Brent’s Wembley Housing Zone contract award – still too many secrets!

 

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

In a guest post last month (‘Tis the Season to be Sneaky!) I suggested that Brent Council might be trying to use its “urgency procedures” to get the decision to award a major contract for its Wembley Housing Zone (“WHZ”) development slipped through over the Christmas / New Year period, in the hope of avoiding it being called-in for scrutiny.

 

Although the decision was scheduled to be made on 19 December, it wasn’t officially made, by Brent’s Chief Executive, until 10 January, and published on the Council’s website the following afternoon. Normally, 28 days clear notice of a Key Decision has to be given, but the Urgent Key Decision Form sent to a Scrutiny Committee Chair on 12 December said that was not possible. Yet the decision was made 29 days after “urgency” was claimed!

 

Part of the Evaluation Process section from the Officer Key Decision Report.

 

In fact, notice of a Key Decision for this contract could have been given at least several months before 12 December. The Officer Report (undated), on which the decision to award the contract was based, says that the tender process started on 30 April 2022, when the Council advertised for initial expressions of interest from contractors. Eight had provided the necessary responses by the closing date of 31 May. The four short-listed contractors were invited, on 3 July, to submit tenders, and three had submitted valid tenders by the closing date of 18 October.

 

The Recommendation from the Officer Key Decision Report.

 

After all of the evaluation of the tenders by Council Officers, the recommendation which Brent’s Chief Executive accepted was to award the “developer partner” contract to Wates Construction Ltd, for a price of £121,862,500. That is a lot of money! In fact, the report shows that it could be even more than that, perhaps as much as £133m (and that is after an estimated £4m already having been spent on architects’ fees).

 

Extract from the Financial section of the Officer Key Decision Report.

 

It appears that the £126.5m will be the cost of building 304 homes on two sites which Brent Council already owns. That is a building cost of around £416,000 per unit. As para. 4.2 in the Report extract above states, part of this will be funded through capital receipts from the sale of private homes. When Cabinet agreed this scheme in August 2021, it included allowing the development partner to have half the homes (152, and all on the more favourable Cecil Avenue site, which will be completed first) to sell privately, for profit. How much will Wates be paying Brent for those homes as part of the contract deal? We don’t know – it’s a secret!

 

Part of the funding will also come from the ‘capital receipts from … intermediate homes’. In plain English that means the sale of percentages in shared ownership flats within the 152 homes that the Council will own. In August 2021, Cabinet agreed that 61 of the 98 homes which Brent would retain on the Cecil Avenue site should be “intermediate”, with only 37 of them for London Affordable Rent. Following the November 2022 Cabinet meeting, will the figure of shared ownership be increased?  We don’t know – it’s a secret!

 

Wembley Housing Zone extract from the “Affordable Housing” report to Cabinet, 14 November 2022.

 

Martin published a guest blog I had written about that Affordable Housing report to the November 2022 Cabinet meeting, and another which I wrote following the Council Leader’s response to questions which Cllr. Anton Georgiou had asked at that meeting. I showed that there is already a surplus in shared ownership homes on offer in Brent, which is likely to continue and increase, and that shared ownership is not really affordable to most people in housing need in Brent. So why is the Council planning to make many of the WHZ homes shared ownership, which won’t help the people its affordable homes policy is meant to house?

 

Outline of the contract from the Officer Key Decision Report.

 

The contract, as shown by the extract above, is in several parts. This is because although both WHZ sites were given planning permission in February 2021, Ujima House only has outline permission. Because of the long delay in getting to the contract award stage (which has greatly increased the cost of the project), the “developer partner” has to prepare, submit and get approval for the actual Ujima House plans. That’s why there is a completion date of 31 December 2026 (nearly 4 years away!), with a possible extension, for those homes to be delivered.

 

The former office block at Ujima House still has some “meanwhile” occupants, including the thriving Stonebridge Boxing Club, a vital resource for the local community. They have still to find an alternative home. Despite the long lead time before any work at Ujima House can begin (apart from its possible demolition, leaving an empty site, like that of the former Copland School buildings, where work on the Cecil Avenue homes could start straight away), Brent Council wants to ‘seek to assist them in finding suitable alternative premises’ (evict them a.s.a.p.). 

 

Extract from the Equality Implications section of the Officer Key Decision Report.

 

The Report’s determination ‘to ensure a start on site by the end of March 2023’ must mean that the extra £5m funding the Council has obtained from the GLA comes from its 2016-2021 (but extended to 2023) Affordable Housing Programme. There is probably some “spare” money in that pot because Brent will fail to start some of its other New Council Homes projects before the 31 March deadline! The £5m looks like the grant for 50 London Affordable Rent homes, at £100k per home. The Cabinet’s August 2021 decision (possibly since watered down) was for all 54 homes at Ujima House to be for LAR, but only 37 at the Cecil Avenue site, so at least some of the latest GLA agreement must relate to Ujima House.

 

One final point. The documents published with the decision notice include the Council’s Tender Evaluation Grid, where Wates appear as contractor “C” (the identities of “A” and “B” are secret). Although “C” scored highest overall, because their Financial score was much better than the other two (meaning their price was lowest), they were only second in the Quality section. Their Quality score was 68.6 out of 100 (contractor “B” was best with 72.0). Brent has had problems over poor quality housing developments in recent memory.

 

The Quality section of the WHZ contract Tender Evaluation Grid.

 

Non-Cabinet councillors have five working days to call-in the Key Decision for scrutiny, if they consider there are reasonable grounds to do so. As it was published on 11 January, at least five members would need to call-in the decision by 5pm on Wednesday 18 January for the award of the contract to be put on hold, so that (probably) Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee could consider it. It will be interesting to see whether that happens!

 

Philip Grant.

 

‘Tis the Season to be Sneaky! Is Brent trying to award the c£100m Wembley Housing Zone contract without scrutiny?

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

The location of the two Wembley Housing Zone sites.

 

If you’re a regular reader of “Wembley Matters”, you will be aware of Brent’s often repeated statements about the urgent need to build more Council homes for the families in temporary accommodation and on the waiting list. They are used to justify the Council’s often unpopular “infill” plans for some of its housing estates, and by Brent’s planners to justify recommending applications that breach some planning policies, and are seen by many as overdevelopment.

 

You will also be aware of Brent’s promise (and Labour Group election pledge) to build 1,000 genuinely affordable Council homes in the five year period ended 31 March 2024.

 

If you’re a regular reader, you will have seen at least some of my previous guest posts about Brent’s Wembley Housing Zone proposals. These include building 250 homes on the Council-owned brownfield site of the former Copland School building at Cecil Avenue. If they had got on and built them as soon as they had full planning permission in February 2021, that could have contributed a quarter of the 1,000 homes target. But as a result of a Cabinet decision in August 2021, 152 of those new homes are to be built for private sale at a profit by a “Developer Partner”. 

 

Title page to the Report which Cabinet approved on 16 August 2021.

 

For much of 2022, I tried to get this (what appeared to be an odd) decision properly scrutinised, but that was finally scuppered by the Chair of the Resources & Public Realm Scrutiny Committee (acting on whose instructions?) in September. Now there appears to be an attempt by those in power at Brent Council to stop any scrutiny of the actual award of the contract for the Wembley Housing Zone scheme.

 

This will be a very big contract, likely to be worth in excess of £100m. Brent advertised in April for expressions of interest from contractors for this, and they had to respond by the end of May. In November, Cabinet were informed that progress had been made, but the details were hidden away in an “exempt” appendix to the Report.

 

Extract from the November 2022 “Update on the Supply of New Affordable Homes” Report.

 

Then, in the past few days, an item appeared on the Forward Plan page, saying that the decision to award the contract, to be Brent’s Developer Partner for the Wembley Housing Zone scheme, would be made this month, under ‘urgency procedures’!

 

The Forward Plan entry from Brent Council’s website.

 

As Brent has been working towards this decision since August 2021 (in fact, long before that) and the contract procurement process has been going on for over six months, why was it urgent and what are those procedures? There are some clues from the document, dated 12 December, that was provided in a “link” from that Forward Plan, which I will ask Martin to attach a copy of at the end of this post, for general information.

 

It appears that there are various degrees of urgency. Normally, at least 28 clear days’ notice of a Key Decision has to be given. In this case, although it would be less than 28 days, it was planned to be ‘at least 5 clear days’ notice.’ The decision would be made on 19 December.

 

Extract from the Urgent Key Decision form.

 

If it had been less than five days, the Chair of a Scrutiny Committee would have ‘to agree that the decision is urgent and cannot be reasonably deferred for the reasons detailed ….’  But as it was ‘at least 5 clear days’, ‘the Scrutiny Chair is only required to note that the decision will be taken.’ In other words, there would be no scrutiny of whether or not the decision was actually urgent.

 

According to the Urgent Decision form, 28 days’ notice could not be provided because: ‘Conclusion of the contractor developer partner procurement was delayed.’ But Council Officers have been working on that procurement for months, and would have known that a decision on it would be required at some time in the near future, so notice could surely have been given earlier.

 

And the reason why it is ‘impractical to defer the decision to a later date’ is said to be ‘to meet delivery timescales and funding conditions.’ With the delays which have already occurred since Brent first entered into its Wembley Housing Zone agreement with the GLA in 2015, delivery timescales don’t seem to have been much of a priority before. As for funding conditions, the Council must have been aware of these ever since funding agreements were made (at least 15 months ago for the extra £5.5m the GLA agreed to offer).

 

As at 6.30pm on Wednesday 21 December the formal decision has not been published on the Decisions page of Brent Council’s website. Perhaps it will be published on 22 or 23 December. But why would Senior Council Officers (and the Cabinet member responsible for this project, who is the Lead Member for Regeneration, despite this being mainly a housing development) delay making the decision, and giving the intention to make it so little publicity, until just before the Christmas / New Year holiday period?

 

Why Call-in matters, from Brent’s Protocol on Call-in.

 

I’ve said before that those behind this controversial Wembley Housing Zone project want to avoid any scrutiny of it. The award of the contract is a Key Decision, so could be called-in for scrutiny. I may be wrong, but I suspect that the decision is being made now to minimise any chance of a call-in. For call-in to take effect, at least five backbench councillors (non-Cabinet members) need to request that a Key Decision is called-in, and they need to do so ‘within 5 days of the date on which the record of the decision is made publicly available.’ 

 

How many councillors, if they were not aware that this important Key Decision was about to be made (because the usual 28 days’ notice has not been given) would be looking at the Decisions page on the Brent Council website over the holiday period? And even if any of them were keeping an eye on it, what would be the chances of organising five members to complete and submit call-in request forms before the end of the fifth day?

 

That’s the main reason I’ve asked Martin to consider publishing this guest post – so that this Festive Season is not used as a cover to sneak through a Key Decision without anyone realising that has been done until it is too late!

 

Philip Grant 

 

Brent’s New Affordable Council Homes promises shredded!

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity 

 

When I shared my open email to the Council Leader on Morland Gardens in a guest post earlier this week, I drew attention to the “Update on the supply of New Affordable Homes” report, which is going to next Monday’s Cabinet meeting. Now I will highlight some points from that.

 

It’s only a month since I wrote about Brent’s Affordable Council Housing – the promises and the reality, but that reality has got a whole lot worse. Then I was writing about Social Rent, London Affordable Rent (“LAR”) and Shared Ownership (“SO”), which is neither ownership nor “affordable” housing. Now Council Officers want to include some new terms, Open Market Rent (“OMR”) and Open Market Sale (“OMS”) into Brent’s New Council Homes programme.

 

Extract from the “Update” Report for the 14 November Cabinet meeting.

 

They are saying that some (in fact, quite a lot!) of the new homes the Council builds can no longer be for social housing, which is what Council homes are meant to provide. They will have to be for rents that are not genuinely affordable, such as OMR (or Local Housing Allowance level, as it is sometimes referred to), or they will have to be for shared ownership or sold off privately, the same as any other developer would do. 

 

‘What is the point of the Council building new Council homes which are not new homes for rent to Council tenants?’ you might ask. The answer from the Corporate Director, Resident Services, is that you have to “convert” some of those homes to unaffordable homes, or homes for sale, in order to be able to afford to build other homes which are for affordable rent. But the Council, as a social housing provider, can’t offer unaffordable homes to Council tenants, so it has to pass on the OMR and SO homes it is “converting” to someone else.

 

The start of a long list of recommendations for Cabinet to agree on 14 November.

 

The Report recommends that the “conversion” will be done by ‘Officers’. Which Officers? – it doesn’t say (why is that?), but many of the other recommendations delegate the power to make decisions to the Corporate Director, Resident Services (the Officer who signed off the Report, Peter Gadsdon). 

 

As will be seen from my first extract from the Report above, the “conversion” will be ‘via the Council’s wholly owned subsidiary company i4B.’ Because i4B is a separate “legal person”, it can charge higher rents than the Council itself would be allowed to charge. The Council would build the homes to be “converted”, then sell them to i4B (who would pay for them with a loan from the London Borough of Brent), for rent to Brent residents (possibly homeless families). 

 

But as well as making these recommendations, Peter Gadsdon is also a director of i4B, which would benefit from the extra properties in its portfolio. Isn’t that a conflict of interests? And another director of i4B is Cllr. Saqib Butt, the brother of the Council Leader who will chair the Cabinet meeting considering the recommendations. I have raised these potential conflicts of interest with Brent’s Monitoring Officer, and await her response.

 

How many of the New Affordable Homes are likely to be “converted” to unaffordable ones? It could be as many as 50% of them, on the basis of this recommendation from the Report:

 

And it is not just ‘new planning permission applications’ that that are at risk of losing up to 50% of their affordable homes. Windmill Court, which has an “affordable housing” condition in its planning consent specifying that the tenure of the homes must be for no more than LAR, is one of the schemes proposed for “conversion”. The planning consent gave the reason for the LAR condition as: 'In the interests of proper planning.'

 

Extract from the Update Report, including proposals for Kilburn Square and Windmill Court.

 

Also on this particular list (there are others) for “conversion” is Rokesby Place. Regular readers may remember that I have been challenging the action by Brent’s Planning Officers in secretly changing the tenure for those two new 4-bedroom Council houses from Social Rent to the more expensive LAR. Now the Report to Cabinet wants to change things again, and either sell off one of the houses, or transfer it to i4B, to be let out at OMR! 

 

The Rokesby Place  planning application was pushed through, against the wishes of existing residents, on the grounds that the Council had to use any “spare” land on its estates to build genuinely affordable homes for local people in housing need. Now one of the two houses won’t be, despite the Report’s empty words: ‘Large family sized homes at low rent remain a priority for the Council.’

 

 
The Update Report’s section on the Council’s Wembley Housing Zone.

 

Another housing “battle” I’ve been having with Brent, for the past 15 months, is to try to get more genuinely affordable Council homes at their Cecil Avenue development. It’s a vacant, Council-owned site which has had full planning permission for 250 new homes since February 2021. The Report says that since Cabinet approved the project in August 2021, ‘officers have advanced competitive procurement of a delivery partner.’ When there are 250 homes which could be for Brent residents in urgent housing need, that’s very slow progress!

 

The delay has been even longer, because Officers carried out a “soft market testing” exercise in April 2021 (which was so soft that it guaranteed the result they wanted, to justify their recommendations to Cabinet). They could have started the project last year, when the cost of borrowing to build the homes (152 for the “developer partner” to sell for profit, 61 as intermediate housing - SO or OMR – and only 37 for LAR!) would have been much lower. What further cuts to the affordable housing in the Wembley Housing Zone are hidden in ‘(Exempt) Appendix 3’, which the public will never be allowed to see?

 

 Now, quickly, here are two more recommendations to Monday’s meeting from the Report: 

 

 

What are Modern Methods of Construction (“MMC”)? I would suggest you read a blog article on “Airspace” which Martin published in October last year. ‘A minimum of 25% of all homes’ out of the 700 the latest round of GLA funding will almost certainly include Gauntlett Court in Sudbury, and probably Campbell Court and Elvin Court in Kingsbury. Has there been any genuine consultation with residents of those Council estates yet?

 

 

 

 

The Report is recommending “conversion” of LAR homes the Council proposes to build to SO, when it has no evidence that there is any demand for them! There are already a large number of shared ownership homes built by, or in the pipeline from, private developers on big schemes in Wembley and elsewhere. Those developers are forced to provide a proportion of affordable homes as part of their plans, and they make as much of it as possible shared ownership, because that is recognised for planning purposes as “affordable housing”, even though it is unaffordable to most people in housing need in Brent.

 

There was an interesting Q&A on Council housing, and shared ownership, as part of consideration of Brent’s Draft Borough Plan 2023-2027, at the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee meeting on Tuesday, 8 November. I’ll end this post with a transcript (from the webcast recording - at around 2hrs 5mins in!) of that exchange. 

 

Cllr. Anton Georgiou (“AG”): Just for complete clarity for the committee, what does Brent Council define as a Council home? Most people define a Council home as being a property owned by the Council that is let at Social Rent.

 

Carolyn Downs, Chief Executive (“CD”): That is what we do as well.

 

AG: From documents that I’ve read, it seems that Brent have extended this to include Shared Ownership, London Affordable Rent, temporary accommodation and assisted living.  

 

CD: Absolutely not. When we talk about one thousand general new Council homes they are Council homes. It is Council housing.

 

 

AG: This isn’t Shared Ownership?

 

CD: We have not ever built a single Shared Ownership. Developers might, we the Council haven’t.

 

Shout from an unidentified person: Not genuinely affordable!

 

Cllr.Muhammed Butt, Council Leader:  Apologies. What you just said there, right, comes under the broad banner of affordable homes, right, but we do actually build Council homes.

 

Cllr. Rita Conneely, Chair: So, I’m going to draw this item to a close.

 

You can make up your own mind, from what was said at that meeting and from the Report, how committed Brent Council are to their promise of ‘genuinely affordable housing for families in Brent’. 

 

My own “Update on the supply of New Affordable Homes”? Far fewer than were promised ahead of last May’s local elections!

 

Philip Grant.

 

Brent Council's Cecil Avenue Housing Scheme: Scrutiny - What Scrutiny?

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

The purpose of the committee, from Brent Council’s website.

 

In a guest post last May, I set out the efforts I’d made to get a proper explanation from the Council about why 152 of the 250 homes at the Council’s housing development on the former Copland School site in Wembley would be built for a “developer partner” to sell at a profit. And why only 37 of the remaining 98 homes (less than 15% of the site total) would be for “genuinely affordable” rent to Council tenants (with the other 61 being for shared ownership). 

 

I asked ‘Where is the Scrutiny?’ Proper scrutiny was needed, because all that Cabinet members and Officers would tell me was that it would not be viable to offer more affordable homes at Cecil Avenue. That answer did not appear to make sense! 

 

Illustration from Brent’s April 2021 Wembley Housing Zone “Soft Market Testing” exercise.

 

The Council already owned the site (so none of the high land costs they use to justify the “infill” schemes on existing Council estates). They already had millions in funding from the GLA for their “Wembley Housing Zone”, as well as £5.5m extra for this scheme. And they could borrow money for the construction from the Public Works Loans Board at historically low interest rates.

 

Of course, the Council would not let me (or any other citizen of the borough) see their “Viability” report, not even under the Freedom of Information Act, because it was “confidential”. But councillors on a Scrutiny Committee would be allowed to see it, and question the relevant Cabinet members and Council Officers about the figures; and about why Brent could not offer more affordable homes on this development for the families in housing need that they claim to be so keen to build “New Council Homes” for!

 

My old parody Brent publicity photo for its Cecil Avenue Council Housing scheme.

 

I’d been trying since a guest blog in January 2022 (“It looks bad. It looks wrong!”) to get one of Brent’s Scrutiny Committees to take a close look at the Cecil Avenue project. And I did manage to include this as part of in a deputation to the 9 March meeting of Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee about the Poverty Commission Update report.

 

It took two months for the Council to provide a written (partial) reply to my deputation, by which time there had been local elections, and a new committee with a new Chair, Cllr. Rita Conneely. I wrote to her on 12 June, recommending that she include “Brent Council’s Cecil Avenue Housing Scheme” on her committee’s agenda for 19 July. I explained why, and said: 

 

‘Senior Council Officers and the Lead Member(s) involved do need to be put on the spot, to explain how they arrived at this apparent "giveaway" of much needed genuinely affordable Council homes, and if they can't give a satisfactory explanation, to come up with something better.’

 

Extract from minutes of the 9 March 2022 meeting of Resources & Public Realm Scrutiny Committee.

 

I received no reply, but after the minutes of the 9 March meeting had been published with the agenda for the committee’s 19 July meeting, I wrote to Cllr. Conneely again. I pointed out that the written response to my deputation totally ignored my points on Cecil Avenue. The claims made at the 9 March meeting about moving forward on the Poverty Commission recommendations, and ‘all homes being ring-fenced as being at affordable levels of rent’ were also false. The 2020 Poverty Commission had recommended Social Rent level, and no New Council Homes were yet being built for Social Rent!

 

The Social Rent recommendation from the Brent Poverty Commission Report.

 

On 18 July, Rita Conneely replied to me, saying: ‘Many thanks for your follow up on this. I am looking into this & seeking relevant additional information for the committee & its members.’ She referred to this, under “Matters Arising”, when those minutes were considered at the 19 July meeting, and indicated that this would be dealt with when the committee met in September. 

 

I was looking out for the agenda for the 6 September meeting, and when it was published there was no mention of the Council’s Cecil Avenue housing scheme on it. Worse than that, this is what the minutes of the 19 July meeting showed:

 

Extract from the minutes of Resources & Public Realm Scrutiny Committee meeting on 19 July.

 

“None”! I wrote to Cllr. Conneely on 30 August, including a transcript of what she had said at the 19 July meeting (from the webcast, beginning at 3.35 minutes into the recording):

 

‘And then we’re going to do “Matters Arising”. After our paper (?), so we have received …. Prior to this meeting we received a deputation from one of our residents, Mr Philip Grant, in regards to a presentation which was made to this committee in our previous municipal year, on the Poverty Commission. We’ve received some further information from our, from the Housing Department, in regards to that which the committee will be looking at in future, and we’ll be commenting on any of our further recommendations at our September meeting.’

 

In my email I asked that the minutes should be corrected, and also wrote:

 

‘An opportunity to put the decision makers "on the spot" at the 19 July meeting was missed, but I was led to believe that this would be done at your September meeting. Please let me know how, and where on the agenda, you will be doing that, so that I can request to speak on that item, if appropriate.’

 

I heard nothing back from the Chair of the committee, but did receive a promise from its Governance Officer (who my email had been copied to) that the minutes would be corrected. The day before the 6 September meeting, the agenda was republished. There was still no mention on it of the Cecil Avenue housing scheme, but revised minutes showed:

 

Extract from the revised minutes of Resources & Public Realm Scrutiny Committee’s 19 July meeting.

 

So what did happen on 6 September about the outstanding matters from my 9 March deputation, and especially the answers to the points I’d raised about the lack of genuinely affordable housing proposed for the Council’s Cecil Avenue development? There was no consideration by the committee, and no recommendations. This is a transcript (from the webcast, beginning at 1hour 8minutes and 25seconds into the recording) of the monologue from the Chair:

 

‘Next on my list – Minutes of the previous meeting. Does anybody have any challenges to the minutes of the previous meeting? [Pause – nothing heard] Lovely.

 

Matters Arising. I need to confirm that following a deputation that was received by this committee, historically, in the last municipal year as well actually. The deputation came from one of our residents, Mr Grant, and it was primarily regarding issues of affordability.

 

And I just want to flag in regard to that, as the Chair has received information which, er I’m sorry I’ve lost my …, I’ve received information which reassures us about the accuracy and the quality of the information that was presented to the Scrutiny Committee.

 

However, I do want to flag, a bit like my comment about acronyms earlier, affordability has a lot of different phrases now, and I think clarity in our meetings is important, both from us as councillors when we’re asking, that we’re clear what we are asking about, and that we try as best as possible to use the up-to-date and accurate terms when that information is being shared from officers.

 

So, we’d really, really appreciate an effort from all of us to keep meetings as clear and transparent as possible, so residents continue to be really as confident as possible in the information that is being shared. 

 

And again, just to reiterate that the issues of affordability in our housing stock is of serious concern to this committee, and the Community and Wellbeing Committee, and I know a lot of our residents as well. And I know the Cabinet of this Council as well. So, thank you all.’

 

Tucked away in that statement is the key sentence, which slammed the door shut on any consideration of the outstanding Cecil Avenue points (although that scheme is not mentioned by name):

 

‘I’ve received information which reassures us about the accuracy and the quality of the information that was presented to the Scrutiny Committee.’

 

What information was received? And what ‘information that was presented’ did it reassure “us” about? Did other committee members even see any of that information, or is “us” just the committee Chair? I think it’s fair to point out a lack of transparency here! 

 

And did you notice the hesitation before that sentence was read out? It certainly sounded as if Cllr. Conneely had to find the piece of paper that sentence was written down on – a carefully constructed form of words that prohibited any further discussion of this “matter arising” by committee members, without giving away any details of why that was the case. Did the Chair write those words herself (and if so who advised her on the best words to use), or was she just given the piece of paper by someone else, and told what she must say?

 

In my blog about this back in May, I said: ‘Brent’s Cabinet and Senior Council Officers do not want their Wembley Housing Zone proposals to be scrutinised.’ Well, they’ve got what they wanted, and Resources & Public Realm Scrutiny Committee have allowed them to get away with it.

 

It’s not just on this issue that Brent’s Cabinet and Senior Officers seem to control what the committee scrutinises. A report to the Full Council meeting on 11 July, headed “Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee Chair’s Report”, but actually written by Council Officers and signed off by the then Assistant Chief Executive, included this section on the committee’s work plan for the year ahead:

 

Extract from item 11 on the Full Council meeting agenda, 11 July 2022.’

 

‘Scrutiny is the mechanism by which the Cabinet is held publicly to account.’ But if Brent’s Cabinet is telling the Resources & Public Realm Scrutiny Committee what subjects it can look at, those words are meaningless. 

 

Scrutiny – What Scrutiny?

 

Philip Grant.