Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity
Aerial view of the 1 Morland Gardens site. (From Google Maps satellite view)
In a guest post on 18 September, Morland Gardens – Why no progress? , I published the text of an open email I’d sent to Brent’s Chief Executive and Head of Capital Delivery. It was the anniversary of a petition I had presented at the September 2025 Full Council meeting, on behalf of Willesden Local History Society, calling on the Council and its Cabinet to retain the 150-year old heritage Victorian villa, “Altamira”, as part of its redevelopment of the former Brent Start college site at 1 Morland Gardens in Stonebridge. Despite Officers beginning a review of plans for the site in November 2023, after their flawed original planning consent had expired, no plans had yet been brought forward.
When the Council is publicly questioned in this way, it is only fair to publish their reply, and this is the full text of the response I received at the end of September:
‘Dear Mr Grant
RE: Request for update on plans for 1 Morland Gardens
Thank you for your open email dated 15 September 2026 addressed to the council’s Chief Executive and myself, regarding an update on plans for 1 Morland Gardens.
Since my last response in November 2025, the council has carried out a number of actions to progress a proposed development at 1 Morland Gardens. This includes:
1. Continued engagement with youth organisations
2. Submission to the Greater London Authority (GLA) for funding from the 2026 –
2036 Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP)
3. Feasibility commission
1. Youth Engagement
Council officers continue to engage with youth organisations to develop the youth facilities offer at Morland Gardens and to understand how the building could meet the needs of young people living in Stonebridge and across the borough. This is being fed into the feasibility work discussed below.
2. SAHP Application
In February 2026, the GLA launched the London component of the SAHP, requesting affordable housing delivery partners to submit proposals for a programme of affordable homes delivery over the next decade. The council has submitted an ambitious delivery programme of 1,300 affordable homes of which Morland Gardens is part of this submission. We have included for 65 social rent homes, the same number as was proposed for the previous scheme at the site. We understand from the GLA that delivery partners will be told imminently on the outcome of their bids. In the interim, the council has included affordable homes within the facility mix to be reviewed as part of the feasibility commission described below. Whilst this indicates our intentions, the plans are heavily dependent on securing grant funding from the GLA.
3. Feasibility Commission
The council has commissioned Mott MacDonald to undertake a feasibility study into providing a mixed-use development at Morland Gardens, including provision for youth facilities, Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and affordable homes. This work is looking at a variety of options which includes the retention of the Altamira and is expected to conclude towards the end of October which may coincide with the SAHP bid outcome announcement.
Therefore, the council is not currently able to confirm whether it intends on retaining the Altamira building or not. However, the council is progressing options for the scheme and will review the feasibility work, the outcome of the SAHP bid, review viability implications and funding mechanisms before proposing a capital delivery project for Cabinet’s consideration. This is expected in the new year and I will let you know when any decision is placed on the council’s Forward Plan.
You kindly issued the article by Mark Sabolch back in August 2024 and feel free to share my contact details with Mr Sabolch should he wish to include the building in the London leg of his tour looking at heritage buildings in the UK that inspired the designs of Australian architects in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Thank you for your enquiry and please let me know should you have any further queries.
Regards
Head of Capital Delivery’
While I am pleased that some progress has been made, I do have concerns over the chances of the heritage asset being retained, despite the statement that this is one of the options being considered as part of the “Feasibility Commission”. It will be great if the Council can get funding for genuinely affordable ‘social rent homes’ from the GLA’s 2026-2036 Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP), but the Brent’s bid for the money is based on 65 homes for this site.
As the email above says, sixty-five homes is ‘the same number as was proposed for the previous scheme’. One of the main reasons the original 2020 planning consent failed is that the proposed site included not just the land at 1 Morland Gardens, but also the Harlesden City Challenge Community Garden land in front of it. The Council had no legal right to build on that extra land, and it failed in its attempt to obtain that right! That extra land would have been part of the footprint for the ten-storey tower block where many of the 65 homes would have been built, and the building would have been so close to the major road junction of Hillside with Brentfield Road (one of the worst air pollution locations in Brent) that the windows on the lower floors would have to be fixed closed, with artificial ventilation provided.
Architect’s drawing of the proposed 2020 Morland Gardens building, with my speech bubble added.
Realistically, I don’t believe it would be possible to include 65 homes on the 1 Morland Gardens site without demolishing the Victorian villa. If the consultants, Mott MacDonald, have been told by Brent that a scheme must deliver that number of homes, or a figure close to it, they will come back with a report which says it would not be feasible to retain the locally listed heritage building. Is that what Council Officers (and the Cabinet members they will have spoken with about the future of the site) want the outcome to be?
Philip Grant.
16 comments:
I like Mr Grant, but I want to hear more a statement from Brent Greens on the vote for the destruction of Israel. Hackney issued a statement in support. Another Green joint run council, (Lambeth?) issued a statement against. Where do Brent Greens stand?
As already said, go to Carlton-Granville Centre and take a look at what is happening there- the before and the after.
Its being towered away incrementally as part of the ongoing Neighbourhood Denial process in South Kilburn.
Why does Butt hate this building and memorial garden so much? Of course we know that the Commercial Lobbyist Councillor will do anything to build unwanted flats to make profits for the banks and developers, while chanting Build Baby Build in his red MAGA baseball cap.
FOR INFORMATION:
I sent a follow-up email to Brent's Head of Capital Delivery yesterday, requesting answers on two points:-
1) I hope that Brent Council can get some funding from the GLA's SAHP programme to help finance genuinely affordable homes to rent for local people in housing need, but I was concerned to read that your bid for 1 Morland Gardens has included '65 social rent homes, the same number as was proposed for the previous scheme at the site.' The failed "previous scheme" included construction of a block of flats on land outside 1 Morland Gardens (the Harlesden City Challenge Community Garden) which Brent did not have the legal right to build on, and the demolition of the Victorian heritage building. Please explain why, in these circumstances, a figure of 65 homes at 1 Morland Gardens was chosen for inclusion in the Council's submission to the GLA.
2) Your response made no mention of any remedial work on the fabric of the Victorian villa, despite the problem with the missing roof slates having been reported to you a number of times over several years. What action, if any, has been taken, or is in hand, to stop the deterioration of the fabric of this Council-owned heritage asset, before another winter sets in?
I also submitted a Freedom of Information Act request, seeking details about Brent's instructions to Mott MacDonald for the feasibility study, and what documents and information were provided to them about 1 Morland Gardens, in order for them to carry out the study and report back to the Council.
It may be that everything to do with the feasibility study was properly carried out, so that an independent assessment could be produced. However, based on some past experience with Brent Council, I felt the need to check this for myself.
Outside consultants are sometimes paid large sums of public money, but only given the information which can lead to just one conclusion, the one that the public body paying them wants them to supply! If that looks like the case here, you will certainly hear more from me about it.
London Borough of Bent
Could developer bit-by-bit, bite-by-bite Stonebridge and St Raphs do the full exit to total corporatism zone switch as per South Kilburn Not Kilburn?
Ballymore are redeveloping Edgeware Town Centre. Wembley Central as the City of Quintain pending?
How about an honest and transparent Brent Local Plan as most of Brent is to be corporatist butchered and calved-up for oligarchs, tower lords and conglomerates C21. New feudalism which only the Greens seem to seriously question.
Conservation areas as Brent's sad 'small thinking' human life rafts, when grand human ambition for all Brent lives is what's urgently needed.
If only it could be teleported to the Queens Park human life raft, MG would be sacred and saved forever.
Design for demise
Thank you for various anonymous comments above.
There are many people who would like to see the Victorian villa retained as part of Brent's Morland Gardens redevelopment, as it should be if the Council's heritage planning policy is properly applied, including councillors in Stonebridge and elsewhere in the Borough. That is why Willesden Local History Society is leading the fight to save it, and has done since 2019.
I can't say whether the Council Leader, Muhammed Butt, actually hates the building, or whether he has other reasons (perhaps personal, because I am the most visible person fighting to save it, and have tried in the past to have him held to account for abuses of his power?).
It could be that he genuinely wants to see as many affordable homes as possible built on this Council owned site - but if that is the case, why did he side with "Towerblock" Tatler's plans to let a private developer have well over half (150 out of 237) of the homes built on the Council-owned former Copland School site in Wembley for private sale, with only 56 out of the 237 for affordable rent to Council tenants?
The Altamira saga is a classic case study of Labour incompetence and breath taking ability to waste many £ millions - while failing to deliver a single affordable home on that site. If they listened to Philip all those years ago we would have an Active Community asset and real homes for local people in need. Why is Councillor M Butt still Leader of Brent Council? - oh of course the Conservatives sold out for a few meaningless allowance paying positions on Brent Council. One bunch of incompetents propping up another bunch of even greater bunch of incompetents.
Hostile to build out the few heritage buildings in car-free sky houses tower hundreds Brent of C21. I guess its a tower the heritage, welfare state life support infrastructure and green spaces first policy.
Stonebridge is not about neighbourhood though is it. Its about Brent exiting to private estate zone it all. Beautiful building, but wrong zone to protect and care about. Tenants also, so the wrong type of people as well. More social value in a 30 storey full ground plan slab tower replacing it in such a to be private estate exclusion zone.
I think the total amount wasted on this project by the Labour run is now around £4 million and as the above comment states NOT a single new home has been built on this site.
Paul is right about the waste of Council money. The Morland Gardens project was initially about modernising the Brent Start adult education college. The architects who won the competition to design it in 2018 had experience of schemes that combined new build with existing heritage buildings, and their initial design idea included retaining the Victorian villa as part of a new college facility and some affordable homes.
Unfortunately, Brent pushed for more homes than would be possible without demolishing the heritage building, and the Council Leader unofficially approved a scheme that might have provided as many as 89 homes in February 2019.
Even though that number had been reduced to 65 by the time Cabinet formally agreed the scheme in January 2020, the flaws in the plans, which would see that project fail,,were already there.
Not Brent, exile of zones. A very powerful form of social and political control as it removes the civic rights of entire zones. What Local devolution is all about. Deprived area, just private exile it all.
Zones of deprivation, excluded and handed over to private tower lords. Assisted dying and doubling prison estate policy linked in to this.
This is a reasonable request for clarification on an important political issue, but the comments on my guest post above are not the right place for a statement on a motion that was passed at the Green Party's conference.
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