Regeneration at Scrutiny meeting – The truth about Brent’s Wembley Housing Zone land – two follow-up emails

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Cllr. Tatler (front right) on the Cecil Avenue site in March 2023.
(from a Brent Council press release announcing the WHZ development contract with Wates)

 

Following my guest post on 28 April, setting out the truth about the Council’s ownership of the Wembley Housing Zone site at Cecil Avenue, I added a comment below which shared the text of an open email I had sent to Councillor Shama Tatler.

 

Martin asked whether he could publish that email as a separate post, but I said it might be better to wait until I had also sent an email to the members of the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, and publish both together. That is what this guest post does.

Open email to Councillor Shama Tatler, Brent’s Cabinet Member for Regeneration, on 29 May at 8.30am:

 

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

 

[Thirty-six hours later, I have yet to receive any acknowledgement or response from Cllr. Tatler, and on past experience, I’m not sure that I will.]

 

Wembley Housing Zone location plan, with added description in key.
(Original version taken from a Report to Cabinet in August 2021)

 

As I have little confidence that Cllr. Tatler will take my advice, and bring the error I have pointed out to the attention of the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, my second email was addressed to them.

 

Email to Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, on 30 May at 8.27pm:

 

Subject: Correction to information given to you on Wembley Housing Zone land at meeting on 23 April.

 

Dear Chair and members (including substitutes) of Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, I was interested in item 6 on your 23 April agenda, Regeneration in Brent, and watched some of the meeting on the webcast.

 

You may remember that, in 2022, I was seeking to get your committee to scrutinise various aspects of the Council's delivery of affordable housing, and in particular the lamentably low proportion of genuinely affordable homes to rent which were proposed for the Cecil Avenue site of the Council's Wembley Housing Zone project. 

 

I was pleased to hear Councillor Conneely express your Committee's support for more genuinely affordable homes on Council schemes. However, I was astounded to hear what Councillor Tatler said about the Wembley Housing Zone scheme, which comes under her Regeneration portfolio. This is what I transcribed her saying, when I went back to check it on the webcast recording (with my bold type for emphasis):

 

'With the Wembley Housing Zone, we didn't own the land. We had to purchase the land. That impacts viability as well.'

 

She was claiming that the Council could not provide more genuinely affordable homes than the 88 at London Affordable Rent (out of a total of 291 homes to be built, with 150 of those for private sale by Wates) because purchasing the land reduced the viability of the project.

 

But Brent Council did not have to purchase the land for the main part of the project, the former Copland School site at Cecil Avenue, where 237 of the 291 homes will be built.

 

I double-checked that I was correct over Brent's ownership of that vacant brownfield site, before sharing the truth about this online. I also wrote to Councillor Tatler yesterday morning (29 April), and am appending the full text of that email below for your information (although I did copy the original to your Chair).

 

I am not confident that Councillor Tatler will write to correct the false statement she made to you on 23 April, so I decided to write to you as well. Please base any follow-up work you do on Regeneration, and any recommendations your Committee may make on the Wembley Housing Zone, on the true position over land ownership at Cecil Avenue. Thank you.

 

As set out in the online article which I provided a "link" to at the end of my email to Councillor Tatler below, effective scrutiny in holding the Cabinet to account relies on Cabinet members, and Council Officers, being honest in the information they provide to you. I hope that you will make that point clearly when dealing with this matter, because the work that you do is very important. 

 

Thank you. Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant.

 

Regeneration at Scrutiny meeting – The truth about Brent’s Wembley Housing Zone land

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity-

 

The Scrutiny page on Brent Council’s website includes the following question and answer:

 

From: https://www.brent.gov.uk/the-council-and-democracy/council-meetings-and-decision-making/scrutiny#Whatisscrutiny

 

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.

Wembley Housing Zone – Brent’s Cecil Avenue development downsized!

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

Revised East and South elevation drawings for Brent’s Cecil Avenue development.

 

It may not look any smaller, but as disclosed in the Affordable Housing Supply Update report to December’s Brent Cabinet meeting, the number of homes to be built on the Council’s Cecil Avenue development has been reduced. The reason is the need for second staircases, because of new fire regulations introduced as a result of the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

 

I mentioned this in a guest post last month, Brent’s Affordable Council Housing – open and transparent?, when I wrote: ‘the report does not say how many of the new figure of 237 homes will be for private sale, and how many of those left for the Council will now be for “genuinely affordable” rent, rather than shared ownership. A lack of openness, which I will try to remedy!’ 

 

I’ve now received a reply to a Freedom of Information request, and can provide the answer. Cecil Avenue is part of a wider Wembley Housing Zone (“WHZ”) project, together with Ujima House, on the opposite side of the High Road. Brent Council’s contract with Wates in March 2023, said each would have half (152 out of 304) of the WHZ homes. However, all of the Wates homes, for private sale, would be on the more desirable Cecil Avenue site. 

 

The revised split of the Cecil Avenue homes, from Brent’s 8 January FoI response.

 

These figures show that although there will now be thirteen fewer homes on the Cecil Avenue development, those going to Wates will only be 2 less, while Brent Council loses 11. This is partly compensated for by the revised proportion of family-sized homes going in Brent’s favour. The Council will now have 71.4% of the family-sized homes, rather than 68.75%, but the total number of family-sized homes at Cecil Avenue has been reduced from 64 to 42, as part of rearranging the unit sizes to fit in the staircases.

 

Surely these changes would need planning permission? They did! An application was submitted on 21 August 2023, but Brent’s planners treated it as “non-material” amendments to the original consent given in February 2021, so that it was not publicised or consulted on. The application was approved by the Delegated Team Manager on 30 October 2023.

 

The heading to the Delegated Planning report, October 2023.

 

The report on this application (23/2774) makes clear that despite the WHZ involving two sites and a combined building contract, for planning purposes the Cecil Avenue application must be looked at on its own. Brent’s planning policies require that large housing schemes, such as this one, should provide 50% affordable housing. These revised proposals only provide 36.7% (and only 48.5% if the whole WHZ scheme is taken together). If it had been 50% at Cecil Avenue, there should have been at least 118 affordable homes on the site, not just 87 out of 237.

 

Brent’s affordable housing planning policies require a tenure split of at least 70% of the affordable housing to be “genuinely affordable”. The 56 homes at London Affordable Rent (“LAR”) out of 87 “affordable” Council homes is only 64.4% (62.4% over the WHZ scheme as a whole). Despite not meeting either of Brent’s planning policy percentages for affordable homes, the amended application was accepted. 

 

The only “good news” this time is that 21 of the 28 family-sized homes for Council tenants at LAR (down from 35 family-sized, on the figures supplied to me last July) will be 4-bedroom homes, with private gardens. There is currently a desperate need for these large family homes for affordable rent in the borough. It is unfortunate that, because of more than two years delay by Brent Council, in going down the “developer partner” route, it will be nearly three years before these homes are actually available! And LAR rent figures exclude service charges, which could bring the total bill up to as much as 80% of local open market rent level.

 

Extract from the approved documents for the amended application 23/2774.

 

35.6% of the “affordable” Council homes at Cecil Avenue will be what is known as Intermediate homes. This is a summary of what these 31 homes comprise:

 

Extract from the approved documents for the amended application 23/2774.

 

As shown in the information provided to me above, 28 of these homes will be for shared ownership (despite there being a surplus of these in the borough, it not being affordable to most people in housing need – a household income of £60k a year required to afford a 1-bedroom flat - and shared ownership being a “scam”!). What about the 3 “other affordable” homes? The planning application documents show that these Brent Council homes are intended to be sold, by Wates, as Discount Market Sale (”DMS”) homes.

 

The DMS homes must be ‘offered to Eligible Purchasers for sale at a price that is no more than 80 (eighty) per cent of Open Market Value, with the Council retaining and holding the remaining equity under an equitable charge’. To be an eligible purchaser for one of these 1 or 2-bedroom flats you would (on current figures) need to have an annual household income of no more than £90k. Affordable?

 

It is not just the number of homes (and affordable homes) which has been downsized in the amended plans for the Cecil Avenue development. In his reply to an email I had sent him about the Council’s Cecil Avenue development in February 2022 (that’s nearly 2 years ago!), Cllr. Muhammed Butt spoke proudly of ‘a new publicly accessible open space during this latest development. A positive outcome for the residents of Brent.’

 

My guest post including his reply did concede that: ‘The approved plans for the Cecil Avenue site include a courtyard garden square. This would mainly be for the benefit of residents, but there would be public access to it, through an archway from Wembley High Road.’ All of the tower block developments, existing and planned, along this stretch of the High Road, will bring thousands of extra residents within a short walk of this ‘publicly accessible open space.’ However, that too has been downsized:

 

Paragraph from the Delegated Planning Report on application 23/2774.

 

The amended external amenity space may just ‘exceed the minimum requirement’ for play space needed by the reduced number of future occupants at Cecil Avenue, but there will be little to spare for the other ‘residents of Brent’. 

 

Delay and downsizing. What more can go wrong for a Brent Council housing scheme, on Council-owned land, which received full planning consent on 5 February 2021? If only Brent had got on and borrowed the funds to build it, at the very low interest rates at then, and hired a contractor straight away, they could have had 250 (or at least 237) affordable Council homes at Cecil Avenue available in 2024, rather than 87 in late 2026.

 

Philip Grant.

LETTER: The loss (theft?) of Wembley Central's greens spaces and trees

 Dear Editor, 

Brent Council have long since chopped down the mature trees along the High Road,Wembley, and replaced with twiglets. 

 

The remaining tree at the corner of High Road and Cecil Avenue (Pic Google Streetview)

 

The only remaining large tree stands at the corner of High Road and Cecil Avenue it has a Tree Preservation Order on it, and at present remains outside of the hoarding in Public Realm, for how long remains to be seen, as I recall seeing some documents some years ago from Planning that it was intended for removal as it will interfere with the Copland site development, despite numerous objections. 

 

All the beautiful trees that stood outside Brent House were removed, and all the trees on Coplands School and Fields were removed with no consideration for the wildlife.

 

The Copland site top left of centre. Copland fields now enclosed is the large green space. Public access is limited to the alley way between fences seen as grey line.

 

Brent Council care nothing about the environment. Coplands Fields (approx 20+ acres) to the rear of Ark Elvin School was Public Land and used by locals for over 70 years. Brent thought nothing of holding a public consultation before disposing of it and leasing it to Ark Elvin School, who do not use it at all, only St Josephs RC School and Elsley Primary use it under  ancient covenants. 

 

It is now surrounded by 3 metre high fences and locked gates, the grass is mowed regularly and the area kept very clean, however it cannot be accessed by local residents, not by anyone, least of all the residents of the 115 Flats in Elizabeth House, nor 250 flats at Wembley Place (former Brent House) and I doubt any of the 304 flats still to be built at Cecil Avenue, the old Copland School site which lies within a 150 metres of this once green Open Space. 

 

The eventual residents of those flats will probably have some reduced amenity space by way of a tiny balcony and a tiny bit of grass and they'll call it a Pocket Park or such like. Only 500 metres from Wembley Stadium the home of English Football, the kids round here are finding it increasingly difficult to find somewhere to kick a ball about, andwe wonder why 25% of Brent 10 year olds are considered obese!

 

Jaine Lunn

Editor's note. This was first received as a comment so with the writer's permission I edited it as a letter for a wider audience.

Brent’s Wembley Housing Zone – 'Some' Good News! (But what is Brent Council's policy now on unaffordable Shared Ownership?)

Guest Post in a personal capacity by Philip Grant 

 

Architect’s view of Brent’s 250 home Cecil Avenue development.

 

On 14 March this year, Martin’s post “Wembley Housing Zone: Never mind the gloss – what are the details?” shared with us a Brent Council press release, about its deal with Wates to finally build the 250 homes at Cecil Avenue, which it had received full planning consent for in February 2021. The blog included “links” to several of the guest posts I’d written since August 2021, urging the Council to include more genuinely affordable homes for rent in the project, especially homes at Social Rent level which the 2020 Brent Poverty Commission said should be the priority.

 

My “parody” Brent Council Homes publicity photograph (from November 2021).

 

Since 2021, Brent’s plans had been to allow its “developer partner” to sell 152 of the homes on the former Copland School site privately, with only 37 of the 250 for London Affordable Rent, and the other 61 as “intermediate” Council housing (either shared ownership or Intermediate Rent level). 

 

You would have thought that when they arranged additional funding from the GLA, to allow for more affordable homes to be delivered as part of this Wembley Housing Zone project, Brent would have celebrated with another press release, telling us about this “good news” story. Instead, I only discovered it when I spotted an item on the Forward Plan page of the Council’s website, as I was checking whether another item had been included there. It was about a Key Decision made by the Corporate Director, Communities and Regeneration, in April 2023:-

 

There was a “Officer Key Decision Report” on the website, but (true to form) the appendices to it were both “exempt”, so that the press and public were not allowed to find out ‘information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (including the authority holding that information)’. The Report did, however, give an outline of what the amended agreement with the GLA involved:-

 

 

My various attempts, since August 2021, to get Brent to include more genuinely affordable homes at Cecil Avenue, using additional GLA funding where possible, have been ignored, dodged or blocked. I was told that anything other than what the Council already planned would be impossible, because the scheme would not be viable. Now they had an extra c.£10.5m, how many extra affordable homes would they be able to provide? 

 

I had to submit a Freedom of Information Act request to find out, but “Wembley Matters” can (at last) share the Good News!

·      Instead of only 37 of the Cecil Avenue homes for London Affordable Rent, there will now be 59. 35 of these will be family-sized (3 or 4-bed) homes.

·      36 of the Cecil Avenue Council homes will be for Shared Ownership (of which 9 will be family-sized).

·      3 of the Cecil Avenue Council homes will be “Other” affordable homes. (Does that mean at Intermediate Rent?)

·      As before, 152 of the homes being built by Brent Council at Cecil Avenue will be for private sale by Wates (including 20 family-sized).

My title does say ‘Some Good News’. The other part of the Wembley Housing Zone project, across the road at Ujima House, was meant to have ALL of its 54 flats for London Affordable Rent to Council tenants. The revised figures for this block are now:

·      32 for London Affordable Rent (including all 8 family-sized flats).

·      22 for Shared Ownership.

So, the original proposed number of Wembley Housing Zone London Affordable Rent homes was 91 (37 + 54), and the revised number is 91 (59 + 32). Perhaps that is why Brent did not want to draw attention to the extra funding they’d negotiated from the GLA!

The only improvement from the extra GLA funding, and that is genuinely to be welcomed, is that more of them will be family-sized homes for affordable rent, and more will be delivered earlier (Ujima House still only has the outline planning permission approved in February 2021).

Of the original proposed 61 “intermediate affordable homes”, 58 have now been positively identified as being for shared ownership. But didn’t Brent’s Cabinet, just last week, decide to sell off the 23 shared ownership homes it had acquired at the Grand Union development,  because the Council does not have 'the knowledge, experience and the capacity to effectively sell and manage' shared ownership homes?

 

Placard from a demonstration against Shared Ownership.

 

The Report to the 17 July Cabinet meeting clearly showed that shared ownership is well above the affordability level of most families in Brent, and admitted:

 

‘… the market and demand for Shared Ownership, particularly in the latter quarter of 2022 was and has remained turbulent. This is both in terms of too many shared ownership homes available in the market and appetite and demand for these homes reducing.’

 

In a November 2022 guest post, I set out the reality of Brent’s Affordable Council Housing programme, and why they should not include any shared ownership homes. But the decision makers at the Civic Centre are still pressing on with their flawed policies!

 

Cllr. Shama Tatler fronting a publicity photo at the Cecil Avenue site in March 2023.

 

Brent’s March 2023 press release about its Wembley Housing Zone deal with Wates began by claiming: ‘More much-needed housing will soon be a reality following an agreement to build 304 new homes in Wembley.’ From the hard hats and “high-vis” jackets in the photograph that came with it, you might believe that heavy machinery was already at work on the Council-owned Cecil Avenue site, which has been vacant for at least three years.

 

 

The Cecil Avenue site from the top deck of a bus, 26 June 2023.

 

In the extract from the April 2023 Key Decision Report above, it says that ‘start on site [was] recorded on 27 March 2023’. When I went past on the last Monday in June, there was no machinery, no workers and no progress on the Cecil Avenue site, just two portacabins. My recent guest post, 1 Morland Gardens – an Open Letter to the Mayor of London, explains what is required for a “start on site” for GLA funding, and it appears this has not yet happened.

 

It appears that the ‘will soon be a reality’ actually means ‘by 31 December 2026’. Some eventual good news, but I still believe that Brent could have done so much better than 59 “genuinely affordable” homes for rent to Council tenants as part of its 250 home Cecil Avenue development.

 

Philip Grant.