Philip Grant's presentation to Scrutiny Committee was abandoned due to poor internet connections. Here it is:
The Poverty Commission Update report asks you to ‘Note progress on implementation of the Poverty Commission recommendations as agreed by Cabinet.’
You are a Scrutiny Committee, and you should be questioning this report, not just noting it. Please look at paragraph 3.7, on Housing. What progress has been made on that?
Lord Best’s Poverty Commission identified the cost of housing as a major contributor to poverty in Brent, and recommended a substantial increase in investment in social housing.
Brent’s Cabinet agreed Recommendation 4, which said: ‘We recommend that in pursuing its strategic target to secure 50% of new homes as affordable, Brent gives special consideration to achieving more social rented homes.’
Yet you look at “Housing” in the Update report, and there is not a single mention of social rented homes!
The Update report says that the Council is making great progress with its New Council Homes programme, but how many of those homes are genuinely new homes for people on the housing waiting list?
Of the 655 homes already delivered, 209 at Gloucester & Durham in South Kilburn are actually replacement homes for tenants whose flats were demolished to make way for that development.
Of the homes delivered or ‘onsite’, 92 at Knowles House are for temporary accommodation, not permanent Council homes.
At Grand Union in Alperton, the figures include 23 for shared ownership. The 92 rented Council homes there will be for London Affordable Rent, which is higher than social rent levels.
If you ask how many of the New Council Homes Brent says it can deliver by 2024 will be at social rent levels, I think you’ll find the answer is “none”.
One place where Brent could increase investment in social housing is the former Copland School site. It is vacant land, owned by the Council, which has had full planning permission to build 250 homes there for over a year.
I wrote to Cabinet members last August, when that item was on their agenda, urging them to fulfil their Poverty Commission promises, and make at least some of this development homes for social rent.
Instead, they approved a proposal which allows 152 of the new homes there to be sold privately. Of the 98 Council homes, 61 would be for shared ownership, and only 37 for London Affordable Rent.
Overall, the Wembley Housing Zone scheme claims to provide 50% “affordable housing”. But the balance of that is 54 flats at London Affordable Rent level on the Ujima House site, and only 8 of those would be family-sized homes.
There would be NO social rented homes. That’s the reality hidden in this Poverty Commission Update.
You, as a Scrutiny Committee, need to challenge that, and demand that Brent Council does better.
You can recommend that in meeting its Poverty Commission commitments, it should invest in more social rent housing as part of the New Council Homes programme, including at its Cecil Avenue development.
Thank you for listening to me. I’d be happy to answer any questions.
8 comments:
According to the Kilburn Times, Brent has just purchased a site Edgware Road Colindale Growth Area for an 18 storey tower (110 flats), short-term rents or 125 year leases for families on its housing waiting list. The purchase cost is not revealed under Local Government Act 1972.
While the Architects Journal claims that Unity Place, Brent purchased and all at London affordable rent was used to also house families from throughout Brent. No wonder then that Kilburn Growth Area life is continued brutal sanctions and destroy all infrastructure into new 'sites'- a toxic policy approach too given that regeneration estate turmoil and trauma has been for 20 years already and the new 'redevelopment plan' announces another added 15 years of 'sites' and market land war. What happened to Brent as considerate Master Developer?
Martin has sent me a copy of a "tweet" about my Deputation above, from "Life in Kilburn".
I am happy to acknowledge that information I used about Brent's claims about its 1000 New Council Homes came from their excellent blog article last September:
https://lifeinkilburn.com/brent-council-1000-new-council-homes-programme/
They had to use Freedom of Information Act requests to get the facts behind Brent Councils PR "spin" (producing information which showed that only around 44% of these homes would actually be new homes available for rent by people on the Council's housing waiting list).
My Deputation was aimed at showing how the "Housing" section of the Poverty Commission Update was also "spin", which concealed Brent's failure to act on the recommendation that the Council should concentrate on, and invest in, social rent housing.
The report to Scrutiny Committee tried to use its "1000 New Council Homes" claims to hide its failure over social rented homes. My Deputation sought to challenge, and to get Scrutiny committee members to challenge, the misleading information which Cabinet members and Senior Council Officers have been peddling, to the public and backbench councillors.
I had hoped, and had been trying since January, to get a Scrutiny Committee to investigate "Council Housing at Cecil Avenue". I was not able to do that.
However, when the Poverty Commission Update was on the agenda, that did give me an opportunity to raise the former Copland School site, as part of a wider response on the housing part of that Report.
My initial involvement with that (what should be) Council housing development was to ask the Cabinet in August 2021 to include social rent housing as part of it, following their agreement to the Brent Poverty Commission recommendations a year earlier:
https://wembleymatters.blogspot.com/2021/08/wembley-housing-zone-is-this-answer-to.html
If you travelled back in time to say the 2002 Local Elections in Brent, the South Kilburn Estate was an entirely council owned and managed public need met, communal asset and public good. Estate votes counted and local people were grudgingly engaged with even though Brent policy overall was to intensive neglect, mis-manage and abuse this estate as preparation for its becoming 48 hectares of brownfield surplus land fire sale to private market. Estate built diverse communal land uses being mainly not registered at the UK Land Registry where South Kilburn land uses were pre 1947, and quite literally as if this estate was simply never built by its lucky cash-it-all- in landowner Brent!
For May 2022 Brent Local Elections a radically changed social situation prevails where South Kilburn is become a Corporatist Colony of authoritarian, " we can do whatever we want"/ "let development decide", where siloed population is innovatively farmed and intensively extracted from. Corporate private enclosures of ever escalating service charges and roads only funded by road tax, mean that most tax and council collected from this zones emerging mega population density is become sovereign tribute to spend elsewhere on UK lives that matter.
Local councilors and Local MP have literally "given-up on South Kilburn" long ago and extreme sanctions and continued infrastructure destruction prevails. This 48 hectares Growth Area Tall Building Zone extraction machine for global capital is interesting in terms of the civil and democratic UK rhetoric currently being fired at the Russia Ukraine War. What is happening six kilometers from Parliament is much further away than Ukraine, and war refugees must hope that their fate is not to be trapped in such a Corporatist (Level/ Tower Up) Colonial play zone as third class UK subjects.
FOR INFORMATION:
This is the text of an email I have sent today, under the heading "Response to my (written) Deputation of 9 March on the Poverty Commission Update":-
'Dear Councillor Mashari (and Councillor Southwood),
I understood that a written answer would be provided (to me and to committee members) to the deputation on the Poverty Commission Update which I was unable to present properly to your Resources & Public Realm Scrutiny Committee meeting on 9 March, because of technical problems with the zoom link.
I also understood that the reply would come from Councillor Southwood, as my deputation focused on the "Housing" section of the Update report your committee were considering.
Two weeks on, I have still to receive that written answer, or any communication from Brent about it. I hope that Councillor Southwood can now provide that written answer, please, before matters get forgotten in the run up to the local elections on 5 May.
If that written answer is not yet ready, I would ask one of you, or Mr Kinsella, to let me know when it will be provided. Thank you. Best wishes,
Philip Grant.'
FOR INFORMATION 2:
I received a reply from Councillor Mashari to my email above at lunchtime today. This is what she wrote:
'Dear Mr Grant
Thank you for your email.
Unfortunately it was not possible to hear your deputation at the meeting and you were invited to submit your contribution in writing.
I have checked my records and your email today appears to be the first I have seen of your full written deputation. Please do let me know if you have sent it previously and to which email address.
Now that I am in receipt of your full written deputation, I will endeavour to ensure you receive a full response as soon as possible, at the latest within the next ten working days.
With kind regards
Cllr Roxanne Mashari'
FOR INFORMATION 3:
It is a shame when you can't trust what you are told in an email from Brent Council or its members (see FOR INFORMATION 2 above). This is the reply I have just sent to Cllr. Roxanne Mashari:
'Dear Councillor Mashari,
Thank you for your email, and your assurance that you will endeavour to ensure that I receive a full response to my deputation. I hope that Cllr. Southwood, and the Council Officers involved will actually ensure that I do.
I'm surprised by your claim that my email today was the first time you had seen my full written deputation.
The document I sent today was exactly the same one that I sent to you, and all members of the Resources & Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, at your official Brent councillor email addresses, attached to an email (with a copy to Mr Kinsella, which he acknowledged) headed "My deputation on Poverty Commission Update". I wrote that email shortly after I had been cut off from the zoom link to your meeting on 9 March, and sent it at 9.18pm that evening.
I also sent the full text of my deputation to Martin Francis, at "Wembley Matters", and as he was following the meeting online and saw that I had not been able to present it properly to your committee, he immediately published the full deputation online at 21:22hrs on 9 March, under the heading "Philip Grant’s Deputation for Scrutiny Committee: item 9 – Poverty Commission Update":
https://wembleymatters.blogspot.com/2022/03/philip-grants-deputation-for-scrutiny.html
I do not know at what time he "tweeted" a link to that post, but the following morning (10 March at 9.20am) he sent a screenshot of your own response on Twitter to the full text of my deputation being available to read online:
Screen shot of Cllr. Mashari's tweet re deputation (This began with a heart emoji, and said Roxanne Mashari 'liked your Tweet' - the "tweet" from Wembley Matters that she liked said: 'Philip Grant's Deputation for Scrutiny Committee re. Poverty Commission and social housing - read it here.')
I hope that this information clarifies why I was disappointed that I had not received the written response to my deputation, two weeks after the full text of it was available to you and Brent Council.
I look forward to receiving the promised full written response to my deputation at an early date. Best wishes,
Philip Grant.'
FOR INFORMATION 4:
There has been another brief exchange of emails between Cllr. Mashari and myself today.
Is it just me that Brent Council's communications systems appear to have a vendetta against (because someone at the Civic Centre doesn't want councillors to know my views?), or do others have similar problems?
'Hi Phillip
Like I say unfortunately this is the first time I’ve received this by email so I’m not sure what’s happened there. Will get a response to you asap.
Best wishes
Cllr Roxanne Mashari'
'Dear Cllr. Mashari,
Noted, thank you.
Something has definitely gone wrong with Brent Council's systems when there is a "dodgy" link on zoom to a Committee meeting*, then an email sent to councillors at their official Brent addresses is not delivered! Best wishes,
Philip Grant.
* I have used exactly the same equipment (laptop and headset) for a subsequent zoom meeting, without any problems.'
FOR INFORMATION (AGAIN!)
Further to FOR INFORMATION 2 & 3 above, I have had to chase up for a response again:-
'Dear Councillor Mashari,
I refer to our exchange of emails on 23 March, about my "Poverty Commission Update" deputation on 9 March. You said you would seek to ensure that I received 'a full response as soon as possible, at the latest within the next ten working days.'
I regret to say that, ten working days later, and four weeks after a document copy of my deputation was sent to Brent Council, I have still to receive that response from Cllr. Southwood, or from a Senior Council Officer on her behalf.
Dear Councillor Southwood,
I raised some important points in my deputation, about Brent Council's failure to honour the Poverty Commission recommendations over investment in social housing, and the attempt to hide that failure in the Report to Resources & Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, behind misleading claims over the number of Council homes it has built.
The points I raised are in the public domain, and I would have thought that you would want your answers to them similarly available. The first R&PR Scrutiny Committee meeting of the new Council also deserves to have those answers available to it.
Please let me have the Council's full response (either from you, or from a Senior Council Officer) without further delay. Thank you. Best wishes,
Philip Grant.'
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