1 Morland Gardens – How many more times can they get it wrong?

 Guest Post by Philip Grant in a person capacity

 

 

1 Morland Gardens, behind locked Heras fencing, 26 January 2023
 

 

It is almost three years since I first wrote about Brent Council’s plans to demolish “Altamira”, the locally listed Victorian villa at 1 Morland Gardens, and build a new adult education facility and 65 homes there. Ever since the project for an updated Brent Start college, intending to retain this beautiful heritage building, was “hijacked” at the end of 2018, to provide a large number of new Council homes, there have been mistakes and delays. Now there are more.

 

Brent Council does now have a vacant building, as the six month stay by Live-in Guardians has ended, and a barrier of Heras fencing now surrounds the outer wall of the grounds. They also have a contractor in place for their project, Hill Partnerships Ltd, under a two-stage Design & Build contract awarded last July. The first stage, a Pre-Construction Service Agreement, is underway, and as part of that the contractor submitted a Construction Logistics Plan (“the Plan”), as required by one of the conditions of the planning consent (given in October 2020!).

 

Condition 20, for a construction logistics plan, from the 1 Morland Gardens planning consent.

 

The submission of the Plan, in December 2022, was treated as a separate planning application (22/4082), but it was not advertised. I only discovered it online last week. It may not sound like a very interesting document, but when I read it, I found a number of things to comment on, pointing out in my objections how Brent, and their contractor, have got it wrong again.

 

The Plan treats the development site as a single plot of land, when it is actually two. Brent Council owns the public realm and highway outside the boundary of 1 Morland Gardens, which its proposed new building would partly cover. But it does not have any legal right to build on that piece of land. It first needs to obtain a Stopping-up Order for a section of the highway, and if it gets that order, the Council would need to appropriate that land for planning purposes. 

 

There are objections to the proposed Stopping-up Order, and Brent has yet to submit its request for an Inquiry by an independent Inspector. As far back as May 2021, Brent’s Development Management Manager confirmed that an order would need to be: ‘approved prior to any development taking place on the areas that are currently adopted highway. Until the stopping-up process has been completed under S247 of the Town & Country Act 1990, works will not be able to start on the development insofar as it affects highway land.’

 

The Plan has been submitted because it needs to be approved in writing by the Local Planning Authority (Brent Council) ‘prior to commencement of the development’. If or when the legal hurdles I’ve just mentioned have been overcome, and the contractor has a site it can start work on, there are still plenty of problems.

 

The Key Site Constraints page from the Construction Logistics Plan.

 

As this early page from the Plan shows, there are a number of “constraints” involved in developing the site. Some of these are the result of the project’s designers trying to squeeze too many new homes into an unsuitable site, and ignoring the practical “constraints”. (Does that sound familiar? Newland Court and Kilburn Square come to mind, among others!)

 

One of the “constraints” listed is the single access/egress point to the site during construction, along the residential cul-de-sac of Morland Gardens itself, which would restrict the size of delivery vehicles. The Plan deals with this by saying that deliveries by articulated lorries will be unloaded from the lay-by, or “pit-lane”, on Hillside. What lay-by? 

 

Page showing where vehicles would deliver materials to the site, from the Logistics Plan.

 

Someone involved in Brent’s project has made a major mistake here. The lay-by on Hillside for deliveries and refuse collections was part of the original plans submitted in February 2020. Those plans had to be revised, because both TfL and Brent’s Transportation Unit objected that a lay-by there would be unacceptable. Hillside is a London distributor road and bus route, with no waiting allowed at any time along its frontage with 1 Morland Gardens because of the proximity to traffic signals. A lay-by there would also be too close to the bus stop, and make the footpath too narrow for safe use by pedestrians. It appears that the contractor has been given the original, and incorrect, plans! 

 

The site diagram above shows all deliveries by “rigid vehicles” coming through a gate from Morland Gardens, and then using the existing “turning head” to drive into and then reverse, so that they can exit forwards once they have been unloaded. But that “turning head” would no longer be available for vehicles making deliveries to, or collecting refuse from, the other properties in Morland Gardens. This, again, would ‘unduly prejudice the free and safe flow of local highways’, something the Plan should not be allowed to do, if it is to be acceptable to Brent’s planners.

 

Access for deliveries to Brent’s proposed Morland Gardens development is not an unforeseen problem. I raised it in an objection comment in July 2020 (see the “Transport and Access” section of a guest post I wrote before the Planning Committee meeting), after the revised plan removing the lay-by had been submitted in June 2020. However, Planning Officers dismissed my objection by saying it would be dealt with by a condition requiring a Delivery and Servicing Management Plan for the new college (ignoring the fact that there would also be deliveries and servicing for 65 homes!).

 

The other page from the Plan which has caused me to make an objection comment is the one labelled “Proposed Sales & Marketing Area”. 

 

The “Sales & Marketing” page from the Construction Logistics Plan.

 

Sales and Marketing? The 65 homes in this planned Brent Council development are all meant to be “genuinely affordable” homes. Condition 3 of the planning consent confirms that, stating: ‘The development hereby approved shall be implemented and maintained for the lifetime of the development as 100% London Affordable Rent.’ Yet the diagram above shows a 2-bedroom, 3 person “show apartment”, available for viewing in the first section of the development (due for completion in week 64), to be used for sales and marketing purposes.

 

The 1 Morland Gardens planning application went totally against both Brent and London planning policies on the protection of heritage assets, and Planning Officers admitted that. The justification for doing so was the “public benefits” of the development, particularly the provision of 65 homes which would all be “genuinely affordable”. If some of the homes are to be sold, not let to Council tenants who urgently need them, that shifts the balance more towards scrapping the demolition, and keeping the Victorian villa as part of a more sensible scheme.

 

The Report to November 2022’s Cabinet meeting about the conversion of some LAR homes to shared ownership did include a paragraph on Morland Gardens, which suggested “value engineering” the project (without giving details). Martin published a guest post from me, including my open email to the Council Leader and Lead Member for Housing. I suggested, not for the first time, an alternative solution, but Cabinet members and Brent’s New Council Homes team seem determined to carry on with a project which is unviable and impractical.

 

How many more times can they get it wrong, before they realise they’re just throwing good money (our money!) after bad?

 

Philip Grant.

Contract for 1 Morland Gardens – Brent’s response to an open letter

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Last month I sent an open letter to Brent’s Strategic Director for Regeneration, and Lead Member for Education, explaining why it would not be a good idea to award a Design & Build contract for the Council’s proposed redevelopment at 1 Morland Gardens. Notice of the intended decision to award a contract on 4 January 2022, dated 3 December, had appeared on Brent’s website.

 

The Key Decision had still not been announced on the Council’s website by the evening of 11 January, but I did receive a response to my open letter then. I will ask Martin to attach that at the end of this article, so that anyone who wishes to read it can do so. The response confirmed ‘that the council intends to proceed with the proposed scheme of works’.

 

Architect’s visual impression of the proposed scheme for 1 Morland Gardens

 

However (as is becoming common with Brent Council, if you can get a reply from them), the response raises as many questions as it answers. It does, of course, begin by referring to ‘the very many benefits that the scheme will provide.’ 

 

This ignores the fact that if Council Officers had followed Brent’s own, and national, planning rules over heritage assets at the start, they would never have come up with this scheme! It involves the demolition of an irreplaceable locally listed heritage building. And if the Planning Committee in August 2020 had been properly advised, they would have known that this heritage asset was too “significant” for them to decide that the “public benefits” of the proposals outweighed the importance of retaining the beautiful, architectural and historic Victorian villa.

 

Extract from Brent Council’s May 2019 Historic Environment Place-making Strategy

 

The response lists one of the benefits of the scheme as ‘65 social rented homes.’ Will these really be homes let to Council tenants at genuine social rent levels, or is this just another example of Brent officers (and Lead Members) misusing the term ‘social rented homes’ when they are actually referring to “affordable housing”? 

 

Brent originally told the GLA that the new homes at 1 Morland Gardens would be for “social rent”, but at the planning permission stage in 2020, the Council had changed this to 'all of the 65 units would be delivered at London Affordable Rent.' In a comment on an earlier blog, I pointed out that £6.5m of the cost for these homes was meant to be funded from the GLA’s Affordable Homes programme for 2016-2021. Even though the end date for that was extended to construction beginning by 31 March 2022, that £6.5m is unlikely to be available. Does a change back to “social rent” mean that some of Brent’s funding from the 2021-2026 GLA programme will now have to be used for this project?

 

Are you are wondering what is behind the "little dig" in the response ('I know from previous correspondence that you are concerned with the pace of delivery of social rented accommodation in Brent ....')? It refers to my attempts to get Cllr. Shama Tatler or Mr Lunt to explain properly why they propose that 152 of the 250 new homes on the Council-owned vacant former Copland School site at Cecil Avenue (Wembley High Road) should be built for a private developer to sell at a profit, rather than all 250 being genuine affordable rented housing for people in urgent housing need. I have yet to receive an answer to that!

 

Moving on to Brent’s responses to the six reasons why they should not award this contract, the “answers” to points 1, 2, 3 and 6 are similar. The Council has not yet done anything about the legal requirements over stopping-up orders, appropriation of land for planning purposes or the planning condition that it needs to “divert” (that is, dig up and move!) the water main in Hillside / Brentfield Road. 

 

It could have begun these tasks, which it admits are necessary to complete before construction can commence, at any time after receiving full planning consent in October 2020. Instead, it now says that ‘the council will complete the first stage of the two-stage design and build contract and finalise and obtain the necessary legal pre-requisites in order to begin any construction works.’ But there is no guarantee that at least one of these ‘legal pre-requisites’, the stopping-up orders, will be obtained! Why even pay for the first stage, when you don’t know whether the proposed construction work could go ahead?

 

The Victorian villa which Brent Council’s project would demolish. (Photo by Irina Porter)

 

Reason 4 was the effect of the proposed demolition on climate. As Brent Council has declared a “Climate Emergency”, you would think that Senior Officers and Lead Members would take that matter seriously. But here the response is: ‘Whilst the proposed redevelopment will emit CO2, the benefits the project brings can go some way to justify this.’ Have they quantified the climate damage, and measured the harm this will cause as compared to the alternative option, retaining the Victorian villa, which I have suggested? Or is this just another example of Brent Council making fine-sounding promises, but not following them in practice?

 

The response to reason 5, the Design & Build Contract itself, leaves a very important point unanswered. I had asked: ‘Why is it proposed that ‘the contractor is undertaking design work’ and ‘design liability’, when full planning permission was given for a detailed design by architects Curl la Tourelle Head?’ 

 

That point has been ignored. Is Brent Council proposing to pay the contractor to come up with a new design, or make significant changes to a detailed design it has already paid a firm of architects to prepare for it? And if there are any significant changes to the building plans that were approved in 2020, won’t that mean a new application for planning permission? Surely those are important questions that need to be answered!

 

The response tells me that: ‘The council has appointed technical consultants to ensure the designs by the contractor meet the council’s requirements ….’ How much will these consultants cost, and will that cost have to be met out of the budget for the project agreed by Brent’s Cabinet two years ago?

 

A bigger reason why I was concerned about the proposed two-stage contract was this: ‘If the contractor given the proposed D&B contract wishes to keep within Brent’s maximum price for the scheme, there is a severe risk that they would cut corners, both in modifying the design and carrying out the building work.’

 

Brent’s answer: ‘the technical consultants will be monitoring the contractor’s progress to ensure the build meets the requirements in terms of materials used, methods of construction and quality of finishes. It is expected that this monitoring will prevent any issues with the quality of the finished building and any issues can be dealt with under the defects liability (including latent defects) responsibilities set out in the contract.’

 

Do you have confidence in the Council’s expectations that there won’t be any “issues” with a ‘cross-laminated timber structure’ (one of the tallest buildings in this country to use that method), with ‘innovative hybrid steel reinforcement’ supporting external cladding? Or that if there are any “issues”, they will be dealt with by the contractor ‘under the defects liability’? Given Brent’s experience over Granville New Homes, I have a feeling that history might repeat itself, IF the Council continues its insistence on pursuing its flawed 1 Morland Gardens project.

Philip Grant

 

 

From ruin to restoration – What makes good planning?

Guest Post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

The ruined Wembley Park Lodge in 2017

 For the past few years, the former Wembley Park Lodge at the corner of Wembley Hill Road and Wembley Park Drive has looked a sorry sight. Badly damaged in a fire in 2013, and with its roof missing, many wondered whether this historic cottage, dating from the 1790s or early 1800s, could ever be saved.

 

Wembley Park Lodge in a postcard from c.1900. (Brent Archives online image 7742)

 

Last autumn, there was an application (20/3027) for permission to demolish the 1930s extension to this Grade II listed building. With my interest in Wembley’s history, I submitted a comment, to say that although I did not object to the remains of the more modern structure being demolished, great care should be taken to ensure that the original parts were properly preserved and safeguarded, for incorporation in any restoration of the cottage.

 

As a result of my earlier comment, I received a letter from Brent Council last week, advising of a new application (21/0703) for full planning permission at 114 Wembley Hill Road (the Lodge’s modern address). This proposes the restoration of the cottage, and the construction of a new house on the site, to help cover the cost of making good the heritage building. As the “footprint” of both homes will be relatively small, the plans include basements under a new extension to the Lodge and the new house, to provide laundry and media rooms, plus storage.

 

Elevation drawings showing the rebuilt Lodge. (From planning application drawings)

 

The proposals for the restoration of the Lodge have been closely discussed with the experts at Historic England (formerly “English Heritage”, who oversee listed buildings). While the 1930s extension had a tiled roof, these proposals include a thatched roof for the whole building. That may seem odd, but a look at the 120-year-old postcard above shows that the single-storey section of the cottage then, on the left of the picture, was also thatched.

 

Re-thatching Wembley Park Lodge in 1976. (Brent Archives online image 9547)

 

The Lodge is on a prominent corner site, in an area of mainly inter-war suburban housing. Corner sites play an important part in defining the character of an area (as I will mention later), so it was important to get the location and style of the new house right.

 

The proposed site plan for 114 Wembley Hill Road. (From planning application drawings)

 

In this case, the architects have positioned the proposed new house so that the front follows the existing building line for Wembley Park Drive, even though this means that is at an odd angle to the Lodge. But how do you design a new house that will sit close to both a restored heritage building and the much later homes next door?

 

The proposed elevations drawing, as seen from across Wembley Park Drive.
(From planning application drawings, with notes added in blue)

 

The Lodge, which was by the gate to the drive leading up to the Wembley Park mansion, was built in the “cottage orné” style, which was popular in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, giving a picturesque rustic feel to the gate-keepers cottages on country estates. This one may well have been designed by Humphry Repton, as part of his landscaping for Wembley Park in 1793. 

 

For the new house, the architects have borrowed features from “orné” cottages built at Blaise Hamlet in 1810. These were a collaboration between Humphry Repton and the architect John Nash, and show marked similarities in their chimneys and other characteristics to the lodge at Wembley Park. The Blaise Hamlet cottages (now a National Trust property on the outskirts of Bristol) were built of the local Cotswold stone, but the proposed new house has a tiled roof and white rendered walls, to match with the neighbouring houses in Wembley Park Drive.

 

I would not claim that the proposals for 114 Wembley Hill Road are perfect (I do have some doubts, especially over excavating for basements so close to existing buildings). However, I think that overall they offer a good solution to a tricky planning problem, and one which would see an important local historic building restored, and back in use. If you would like to look more closely at the plans, make your own judgement and submit any comments (by 27 May), you can do so here.

 

I said above that corner sites are important in shaping the character of an area, and I will give two more examples of this from recent planning applications. Last August, Brent’s Planning Committee voted, by a 5-2 majority, to approve Brent Council’s own application to demolish the locally listed Victorian villa at 1 Morland Gardens. This beautiful building would make way for a new adult education building, with up to nine floors of flats above it. The decision went against Brent’s heritage assets planning policies, and ignored objections from many residents, and from the Victorian Society and an expert on historic architecture.

 

“Altamira”, the Victorian villa at the corner of Hillside and Brentfield Road.

 

Updated college facilities and new affordable homes are an attractive proposition. But to demolish a beautiful and still useful building, part of the original Stonebridge Park from the 1870s, and replace it with a modern block, will ruin the character of the area. That is especially so as the plans also involve building out over the existing community garden on the corner.

 

Another application approved last year, again despite strong opposition from local residents, was for a three-storey block of flats at the corner of Queens Walk and Salmon Street. Objectors pointed to Brent’s planning policy that developments should respect the suburban character of areas such as this, and said that the proposed building, on a prominent site, would be out of character, a ‘blot on suburbia’ and ‘an eyesore’.

 

In their report to Planning Committee, recommending approval for the scheme, planning officers argued that it would not be an eyesore. They said: ‘The corner plot presents an opportunity for a building of a differing architectural style and slightly greater prominence to sit comfortably without detracting from the character along either of the streets it adjoins.’ The plans were approved, and the new building is now taking shape. Readers can judge from these photos whether or not it detracts from the character of the streets it adjoins.

 

A view along Salmon Street towards the new development and Queens Walk.

 

Close up of the new 44 Queens Walk development. (Both photos by Martin Francis, April 2021)

 

I asked in my title ‘What makes good planning? You are all entitled to your own views, and are welcome to share them as comments below. I would compare planning in Brent to a “spaghetti western”, and suggest that my three examples above show the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Philip Grant.

1 Morland Gardens – Open Letter / its Harlesden City Challenge's legacy

 Guest blog by Philip Grant in a personal capacity:-

One of the “spin-offs” from Martin publishing my guest blogs over 1 Morland Gardens is that he received, and passed on to me, a query over a time capsule that was buried there in 1994. Did the people at Brent Council know about it, and if so, would they save and rebury it as part of their planned redevelopment?

 

I asked, and got the answer that they did, and they would. Through my sharing the answer with the person who had first raised the query, I also discovered how Brent Council came to own the Victorian villa that they now propose to demolish, and how it came to be restored, to improve the environment and quality of life for the local community, with most of the finance coming from the Harlesden City Challenge project in the 1990s.

 

 

I am setting out below the full text, and illustrations, of an open letter which I sent to Brent’s Chief Executive over the weekend. I’m sure that many readers will remember BACES, and my letter gives the details about Brent Adult & Community Education Service and Harlesden City Challenge being at the heart of the Council’s ownership of 1 Morland Gardens. This information was never made available to the councillors who have made decisions about Brent’s current proposals for the property, and needs to be more widely known before any final decision is made on whether the plans to demolish this beautiful building go ahead.

 

My letter begins with my initial response to Brent’s answer to the serious concerns I raised in August about the planning application, and the further information on this that I had obtained under FoI. When Brent’s new Strategic Director, Regeneration, sent me a copy of his report into the concerns I had raised about how Council officers had dealt with the 1 Morland Gardens proposals, I asked if he would have any objection to it being published, in the interests of openness and transparency. He did not want his full report published, but sent me an edited version that could be made public, and I will ask Martin to include that document at the end of this post.

 

Here is my open letter:-

 

To: Carolyn Downs                                                                      From: Philip Grant
Chief Executive, Brent Council.                                                  

                                                                                                                         10 October 2020

THIS IS AN OPEN LETTER

Dear Ms Downs,

1 Morland Gardens, its heritage significance and Harlesden City Challenge

 

Thank you for your letter of 7 October, which was your response to the serious concerns I had raised over the actions of Brent Council officers in connection with the redevelopment proposals for 1 Morland Gardens. Your response was based on the report into those concerns by the Strategic Director, Regeneration, who also sent me a summary version of his report on the same day.

 

I have not yet provided my response to Mr Lunt’s report, because I am still awaiting some information, the request for which was wrongly refused on 18 September, and is currently the subject of an internal review. It would also help to resolve matters if the Council would provide me with a copy of the advice that Mr Lunt received from Legal Counsel over the planning policy point at issue. I know that this is said to be covered by “privilege”, but as there is no ongoing legal action over this matter, and I have undertaken not to initiate any such action, I cannot see the harm in this being made available to me on an “in confidence” basis.

 

What both your letter and Mr Lunt’s report have failed to grasp is that the heritage “significance” of the locally listed Victorian villa is at the heart of where Council officers went wrong over 1 Morland Gardens. Both the National Planning Policy Framework and Brent’s own policy DMP7 set out clearly that the starting point for any proposals affecting a heritage asset must be a clear understanding of the architectural and historic significance of that asset.

 

Brent’s Property Services team failed to seek or obtain any clear understanding of that significance, before embarking on proposals which demanded such a high number of homes, as well as an improved education college and affordable workspace, should be delivered by the scheme.

 

In giving advice to the Property Services team, in both unofficial (December 2018) and official (from March 2019) pre-application discussions, Brent’s Planning Officers failed to ensure that the applicant had a clear understanding of the significance of the heritage asset. Planning Officers also failed to find out, or show, any proper understanding of the architectural and historic significance of the building themselves. That ignorance was displayed, and had a critical influence on the development of the proposals, when one officer advised that ‘we’re not likely to refuse a scheme due to the loss of this building’ as early as December 2018.

 

That negligent action, in clear breach of Brent’s stated policies of valuing and protecting the borough’s heritage assets, is in stark contrast to the Council’s original involvement with and redevelopment of 1 Morland Gardens, when it was first acquired in the 1990’s. 

 

I recently passed on an enquiry that had been forwarded to me about a time capsule, which was buried at the site during that redevelopment in 1994. Sharing the information which Mr Lunt provided on this has brought to light some important information about the recent heritage of the Victorian villa. That is the main reason for this letter, which I am making an open letter, because the information deserves to be in the public domain.

 

It has now emerged that the Council’s acquisition of 1 Morland Gardens, the restoration of the Victorian villa and its redevelopment into an adult education college came about through the Harlesden City Challenge initiative of the 1990s. No reference to this was made in the then Strategic Director of Regeneration’s Report to Brent’s Cabinet on 14 January 2020, which simply said (at para 3.1): ‘The council fully owns 1 Morland Gardens, which presents an opportunity to deliver an innovative and high quality mixed use development in the heart of Stonebridge ….’

 

The then Government’s City Challenge programme ran from 1992 to 1998, ‘with the aim of transforming specific rundown inner city areas and improving significantly the quality of life of local residents.’ Harlesden in Brent was one of the areas whose bid for major funding, through a specially formed company Harlesden City Challenge Ltd (“HCC”), was successful. The basis of the finance for City Challenge was that capital projects under the scheme would have 75% funding from the Government, with the other 25% being raised from Local Authorities, local businesses or other sources such as charities.

 

The initiative for the 1 Morland Gardens scheme appears to have come from Brent Adult & Community Education Service (“BACES”), which wished to expand the range of courses it was able to offer. It had identified the disused Services Rendered Club at 1 Morland Gardens (which had originally been the private residence, “Altamira”, Stonebridge Park) as a possible location, in the heart of the area where it felt the greatest need for its services was.

 

BACES, together with Brent Victim Support, who also wished to provide a service in the area, approached HCC with their proposal, and were offered £700k of City Challenge funding, if they could obtain the balance required. BACES then got a commitment from George Benham (who was probably Brent’s Director of Education at the time, but later became its Chief Executive) that the Council would back the scheme and make sure it came to fruition, which would involve a minimum of £200k Council funding. 

 

It was on that basis that 1 Morland Gardens was purchased in the name of Brent Council (but with majority funding from HCC). Chassay Architects were commissioned to design a sympathetic restoration of the Victorian part of the building, with partial demolition of some of the later additions by the Services Rendered Club, and a new extension subordinate in design to the heritage building. This would provide an adult education college for BACES, and premises for Brent Victim Support. Planning permission was given for this in January 1994.

 

Restoration work in progress on the front of the Victorian villa, May 1994. (Still photograph from a video)

 

During the building work, on 9 May 1994, a ceremony was held to bury a time capsule, containing 25 items chosen by various people involved in the project, including BACES students and members of the local community. A plaque was unveiled, saying that the time capsule ‘was buried to celebrate the creation of a new adult education community college using funds from Harlesden City Challenge and Brent Council’, and that it would be ‘opened in 50 years on 9 May 2044’. 

 

 

In a short speech at this ceremony HCC’s Chief Executive, Gerry Davis, said HCC was not about physical regeneration, but to make better things that are derelict, to make an environment that looked good, so that the lives of local people would be improved. He may also have been speaking about the HCC Community Garden outside, on the paved area of the former Stonebridge Park, closed off from Hillside when the street was renamed Morland Gardens as part of the 1960s/70s Stonebridge regeneration.

 

The first BACES courses at 1 Morland Gardens were offered from September 1994, with the new college fully operational from January 1995. As shown by the cover of the supplement (above), giving details of those first courses, HCC was included in the name of the college. A plaque inside its front door carried the message: ‘City Challenge Brent Adult College supported by Harlesden City Challenge Ltd with funds from the Government Office for London.’ The new college, in the restored Victorian building, featured on the front cover of the 1995/96 BACES courses guide.

 

It is clear from this new information, obtained from the first Head of the City Challenge Brent Adult College (who recently donated material including the items pictured above, and the video mentioned, to Brent Archives), that a key reason behind the purchase and renovation of the Victorian villa was to preserve a beautiful historic building. 

 

It would be used for the benefit of the local community, in providing a range of vocational and recreational courses. As well as providing a beautiful and inspiring college for its students, it would, together with the HCC Community Garden in front of it, improve the environment in a run-down area, and the quality of life for everyone living there. And as the burying of the time capsule shows, it was intended and expected that the renovated Victorian building would provide those benefits for at least fifty years

 

Now Brent Council, without a proper understanding or consideration of the heritage value of the building, plans to demolish it. It’s plans also include (as part of claimed ‘public realm improvements’) building over much of the Harlesden City Challenge Community Garden, and replacing it with a much smaller garden area that will be part of the proposed new college, not a space for public enjoyment.

 

These Harlesden City Challenge disclosures raise questions that need to be answered, and the answers made publicly available, before the Council goes any further with its ill thought out scheme. 

 

·      Was the preservation of this heritage building part of the basis on which City Challenge funding was obtained for the new adult college in the 1990s?

·      What were the terms of the letter from senior Brent Council Officer, George Benham, in respect of committing the Council to the purchase and renovation of 1 Morland Gardens, as far as relate to the future of the heritage building?

·      Were there any covenants or provisions in the purchase contract for 1 Morland Gardens over the preservation of the Victorian villa on that property?

·      What commitments were given over the future of the Victorian villa in return for the £700k received from HCC?

·      Was the £700k grant for the purchase and restoration of 1 Morland Gardens repayable if the building was either demolished, or ceased to be used as an adult education college?

·      If so, is that condition over the repayment of the grant, or any part of it, still in force?

 

 

I realise that the answers to these questions lie back in the 1990s, but I am aware from its catalogue that Brent Archives holds a Local History Collection boxfile, reference LHC/1/PLA/4, which contains a large number of documents relating to Harlesden City Challenge, 1993-1998, which may help with at least some information.

 

 

I hope I have shown that it is not just Brent’s Victorian heritage, but also its modern Harlesden City Challenge heritage, that is of significant historic and architectural value here. I make no apology for persisting in my efforts to persuade the Council that the proposals by Brent’s Property Service, aided and abetted by Brent’s Planning Service, have “got it wrong”.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Philip Grant.