Wembley Park planning application to build 31 storey and 18 storey building on Olympic Way college site to be heard at Planning Committee next week

 

The new buildings from Bobby Moore Bridge (Bridge Road opposite station)

The College of North West London building that will be demolished

 

 In 2017 I predicted that the merger of the College of North West London and City of Westminster College as United  Colleges would lead to deals involving their property portfolio but I rather underestimated the extent of change that this would involve. Will property deals follow CNWL and CWC merger?

In Brent the plan involve the sale of both College of North West London College sites (Wembley Park's Crescent House and Dudden Hill's College Park) for housing development with  the profit funding a new college building on Olympic Way/Fulton Road. This was  given planning permission in July 2023 on the site of the Olympic Office Centre, formerly the HQ of Network Housing.

 

New Wembley Park Campus building

Brent Council was involved via a loan given to United Colleges to help set up the deal. CNWL has already sold its Kilburn site and sold its other Wembley Park building to the Education Funding Agency to provide accommodation for Michaela School.

If your head is spinning perhaps this explanation from Brent Planning Officers will help:

Officers have carefully weighed up the conclusions drawn by the viability assessment and the policy requirement for the delivery the new college facility in order to enable the release these two sites for development. Officers also have attached weight to the benefits associated with the delivery of the new college. Officers consider that the inter-relationship between these two schemes and the delivery of the new college facility is material to the consideration of this application, and a Section 106 obligation will prevent the implementation of these two applications unless the construction of the new College building is going ahead.

 

It is therefore considered reasonable and appropriate for the Council to place weight on the financial contribution that the sale of these two sites will make towards the delivery of the new college building and officers have also evaluated the scheme on this basis. However, it is for the decision maker to determine what weight should be applied to the facilitating role that the sale of these sites play in the delivery of the new college facility.

 

Officers consider that this should be given substantial weight given that the new college facility cannot be delivered without the sale of these sites to the College, not only for financial reasons (as the sale is required to fund the college) but also for planning policy and legal reasons (as Section 106 obligations will prevent the implementation of these two applications, if approved, unless the new college facility is going ahead).

This is rather a lot of pressure on Planning Committee to agree the application, particularly as Brent Council helped facilitate the deal.

The impact of the 18 and 31 storey building on the views from Wembley Park Station and Bridge Road is enormous. It will loom in front of the more distant views along Olympic Way to the stadium as well as from vehicles travelling between Wembley Central and Wembley Park.

 

 The problem will the piecemeal approval of the various Wembley Park applications is that the wider context is not always evident. For example the view below doesn't show the tower blocks under construction at Wembley Park station  along Brook Road, opposite the proposed buildings. In the illustration you can barely see the station itself.

 

The pink buildings in the illustrations are buildings in the pipeline for the approved Fulton Quarter. This the area behind the college building made up of the Stadium Retail Park, McDonalds and the Troubadour Theatre. LINK

The Fulton Quarter will provide 995 homes.

I have tried to show the overall impact by roughly placing the two towers in context below. The numbers refer to the number of storeys in each block.

 

 The viability assessment referred to in the officers' remarks is about how much affordable housing can be supplied and still give the developer a return. The officers make the figures at Wembley Park more palatable by combining the two ex-college sites:

The affordable units classed as intermediate by officers are shared ownership. Not affordable for most Brent residents and the Council itself is aware of the product's shortcomings. See LINK.
 

It is surprising given the magnitude of this application that the Brent Planning Portal LINK states only 6 comments have been received. The only comment actually shown is from Ilford:

I object to this planning application for these two buildings of 18 and 31 storeys in height for various social, environmental, public health and fire safety reasons. For example Wembley has now seen more than enough high density housing schemes in recent years that has put an overall strain on local social infrastructure. Also the townscape has been greatly changed which has had an inevitable effect upon local heritage around here too. This particular housing scheme is also being funded by a private building firm so therefore these flats are highly unlikely to be genuinely affordable to local residents. Fire safety has to be another major consideration in planning terms especially with the tower block fires that we have seen across Greater London in recent years as well.

The application for the Dudden Hill College Green CNWL site will also be heard at the Planning Committee next week, December 11th. I will review that later. LINK