LETTER: Council and developer push out our small family company in Wembley with a 'take it or leave it' CPO offer

 

Dear Editor,

We own a company supplying packaging to the jewellery and gift trade, which has been successfully trading for over 65 years.

For many years we were happily situated in our own approximately 20,000sq ft warehouse and factory in Highbury, Islington.

Then one day in 2000 we were presented with a proposed Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) to make way for the new Emirates Arsenal stadium and luxury flats. Arsenal working together with Islington Council decided they needed our premises and from that time on they made our lives a living hell. Eventually the CPO came through in 2005 and the offer of compensation and help they were obliged to offer, was derisory and to finally get a settlement cost hundreds of thousands fighting in court. We knew we could not fight Arsenal, especially with the Emirates and Islington council behind them. All we wanted was a fair deal to help us move and to compensate us for all the troubles, which unfortunately we did not get. The grief and heartache that went together with this episode is unforgettable and definitely took years off the Directors’ lives.

However, in 2007 having no option and with limited funds, we moved to much smaller premises in Wembley, Middlesex. This time we were renting commercial offices and warehouse from old business friends who were downsizing their business. We had a good relationship with them for many years and were offered favourable terms to stay. We had a solid business plan in place based on our income and expenditure, taking inflation into account on a yearly basis and we were all happy and contented.

Imagine our surprise when in 2019/2020 we were once again presented with a CPO situation. This time it was CBRE / St George who working with the local Brent council had bought up huge tracts of land in Beresford Avenue to redevelop for housing.

This means that we are once again confronted with a situation where we are going to be evicted from our premises with no recourse to help or assistance from the local council or CBRE.

Whilst we have no argument with the council for trying to put more family housing in place, we really feel that we should be compensated for, and in a correct manner. This means that we require realistic financial help to move to suitable premises that fit our requirements, and so far, this does not appear forthcoming, and all our requests have been refused.

It therefore appears that, to our shock and disgust, we will have to move shortly from our current premises and fund most of the move ourselves. The amounts on offer are derisive and are nowhere near enough to move comfortably and set ourselves up once again.

Whilst it is incumbent by law for CBRE to find us alternative premises, very little suitable places have been offered to us. Furthermore, any comparable premises that we have found suitable, are higher in costs than we have been paying and continue to pay currently and are rejected out of hand as ‘being too expensive’.

When we enquired why the financial offer re moving did not include help to meet these ‘forced on us’ increased costs, like higher rents and rates etc, for similar size area, we were basically advised that either you take our offer or suffer in silence!

This we feel is extremely unfair and definitely not what we require or wish to hear.

Financial blackmail is sickeningly ugly, and we who are the ‘piggy in the middle’ have no say whatsoever.

We cannot believe that in the 21st Century – a private company in bed with local government can run roughshod over a small company, that has been trading for many years and that offers employment to local people, and they can just push us out with no real recompense.

We are currently at a standstill.

We have a really sinking feeling that this is going the way of our previous CPO with no one to address these venture capitalists who can run roughshod over people with absolutely no comeback.

Finer Packaging

Lilia House

14 Beresford Avenue

Wembley Middlesex

HA0 1YP

 

Brent shows - again - how little it cares for South Kilburn

Demonstration outside the school

 Guest blog by Pete Firmin, South Kilburn resident

 

On Friday 22nd May, pupils, parents teachers and local residents held a protest at the gates of St. Mary’s Catholic Primary School in South Kilburn against the proposal from Brent Council that the `ventilation shaft’ for HS2 be sited right next to the school and close to flats.

 

 

Apparently such ventilation shafts are necessary at certain distances along the line in order to get rid of the air pushed in front of the speeding trains, otherwise they would slow the trains down. Such vent shafts are not a small thing, being usually about 25 m by 25 m and 2 storeys high – the size of a small block of flats. Such an enterprise is calculated to take up to 6 years building work, involving movement of over a hundred lorries a day to and from the affected area at peak times, with the association noise, disruption and dust..

 

HS2’s current proposal is that this be sited close to Queen’s Park station, but Brent Council is pressing that it be on the Canterbury Works site next to St Mary’s school instead. Some studies suggest a ventilation shaft is not essential at either site.

 

Brent Council’s proposal ignores the pleas from local residents and school staff and users and is putting its regeneration scheme above any concern for the health and wellbeing of students and residents. They have the support of Queens Park residents in this, who feel the vent shaft would be a “blight” on their community, despite the disruption and siting being much further from their homes and schools than is proposed for South Kilburn. As so often, South Kilburn is seen as the dumping ground for things that Brent and its middle classes regard as `undesirable’.

 

The issue of Brent and HS2 has a background. The local Tenants and Residents Association has been asking Brent Council about HS2 and how it will affect us for years, ever since we discovered it is due to run underneath (or very close to) our flats. Unfortunately, unlike Camden, Brent Council didn’t seem to be looking at this at all, its only comments being that HS2 offered great `business opportunities’ for Old Oak Common. Even when we got letters from HS2 saying they may want to Compulsorily Purchase our properties we got no support from Brent. We’ve all had at least 2 such letters now, and, despite our urging, Brent Council appears to have done nothing to get proper answers from HS2 on this. Some people have been told verbally that this is just something that HS2 has to do and they will not be wanting to CPO our properties, but we have never had such a commitment from HS2 in writing.

 

Then, despite us asking for years that Brent take up our concerns and nothing happening, we discovered from a third party that a report on HS2 was due to go to Brent Council  in March last year. This was the first we knew about proposals about the siting of the vent shaft, when the report argued for its siting in South Kilburn rather than next to Queens Park station. We asked that we be allowed to address the Council when it discussed the report, but this was refused. Instead we were given a commitment that our concerns would be taken on board. Given our concerns included opposition to the Council’s push for the vent shaft site to be adjacent to the school and our flats, this was clearly not the case.

 

Then this year we saw by chance an email from a Council officer to one of our Councillors which said “HS2,  we continue to lobby for this to be relocated from the Council owned site at Salusbury Road car park to the rear of Canterbury Works. Various professional studies have been commissioned which support this Full Council approved stance and have been recently submitted to HS2 for their consideration.”

 

 Around the same time the headteacher of St Mary's school came away from a meeting with HS2 and Council officers convinced the vent shaft was going to be put next to the school. Soon after leaflets were put through our doors campaigning against the vent shaft being sited there. This came from people associated with the school, and since then they have had a meeting for all parents, produced petitions and initiated the protest outside the school.

 

Local residents support the opposition from school users to the siting of the shaft here, but there is an added complication. The leaflets put through every door and the drive behind the school campaign come from a PR company employed by the property developers building luxury flats (no social housing) at Canterbury House (also next to the school and a block of flats) and property developers hoping to build a ten-storey block of flats on the Canterbury Works site (currently a vehicle repair site, and the site where Brent wants the vent shaft site to be). 

 

Many of us are opposed to both the siting of the vent shaft next to the school and our flats and ANY further development of the site. We think that having been living on the middle of a regeneration building site for the last 3 years (with the myriad of complaints that has involved, about which Brent has done nothing), we should have respite from any further development and the disruption, noise and dirt involved. Added to which, the Canterbury House development is luxury flats only (advertised as in Queens Park, even though in the middle of South Kilburn), and development on the Canterbury Works would probably be similar, or at the very least the low proportion of social housing we are now seeing in SK `regeneration’), this would only add to what we have called the `social cleansing’ taking place with regeneration. SK is also already one of the most densely populated parts of Brent. We have lost some our little green space through regeneration, we would like to get some back rather than further development. So, as well as opposing the siting of the vent shaft here, we would oppose planning permission for further flats on the site too. Some of us joined the protest outside the school with placards opposing both the HS2 vent shaft and the property developers.

 

Just to be clear, the PR company’s employee working with the school put on the “No to HS2 at Canterbury Works” Facebook page “We do not want to see a ventilation shaft at Canterbury Works, we are protecting the interests of Canterbury House and a ventilation shaft would be detrimental to this development and to its future residents who will be part of the South Kilburn community.” Protecting the interests of Canterbury House means the property developers, it couldn’t be more explicit. Future residents seem to take precedence over current ones too. When they started work on Canterbury House (the building has been empty for years, even though planning permission was obtained some time ago), they knew that HS2 was going through the area and people had been served with potential CPO orders. Our belief was that they were hoping for maximum compensation (unlike us!) and that was why they pressed ahead.

 

We are hoping we can have one united campaign involving both school and local residents against the siting of the vent shaft here. There does seem to be an attempt to keep us at arms length from the school campaign, given our critical stance.

 

As so often, Brent Council has spent years ignoring the concerns of local residents and is now intent on pressing HS2 to trample on the interests of both school pupils and residents.