Wednesday 12 October 2022

Brent’s Affordable Council Housing – the promises and the reality

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity.




This image is a screenshot from a video featuring Cllr. Promise Knight, Brent’s Cabinet Lead Member for Housing, Homelessness and Renters’ Security, which was produced by a PR company to promote the Council’s “infill” housing scheme for Clement Close. The video was shared in Martin’s blog about residents’ opposition to Brent’s plans, in July 2022.

 

My use of images from that video in this guest post is not intended as a personal attack on Cllr. Knight. Her words in the video are official Brent Council housing policy, which she may have been reading from an autocue, and I don’t doubt that she believes them to be true.

 

I’m writing this blog as a follow-up to one last month, “Scrutiny – What Scrutiny?”, after my expectation that concerns over Brent’s Cecil Avenue housing scheme (raised in a deputation on 9 March 2022) would be considered at the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee meeting on 6 September were dashed in a single sentence from the Chair, Cllr. Rita Conneely:

 

‘I’ve received information which reassures us about the accuracy and the quality of the information that was presented to the Scrutiny Committee.’

 

The only information I was aware of which had been presented to the Committee was a written response, sent from a Council Officer two months after my deputation, which made no reference to the Cecil Avenue housing scheme part of it. Cllr. Conneely’s sentence referred to two lots of ‘information’, so I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for both of those, and have now received two documents in response to it.

 

I will ask Martin to attach these. The first includes the “Housing” section of the original “Poverty Commission Update” report, my deputation and the Council’s response to it, and then refers to information about the Cecil Avenue scheme which the Council had sent to me, and had not previously provided to the Committee. There is no indication of when this was supplied to them, and whether this was to all members, or just to the Chair.

 

  

Information reassuring the Committee that Brent had provide information to me!

 

After that brief “note”, it sets out the text of an email which Cllr. Promise Knight sent to me on 13 July 2022. I must apologise to Cllr. Knight, and to “Wembley Matters” readers, as I’d said I would share her reply with you. I thought I had done, but I’ve now found my “possible guest blog” document, unfinished and never submitted to Martin! Here is what she wrote:

 

‘Thank you for your email regarding the proposed development of the Cecil Avenue site. It is my understanding that you asked similar questions at Full Council of November 2021 and received a written response.

 

In summary, the Cabinet report of August 2021 that considered proposed developments in Wembley Housing Zone set out the position. 

 

Brent Council signed funding agreements with the GLA in 2016 and 2018, securing £8m grant to deliver 215 affordable homes across six sites within the WHZ by 2025, through a rolling programme of acquisition and development, and used £4.8m grant to acquire Ujima House. 

 

Heads of terms were subsequently agreed with the GLA to amend the existing WHZ funding agreement to refocus the £8m grant to deliver 152 affordable homes solely on the two council-owned Cecil Avenue and Ujima House sites. 50% affordable housing is proposed across the two sites, with London Affordable Rent homes, increasing the amount and affordability of affordable housing above minimum levels secured at planning. The development will also include workspace to support job creation and economic growth, community space, highway and public realm improvements and new publicly accessible open space. Reviewing the WHZ financial viability, the GLA also agreed in principle an additional £5.5m grant to deliver the scheme.

 

The council can also use its own capital, secured via ‘prudential borrowing’ in order to deliver additional affordable housing. Each opportunity to deliver housing is considered on its individual merits via development appraisals that assess a number of variables per site that ultimately evaluate viability. The intention of the council is to maximise the availability of affordable housing across the borough while ensuring that the proposals represent good value for the council and that borrowing is sustainable. The Council needs to ensure the entire programme is financially viable within the GLA grant available hence the requirement for a mixed tenure development in order to subsidise the delivery of the affordable elements.’

 

Although Cllr. Knight’s email gave more financial details than had previously been supplied to me, it does contain errors. The 50% affordable housing (which is what private developers are meant to provide) is not proposed to be all at London Affordable Rent. Sixty-one of the 98 “affordable” homes the Council intends to retain at Cecil Avenue (after transferring 152 other homes to a developer, for private sale) are to be for shared ownership or “Intermediate Rent”.

 

And my 9 March deputation to R&PR Scrutiny Committee (and follow-up emails to the Chair) urged the Committee to challenge the viability (they could get the details of this, while I’m not allowed to see them because of “confidentiality”), and to question Cabinet Members and Senior Officers as to why they cannot provide more genuinely affordable homes on the former Copland School site.

 

 

I’ll go back to what Cllr. Knight said in her Clement Close video, using images from it (with several lines of text edited into a single picture, for ease of reading). One of the main arguments used by the Council for why it needs to build so many new homes is:-

 


 

They make much of their “Brent Labour” promise of 1,000 new Council homes by 2024 (although a September 2021 “Life in Kilburn” blog showed that many of these would not be for households in temporary accommodation, or on the Council’s housing waiting list):-

 


 

And now the key point, used to justify the many “infill” schemes on existing Council estates:-

 


 

The former Copland School site at Cecil Avenue is a large piece of vacant Brent Council-owned, brownfield land in Wembley. The Council has had planning permission to build 250 homes there since February 2021. What an opportunity to make the most of that, and deliver a quarter of the entire 1,000 new Council homes target, in just one project! 

 

Work could already be underway (they currently don’t expect to “start on site” until next year) to deliver those homes, yet the Cabinet and Council Officers seem fixated on pushing through lots of smaller “infill” projects, against the wishes of many existing residents.

 

The second document which the Chair of R&PR Scrutiny Committee had received, headed ‘Mr Grant Clarification’, is unsigned and undated. It sets out ‘the current position’, and there has been a significant change from the written response sent to me last May. My deputation pointed out that the Report on progress in meeting the Poverty Commission recommendations (which Cabinet had accepted in September 2020) made no mention of social rented homes.

 

The Brent Poverty Commission recommendation for ‘more social rented homes’.

 

In May I was told:

 

‘In 2021, following discussions with the GLA the council received £111m of GLA grant, this falls within the 2021 – 2028 programme and will allow the council to build 701 Social rented homes, which are currently in development and feasibility stages. Delivering social rented homes remains a major priority of the council.’

 

This is in line with what both Brent and the GLA were saying last year:

 

 

The “Clarification” document now says:

 

‘The Poverty Commission report stated that the council is on track to deliver more than 1000 council homes by 2024 and a further 701 council homes by 2028. These are intended to be provided at London Affordable Rent levels.

 

Although both Social Rent and London Affordable Rent (“LAR”) are classed as “genuinely affordable”, they are different, as I pointed out in a guest post in July. Even if Brent Council were to charge the maximum “rent capped” amount for Social Rent (which it does not have to), this is still cheaper than LAR. My ongoing dispute with the Council over the rents for two new Council homes at Rokesby Place, which were wrongly changed from Social Rent to LAR (by Planning Officers!), showed that the tenant of each four-bedroom home would have to pay £772.20 a year more (on 2022/23 figures) if the tenure was LAR.

 

The second document also suggests that Brent is likely to include more ‘intermediate housing (for example shared ownership)’ as part of the so-called “affordable” housing that it builds. It is already going down that road, both at Watling Gardens, where Cabinet approved a change of 24 homes from LAR to shared ownership in June, and in its Cecil Avenue proposals.

 

A placard from a demonstration against Shared Ownership.

 

But the Advertising Standards Authority has recently ruled that shared ownership cannot be described as “part rent, part buy”. Legally it is just an “assured tenancy”, which has been dressed-up as home ownership for political purposes. The rent rises each year are not “capped” (as Social Rent and LAR levels are). If the “owner” of a “share” defaults on their rent (or service charges) their home could be repossessed, and they would lose all the money they have paid for their “share” of the property.

 

And, shared ownership is NOT affordable to most Brent households living in temporary accommodation, or on the Council’s housing waiting list!

 

The direction that Brent Council is travelling over its provision of New Council Homes is moving away from what the 2020 Brent Poverty Commission Report showed was needed. It found:

 

‘More than 90% of couples or lone parents with two children cannot afford LB Brent social rents, and no family with two children (whether couple or lone parent) can afford any rent that is more expensive than LB Brent social rents.’

 

If that is true, then why is Brent not building affordable homes for Social Rent?

 

Philip Grant.

 



12 comments:

David Walton said...


With Brent Growth, Growth, Growth red line zoned and segregated (see Brent Local Plan).

Building homes and re-locating schools onto the now very few remaining public open spaces of the South Kilburn Growth (car-free flats, no- gardens, double the vehicle roads, 5 times its 2001 population by 2041) during an ongoing pandemic crisis is Council infill uncare and anti-health and wellbeing in the extreme zoned.

GLA funding supports Bad Growth, Growth, Growth as long as it's contained and zoned?

Anonymous said...

Have you ever seen such a glum person as Ms Knight, mind you she has to deal with Butt and Co.

Anonymous said...

Temporary Accomodation in Brent is never Temporary despite bidding on Locata for a permanent home, it took 20 years to be housed in Social Housing. Only now can I afford to pay my rent in full without the need of Housing Benefit Assistance, and my 2 oldest children have now left home.

Mr Grant is right, London Affordable Rent is not affordable to the majority of people on the Council waiting list.

Anonymous said...

That's not her glum face - it's meant to be her sincerity face!!!

Paul Lorber said...

The problem with Brnet Council is that it is allowing the building of the 'wrong' type of homes rather than the types of homes needed for local people. Developers have (and continue) to be allowed to build 'student accommodation' well beyond local needs. This type of blocks are clearly profitable for the many off shore investment companies so they get away with building as many as they want.

If there was a genuine "Local" Plan produced by Brent Council then that plan would focus on real "local needs"

Truly affordable homes for people in temporary accommodation and those in need stuck for years on the waiting list and specially adapted homes for disabled people stuck in unsuitable homes because of existing shortage.

After 12 years in control sadly under the present leadership - Brent is simply failing to deliver for local people. Disasters like the stated overspend £2.5 million on the relatively small Learie Constantine housing project in Willesden is another scandal of wasted public money which does not help.

Philip Grant said...

FOR INFORMATION:
This is the text of an email that I sent to Cllr. Promise Knight this morning, under the heading 'Brent's Affordable Council Housing - the Promises and the Reality':-

'Dear Councillor Knight,

An article I wrote, with that title, was published on "Wembley Matters" during the week, while I was away from London with limited internet access:
https://wembleymatters.blogspot.com/2022/10/brents-affordable-council-housing.html

My "guest blog" includes several images of you from your Clement Close video, which I've made clear is not intended as a personal attack, and an apology to you for failing to publish your response to me over the Council's Cecil Avenue project, when I received it in July 2022.

The main themes of my article are Brent's failure to provide new homes for Social Rent, and the Council's moves towards more Shared Ownership homes, which are neither affordable, nor a safe housing product for Brent households in housing need.

I hope that you will read the article, and reflect on it. If you would like to exercise a "right of reply", either as a comment under my article or as a "guest blog", I am confident that Martin, the "Wembley Matters" editor, would be willing to publish it. Best wishes,

Philip Grant.'

Anonymous said...

Smoke and mirrors by Brent Council in a relentless pursuit to do whatever they want without regard to the welfare and concerns of existing residents - it's a real shame when truth, concern and justice are abandoned in all such political power plays

Anonymous said...

Promise knight is a robot with 0 concern and 0 compassion for residents in Brent that have had to deal with her fake promises . Who chose her to head these Infill projects ... seriously she is so full of the jargon that she believes when it comes to speaking to residents on video and in person that it makes you think everyone who works for Brent Council got there job through contacts not on merit as a suitable candidate to represent the average resident.

Philip Grant said...

Further to my "For Information" comment above (15 October at 10:22), I have received a short acknowledgement email from Cllr. Promise Knight:
'Philip - Noted. Many Thanks.'

We must wait and she if she replies further to my article.

Philip Grant said...

At yesterday's Cabinet meeting, Brent's Director of Finance said that a year ago Brent could borrow money for Capital projects at an interest rate of 2% a year. Last week, that rate had gone up to 5.5%.

If Brent Council had got on with building the 250 homes on the vacant Council-owned former Copland School site at Cecil Avenue in Wembley last year, after they received full planning permission in February 2021, 2% interest is what the Council's Housing Revenue Account would be paying on the loan.

Instead, on the advice of Council Officers (based on discussions with the Leader and other key Cabinet members in 2020) in August 2021 Cabinet approved plans to involve a private developer partner in the project and allow that developer to sell 152 of the homes privately, for profit.

Because of the delays in sorting out the complex legal arrangements for a scheme of that sort, and then advertising for a potential developer partner (six months ago), Brent has still not entered into a contract to build the Cecil Avenue homes (as part of a joint Wembley Housing Zone development with Ujima House).

The August 2021 Cabinet decision included that only 37 of the 98 "affordable" homes the Council would retain at Cecil Avenue would be for London Affordable Rent, with the rest as "Intermediate" housing (probably shared ownership). They claimed that this was the best they could offer, because of "viability", but refused to make public their viability calculations.

Now, because the borrowing cost has gone up so much, as a result of their self-imposed delay, they will probably claim that they have to sell off even more of the homes privately, or convert some or all of the meagre 37 London Affordable Rent homes to shared ownership.

The "genuinely affordable" homes on Brent Council's Cecil Avenue development were already going to be less than 15% of the total. Now, once they are finally built (unlikely to be before 2025, at the earliest) there may be none at all. So much for the promise to build 'genuinely affordable housing for families in Brent'!

Martin Francis said...

Comment edited to conform to the guidelines:

I know a gentleman single parent for 4 children aged between 8 and 18 linmvung in emergency accommodation for the past two years costing Brent over £3500 a month This family have Bern trying to get a temporary accommodation from the council for the past year and they cannot...currently living in an emergency accomodation with total strangers with all sorts I'd ussues divided between upstairs and downstairs.

Philip Grant said...

In this week's "Your Brent" newsletter (propaganda vehicle?), received by email today, Cllr. Muhammed Butt says:

'our ambitions for Brent regrettably diminish in line with inflation and this means we must be honest that there are some things we won’t be able to do as quickly as we would like to.

One example is our new council homes programme. The price of building new homes has shot up with the price of timber, concrete and labour all going through the roof. This means some of our housing projects are at risk of becoming unaffordable and unless inflation drops, we will need to go back to the drawing board and find new ways of delivering these homes within increasingly stretched budgets.

Rest assured, we will do everything in our power to deliver the genuinely affordable homes we know people desperately need. I firmly believe a safe, secure home is the foundation for every family to build upon, however it may just take us a little longer to hand over the keys.'

If Cllr Butt and his colleagues had challenged the recommendations Senior Officers had made to them over the Cecil Avenue housing scheme during 2020 and up to the formal Cabinet decision in August 2021, 250 genuinely affordable Council homes for rent could have been under construction now!

Instead, they chose to delay things by going for a scheme that involved finding a "developer partner", allowing that developer to have 152 of the homes (including 20 family-sized homes) to sell for profit, and only providing 37 of the 250 homes the Council will build on the site as "genuinely affordable" London Affordable Rent properties.

Now, with rising costs on the borrowing for the scheme, and the materials, labour etc. there may be even fewer genuinely affordable homes on this Wembley High Road site, if it even goes ahead as planned.

'We will do everything in our power to deliver the genuinely affordable homes we know people desperately need.' You certainly missed your chance to do that at Cecil Avenue, Cllr. Butt!