Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity-
The Scrutiny page on Brent Council’s website includes the following question and answer:
For the Scrutiny system to operate effectively, the information given to Scrutiny Committees by Cabinet members and Council Officers needs to be truthful. Within the Brent Members’ Code of Conduct, this is spelt out: ‘you must comply with the seven principles of conduct in public life set out in Appendix 1.’ The seven principles include “Honesty”, and “Accountability” which is defined as:
‘You should be accountable to the public for your actions and the manner in which you carry out your responsibilities, and should co-operate fully and honestly with any scrutiny appropriate to your particular office.’
Martin posted a blog article, “Cllr Tatler taken to task on regeneration issues”, following the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee meeting last Tuesday (23 April 2024). It included a video, taken from the Council’s webcast of the meeting, which I watched with interest.
I have tried several times, since January 2022, to get proper scrutiny of the August 2021 Cabinet decision to allow a developer to sell at least half of the homes at Brent’s Wembley Housing Zone (“WHZ”) development (including most at the more favourable Cecil Avenue site) for private profit. WHZ was in the first of the regeneration growth areas dealt with in the Officer Report to the Scrutiny Committee meeting:
When I heard what Cllr. Shama Tatler said about WHZ when addressing the meeting, I could hardly believe what I had heard. I submitted a short comment, saying: ‘I'm sure I heard Cllr. Tatler claim that Brent did.not own the Wembley Housing Zone land, which is why it was not viable to build more affordable housing there.’ I finished my comment with: ‘Was Cllr. Tatler being "economical with the truth"?’
After further research, I submitted a follow-up comment, which Martin has agreed to post as a separate item on Wembley Matters. This is what I wrote:
‘I asked above: 'Was Cllr. Tatler being "economical with the truth"?'
This was in relation to the Wembley Housing Zone, where I have been campaigning for more genuinely affordable housing, and writing guest posts about it, since August 2021.
I have gone back to the webcast, and transcribed what Cllr. Tatler said. Martin kindly sent me a document from a Brent Executive meeting in April 2014 on proposed land rationalisation at Copland Community School and adjacent lands.
This is the relevant extract from the webcast of Tuesday's Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee meeting, with Cllr. Tatler addressing the committee on Brent's regeneration schemes:
'With the Wembley Housing Zone, we didn't own the land. We had to purchase the land. That impacts viability as well. And we are looking at how we deal with affordable housing on the scheme. Ideally we would want to deliver 100% social housing on any of our land ....'
This is the key paragraph from the April 2014 Report to Brent's Executive (now Cabinet), whose recommendations were approved and put in place. CCS is Copland Community School, which had been served with an Academy Order by the Secretary of State, and the IEB is the Interim Executive Board, which Brent Council as Local Education Authority had put in place instead of CCS's previous governing body, to run the school until it was taken over by the Ark Academy group.
'CCS is a foundation school and therefore the land and buildings are mainly in the ownership of the school itself, the responsibility for which is vested in the IEB. The IEB has expressed agreement to transfer the freehold of the site which it currently owns to the Council instead, in order for the Council to rationalise the ownership and use of the site overall, ensuring an optimum footprint for the school. The ARK would under these proposals be granted a 125 year lease on the final school site.'
In the "Financial Implications" section of the Report, these were the key points from the proposals (which were approved and put in place):
'2. The IEB transfer to the Council the freehold interest in the CCS site at nil consideration.
3. The Council accepts a surrender of CCS’s leasehold interests at nil consideration.
5. The Council grants the ARK a short term lease of the existing CCS buildings at peppercorn rent.
7. The Council will grant the ARK a 125 year lease of the new school siteat a peppercorn rent.
8. The ARK will surrender the lease to the existing school at nil consideration.'
So, Brent became the freehold owners of all of the original Copland School site and playing fields in 2014, granting ARK a temporary lease of the original school buildings from 1 September 2014.
When the new school was built on the playing fields behind the original school buildings, Brent then granted ARK a 125 year lease for the new school site, BUT retained the freehold of the original Copland School land, now the Wembley Housing Zone Cecil Avenue site, at no cost to the Council.
The other, smaller, part of Brent's Wembley Housing Zone scheme, for which it received an £8m grant from the GLA in 2015, is Ujima House. Brent bought that office building in 2016, using £4.8m of the initial £8m GLA funding. It has since received further GLA funding to be used on affordable housing as part of the WHZ.
Cllr. Tatler DID mislead the Scrutiny Committee when she said that Brent
did not own the Wembley Housing Zone land and had to purchase it!’
Map showing the land around Copland School and its ownership, prior to
the rationalisation.
(From an Appendix to the Report to the April 2014
meeting of Brent’s Executive)
If there was any doubt about Brent Council’s ownership of the former Copland School site, the freehold of all the land hatched in green on the map above was transferred to Brent in 2014. The only land that Brent had to purchase for its WHZ scheme was the much smaller Ujima House site (which will provide 54 of the 291 WHZ homes, scheduled for completion in 2026).
Back in November 2021, Cllr. Tatler, in answer to a public question I had asked ahead of a Full Council meeting, said: ‘it is not financially viable to deliver all 250 homes at Cecil Avenue as socially rented housing.’ [Her scheme only delivered 37 affordable rented homes there then!]
Yet neither she, nor anyone else at Brent Council, has been willing or able to answer my question of why it would not be viable to build far more of the Cecil Avenue homes for genuinely affordable rent to Council tenants (see my January 2024 guest post for the latest figures), when the vacant site to build them on was already owned by Brent, they could have gone ahead with the development themselves as soon as they received full planning consent in February 2021, and interest rates were very low (and did not shoot up until autumn 2022).
Philip Grant.
12 comments:
So Cllr Tatler lied to Scrutiny and the residents of Brent, and someone is making a killing out of this, cos Brent surely ain't.
The London Borough of Bent
Can someone also scrutinise brent council various departments expenditures to dubious contracts avoiding the tender process at uncapped costs to the council pais monthly by the departments. Private companies given contracts under various different names when they are in fact one and the same belonging to the parent company. I am talking here more about the department responsible for administering and increasing the income for the council to be able to meet residents needs and not go buncrupt.
If Brent Council own the land i.e Copland Fields, then why are we the residents being denied access to this open green space?
I understood that this was always Council owned land and public had access to these fields long before the school was developed. I recall back in the mid 1990s when the original plans were submitted they were only to take 10% of the fields!
Considering most of the new builds in this area have below recommended amenity space, 2 Office Buildings within 200 metres of this space have been converted into Flats under permitted development (approx 70 in total) Lanmor House and Jenga Court (formerly Brent House Annexe) with no amenity space whatsoever, but they do have Car Parking spaces for up to 25 and 12 vehicles! and all rented at Full Market Rent, non affordable. Elizabeth House has 115 flats, underground Car Park and two small roof gardens, very little amenity space for the residents.
What does need to be scrutinised is "Car Free" developments along with lack of Social Housing in Council's development plans. The Council needs to audit how many of the residents of Wembley Place (formerly Brent House) signed up for Car Free and yet own vehicles? Many of which have found friends who own properties in the CPZ who are willing to let them apply and obtain Parking permits using their addresses, which kind of defeats the object.
I notice the active traffic bridge public right of way south indicated on the map. If there is no access to the green space, is this now designed as being down narrow easy to future block up alley ways south?
Its interesting how decision makers want car-free slab towers to be so segregated, disintegrated and cut-off. What's the ideology there/ where's the longevity thinking?
Ujima House is supposed to be all Social Housing, and work on demolition should have started in February 2024. Doesn't look like anything's happening anytime soon, Whats the hold up?
FOR INFORMATION:
I believe that if you feel strongly about something in Brent, you should share your views, politely and without being abusive, with the person concerned.
This is the full text of an open email I sent this morning to Councillor Shama Tatler (and copied to Councillor Rita Conneely, Chair of Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, for her information).
Subject: Incorrect statement on Wembley Housing Zone land at Scrutiny Committee on 23 April
'This is an Open Email
Dear Councillor Tatler,
You may recall that I have been taking a close interest in the lack of genuinely affordable housing at Brent Council's Cecil Avenue development, which comes under your Wembley Housing Zone regeneration portfolio, since August 2021.
I was therefore interested when the subject came up when you were speaking to the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee meeting last Tuesday (23 April) when they were considering Regeneration.
You stated (and I have transcribed this from the webcast of the meeting): 'With the Wembley Housing Zone, we didn't own the land. We had to purchase the land.'
That statement was untrue.
Brent Council did own the freehold of the Cecil Avenue site (which will provide 237 of the 291 WHZ homes). That land, which for a time had passed to Copland Community School when it was a foundation school, had come back to Brent Council ownership, for nil consideration, under a land rationalisation agreed in 2014.
The only WHZ land which Brent Council had to purchase was Ujima House (the smaller site, providing only 54 of the 291 WHZ homes), acquired in 2016 for £4.8m, and funded out of the £8m initially provided to Brent by the GLA for the Wembley Housing Zone.
I'm sure that you are at least as aware of those facts as I am, and yet you appear to have chosen to mislead the Scrutiny Committee, as part of seeking to justify the impact on viability which has led to the poor number of genuinely affordable homes homes for rent to Council tenants at your Wembley Housing Zone scheme.
I am bringing this to your attention, and the fact that the true position is now in the public domain*, so that you can write to the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee to correct the error in what you said above (and any other false information included in your statements to them on 23 April) and apologise for misleading them at their meeting.
I am copying this email to Councillor Conneely, the Committee Chair, for her information, and as it is an open email I will also include its text as a comment under the online blog post, which you can read via the "link" below. Yours sincerely,
Philip Grant.
* https://wembleymatters.blogspot.com/2024/04/regeneration-at-scrutiny-meeting-truth.html '
Dear Jaine (29 April at 09:53),
It appears that although Brent Council owns the freehold of Copland Fields, they included that land as part of the site which they leased to Ark Elvin Academy for 125 years, after the new school was built, apart from the southern end of the fields, which was used for the expansion of Brent's Elsley Primary School.
In answer to Anonymous (29 April at 13:29):
1) The 54 new homes on the Ujima House site, which will all be Brent Council homes (and therefore can be called "Social Housing") were meant to be all for letting to Council tenants at London Affordable Rent level ("LAR" - which is more that "social rent" level, but still regarded as "genuinely affordable housing").
That was changed last year, so that Brent now proposes only 32 of the Ujima House homes (including all eight "family-sized" flats, each with a tiny balcony) will be let at LAR, with the other 22 for Shared Ownership. See my July 2023 guest post for details:
https://wembleymatters.blogspot.com/2023/07/brents-wembley-housing-zone-some-good.html
2) I don't know why there is a hold up over the demolition of the existing Ujima House office building. Perhaps you could ask Cllr. Tatler, who should have the facts available to her as Wembley Housing Zone is her regeneration scheme?
Dear Philip
I am aware that both Elsley and St Josephs RC Schools under an old covenant had use of 1 x hectare each for 100 years. However, I would love to know why did the Council lease Coplands Fields to Ark Elvin when they do not use it. They have their MUGA's with fake grass. As it was Public Land should we not have had a public consultation before they gave it away and denied all the residents who used it for informal play i.e cricket, football, etc children to run around in? I note that in 1970s Brent was more than 50% green it's now down to around 14% and considering we have one of the highest obesity rates in the country for 10 year olds at 25% being overweight when leaving primary education. Perhaps we should get Councillor Tatler to read "Natural Englands" recommendations as to what all residents should be able to access Green Open Space if we are to create a much healhier society.
Its not just green open space needed!
We need an end to the constant polluting traffic jams in Wembley High Road, Ealing Road and Park Lane.
We need all the stalls, goods, signs and clutter which is illegally on the pavements removed.
We need more street trees.
These simple changes would encourage residents to walk in the local area building community spirit helping to get us fit.
The public good is a green active traffic superhighway being required in this plan, to meet new car-free traveller needs to scale and directly connect Wembley New Towers and Alperton New Towers cities, I guess Deloitte-led got in the way?
Grow needless congestion, whatever- so long that is as conservation areas are re-designed as being for conservation area car owners only.
Regarding getting fit and the concern about obese kids have you seen the latest advertising banners on the lamp posts in Wembley High Road advertising Walkers Crisps???
Seems that Brent Council are happy to take money to promote junk food to our kids 😞
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