Brent.
I need to remind you that over the last 10 years an average of £15.5 Million a year has been taken out from this councils funding. I hope that you find that truly distasteful, because I truly do.
This labour administration has worked diligently to deliver and support the residents that need our help, we have been the dented shield that has protected our residents.
We make the promise that we will continue to do whatever is in our remit and responsibility for the most vulnerable and needy in our society.
Sometimes this means taking decisions that people may disagree with, but I have always appreciated that.
Brent is a borough of ambition, aspiration and opportunity, that is what a good Labour council like Brent will deliver for its residents
I have answered your question; please feel free to post this on any site you wish to publish my response on; in the interests of transparency I hope unedited.
I look forward to hearing that you will be watching the next Cabinet meeting; it is a fantastic thing to see more people actively involved with local democracy.
Regards
Muhammed
Cllr Muhammed Butt
Leader of Brent Council.’
16 comments:
Butt didn't write a word of that.
FOR INFORMATION:
This is the reply to Cllr. Butt's email that I sent to him yesterday evening:-
'Dear Councillor Butt,
Thank you for your email, in response to my question.
Your email has been published online, in full and unedited, even though much of it was wider party political material on behalf of Brent Labour. In case you do not wish to read it on "Wembley Matters", I'm attaching a pdf copy of the article.
I can confirm I'm well aware that the Cecil Avenue site is part of the wider WHZ scheme, which also involves Ujima House.
The 54 homes at Ujima House, which will all be "affordable homes", only include 8 family-sized units. That site only has outline planning permission at present, and will require the demolition of the existing building, once it is vacant, before the new block can be commenced, so delivery of those homes is quite a long way off. That should be WHZ Phase 2.
The 250 homes at Cecil Avenue will be on a vacant site, which has had full planning consent for a year. That could be going ahead now, as WHZ Phase 1. Yet of the 250 homes on that site, 152 will go to a private developer (including 20 family-sized homes), and of the 98 "affordable" Council homes there, 61 are proposed to be "intermediate" (either intermediate rent levels or shared ownership), and only 37 will be for affordable rent.
You said that 'surely not even [I] can be against' ... 'people desperately in need of housing get[ting] safe secure housing'.
I would say: surely Brent Council can do better than just 37 out of 250 homes on its own Cecil Avenue Council housing development to be available as genuinely affordable rented housing for local people in desperate need!
The key point over Cecil Avenue in your reply was this:
'The Council needs to ensure the entire programme is financially viable within the GLA grant made available by the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, hence the requirement for a mixed tenure development in order to subsidise the delivery of the affordable elements.’
I find that "viability" excuse difficult to understand. Brent already owns the Cecil Avenue site, and has acquired Ujima House with a GLA grant. It has around £3m of the original GLA grant left over from that purchase, and the 16 August 2021 Report to Cabinet said that the GLA had agreed an additional £5.5m to help deliver the scheme.
Brent Council will be borrowing the money, at low interest rates, to build the WHZ homes, just as it would for any other Council housing scheme within its Housing Revenue Account, to provide homes for rent to Council tenants. So how could making Cecil Avenue a 100% Council homes scheme not be viable? Can you, or one of the Council Officers involved, explain that, please?
I have included some of these views in the blog which includes your reply. Best wishes,
Philip Grant.'
Last month Butt wrote "I do not read Wembley Matters, as I have found it to be completely biased"
Now he uses it for his Brent Labour propaganda!!!
Meanwhile Coplands Fields once Public Land prior to building of Ark Academy remains fenced completely and no access to residents of Wembley/Tokyngton.
So much for "Public accessible Open Space and Brents Healthy Green Agenda.
Considering Wembley Place was built with a deficit of 20% amenity space, and the new build having some tiny courtyard with a few trees is insufficient for the amount of properties being built, the whole thing is a shambles. With the number of reserved matters yet to be decided on both sites, it's a long way off from being developed.
what Cllr. Butt means by having people 'actively involved with local democracy' - is actively agreeing with him.
When his actions and those of his 'good labour administration .... turbo charged recovery' (sounds like PM Johnson) are plainly stupid and destroying the planet - its someone else's fault. Its Mayor Sadiq Kahn's funding, the Tory government's cuts etc. etc.
There seems to be plenty of money for tower blocks?
'Our commitment to the green agenda' is clearly parody - he has just cancelled the Healthy Neighbourhood Traffic schemes to avoid election meltdown and will reinstate them once the election is over - engage and interact with 'good' citizens of Brent - patronising.
So many similarities with the Tory Government - dogmatic policies irrespective of the damage to communities (Kilburn Village) and the planet and not enough honest Labour Councillors to oppose Mr. Butt just like the Tories who can't find enough letter writers for partygate.
Copelands Fields fate sounds like Granville Road Public Open Space (3/4 built on already by Granville New Homes), but 1/4 park retained and upgraded as part of the Masterplan of that time in 2010. This new public park has subsequently been locked up by Brent on/off ever since ( 1 year is the record public exclusion time), while in the new Brent Local Plan new little Granville POS is become a 'site allocation' for housing with no public open space replacement planning required.
Dickens and Austen Public Open Space, a great public recreation space for 47 years, has never as a use existed in any Brent plan and is to be housing built on again with no public open space replacement planning required (because it's very existence is denied by Brent politics).
Planning Inspectors find the above to be sound planning? Brent Equalities Duty is clearly in tatters? And the UK is indeed, a flawed (floored) democracy if you live in a Growth Area "we can do whatever we want zone" that is.
Last month Butt wrote "I do not read Wembley Matters, as I have found it to be completely biased"
Wembley Matters is not biased, it seems to be a fair reprentation of what residents actually thing of what is happening in Brent.
Butt and his sicophants that just don't care what residents think. Consequently the residents write to Wembley Matter in the hope that their voices will be heard by Butt & Co, obviously they hear, butt they don't like what they hear! Silly old us, the residents don't know what they are talking about do they? They only live here.
What a bunch of Garlighters we have as a Council. The sooner they are gone the better.
As an aside, property developers of various types in Brent have been building over 2,000 boxes a year for about 12 years, maybe more, and yet our homeless, those in temporary accomodation and those on the council house waiting list (this is meant to mean Social rent properties) have increased. That says to me that the model being employed by Ego Butt, Towerblock Tatler, Dr Mclannan plus the innefective Southwood of the afordable homes, sorry she meant council homes!!!!! Are driving poor old Brent into poverty and sub standard housing for the disadvantaged of Brent. I know they will tell us all about Garnville New Homes that they have just noticed are falling down, the blocks with inadequate fire breaks, dangerous cladding and may more defects are all wonderful quality homes with their brand new cheap kitchen and bathrooms, but they do look nice when they are new as can be seen when these Charletans do their little noticed PR events.
Several points. Firstly, Mohammed Butt writes of "affordable Council housing". I've no idea what that means, since "affordable" has become such a meaningless term with vastly different definitions. If he means Council rents at the same level as other Council properties in the borough, great, but its certainly not clear from what he says. Secondly, his passion for council housing rather comes and goes. Apart from the point that he rather evades the point by referring to 100% council housing when that only applies to one block, most of the additional housing built in South Kilburn under the regeneration scheme is for private ownership. Housing which has garages going for £25,000 p0.a. Cllr Butt has no qualms about that. Yet opportunistically he thinks he can attack those objecting to building on the Granville Centre green space claiming we are opposed to it because it is council housing. No, we are opposed to it because it means we lose what little green space Kilburn has, and restricts the uses a community centre can be put to. When many of us said the new build in South Kilburn should be 100% council housing (rather than a mixture of private and housing associations), losing council housing in the process, we didn't notice Councillor Butt supporting us. Just the opposite.
Butt will go down in history as the man who ruined Brent
Dear Pete (12 February at 18:41),
The affordable Council housing that Cllr. Butt is referring to at Cecil Avenue would be 37 homes at London Affordable Rent (which is higher than Social Rent levels) and 61 at either Intermediate Rent or for shared ownership (neither of which is actually affordable for most people in housing need). The other 152 homes on that site would be for private sale.
The homes that make up the rest of the 50% "affordable housing" for Brent's WHZ scheme will be 54 at London Affordable Rent in the block on the Ujima House site. That makes a total of 91, out of 304 in the WHZ scheme for affordable rents, which in my opinion is very poor for a Brent "Council Housing" development on Council owned land!
The term Council Housing in Brent no longer means housing at Social Rents, instead they are often almost Market Rents (dependant on housing allowance scales) or one of the various overtly expensive Affordable or Shared Ownership products, unless you are deemed a key workers for and by Brent Council when you get a sligtly more (cooked) affordable rent.
Cllr. Butt and his coterie of sicophants continue lying to us and cheating us, alongside looking after their friends the Developers. Cllr. Butt must know from reading the Brent Poverty Commission findings that only real Social Rents are affordable for most current residents of Brent, or perhaps he and his coterie didn't read the report.
I hear that Cllr. Butt doesn't read this blog so could someone let him know what a lot of Brent residents think of him and his cabal decisions.
Obviously they will continue to rely on anti Tory votes and those of the uninformed of Brent who struggle to make ends meet on a daily basis. You know, like the people living on the banks of the Grand Union Canal in Park Royal.
Thanks Phillip, that's what I feared in terms of Mo Butt's "affordable rents". He delights in trying to avoid the issue. Brent has been giving away Council property for years. Virtually all the regeneration that has happened in South Kilburn is to properties which were previously council housing. Now the vast majority are either Housing Association or private. Brent has zero control over what happened in the future on land it has given away.
I'm hoping to get "Council housing at Cecil Avenue" on the agenda for the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee meeting on 9 March.
If I'm successful in that, would anyone (Pete, Jane?) like their name on the list supporting my Deputation to speak at that meeting, challenging Brent's failure to provide sufficient affordable housing in its plans for Cecil Avenue?
Anonymous (13 February at 10:23) is clearly no fan of Cllr. Butt, and I have some sympathy for what he/she says.
This is part of his latest weekly message, issued in an official Brent Council publication, the "Your Brent" online weekly bulletin (paid for out of our Council Tax):-
'What the past two years has shown beyond doubt is the importance of good-quality affordable homes. We have committed to building 1,700 new council homes by 2028, and are working with developers to create 1,000 new affordable homes every year. We are also working hard to make the best use of homes we already have, making sure where possible that the right sized home goes to the family that needs it and coming down hard on rogue landlords, to ensure people in privately rented properties are safe and getting a good deal.'
These messages from the Leader of the Council, always with a photograph of Cllr. Butt, are part of the Council's PR spin to tell local residents what a good job they are doing.
People in the borough will probably assume that what they are reading is true, and that all these "good things" that they read about are the result of the efforts of Cllr. Butt and his team of Labour Cabinet members.
Readers of "Wembley Matters" will be sceptical, because they have access to articles which question the spin (I could almost say propaganda) which comes out of the Civic Centre on behalf of Cllr. Butt and Brent Labour.
How those who can see the reality of the situation in Brent can get their message out to the wider population, in time for any opposition candidates to stand a fair chance in the local elections in May, is a problem which needs to be solved, and quickly!
Cllr Muhammed Butt:
“… focussing on action and outcomes for today, to bring the future forward faster.”
Time-lording it up much?
File under: Empty sloganeering.
Personas aside, what happend to making desireable housing? These proposals are not dynamic .Not only does the asthetic make this area stark and stifling, Extending wembleys lego land cement blocks is what is truly distasteful!! Will there be any sky left?
This area is already soo overcrowded!!
How will infastructure support this??!
These theorys are all about money-and dont consider, life sustaining principles thinking of Ecosystem, Community, or Affordable living. Where is the local green /amenity space for all these new occupiers? This appears to ignore vital assets of what make communities prosperous - how do these people draw these conclusions? it seems disasterous!
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