Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity
Hazel Road and the Mission Hall now, and what is proposed.
Readers may remember a guest post from last September “EXPOSED! – Improper bias by Brent’s Planners over the Hazel Road application.” It may appear to have gone quiet since then, but things have been happening behind the scenes. Now matters are coming to a head!
Kensal Green Residents’ Association, whose FoI request had uncovered the evidence used in my previous article, sent a pdf document copy of my exposé as part of a complaint to Brent Council. The reply they received, from Brent’s Head of Planning, first summarised the issues raised, then responded in general terms to the summary (without referring to any of the detailed evidence of wrongdoing by the Case Officer) and concluded that there had been no bias! (That is typical of the way Brent has dealt with various complaints I have made over the years.)
In between various other, more pleasurable, heritage activities, I had put together a very detailed, evidence-based objection comment about the bias by Planning Officers, which I finally submitted to Brent’s planning website for application 25/0041 on 26 January. Brent’s Planning Code of Practice requires Officers and Members to consider and decide applications ‘in a fair impartial and transparent manner.’ Because I felt that there had been a clear breach of the Code, and a failure by the Council’s Head of Planning to address the concerns raised, I sent this open email to Brent’s Director of Law on 2 February:
‘Bias and perceived pre-determination by Brent Planning Officers in dealing with application 25/0041
This is an open email
Dear Ms Henry,
I am attaching a pdf document copy of an objection comment which I submitted on 26 January in respect of the planning application ref. 25/0041 (26 & 28 Hazel Road, London NW10). It contains detailed evidence of irregularities by Brent Council Planning Officers, which I would bring to your attention in both of your roles.
1. As Monitoring Officer:
There has been a breach of Brent's Planning Code of Practice by the Case Officer dealing with application 25/0041 (I will not name the Officer in this open email, but you can easily identify him internally), and potentially by other Planning Officers who have dealt with this application.
Paragraph 1.2 of the Code makes clear that Officers, as well as Members, must ‘consider and decide planning matters in a fair impartial and transparent manner.’
In cases such as this, where there had been pre-application advice and discussions, involving the Case Officer and other Officers, paragraph 8.4 of the Code states: 'It is vital that such discussions are conducted in accordance with this Code so there can be no suggestion of actual pre-determination or bias, or any perception of pre-determination or bias, or any other procedural impropriety.'
As I have shown in the attached document, there is a very strong perception of pre-determination in favour of the applicant in this case, and very clear evidence of bias by the Case Officer, so that his consideration of the application, in particular (but not exclusively) over the heritage aspects of it with which I was involved as an objector, was neither fair nor impartial.
You will need to consider the attached document in full, but the key points on the heritage side are:
· the Case Officer had already sent the applicant's agent a copy of the Alternative Heritage Statement ("AHS") which I had submitted in February 2025, and invited the submission of a revised heritage statement ("RHS") on behalf of the applicant (which I do not object to);
· after reviewing the RHS, submitted in April, and finding that it did not undermine the case made in my AHS, which showed that the application failed to comply with Brent's Local Plan heritage policy BHC1, the Case Officer not only asked the agent to prepare another revised heritage statement ("RHS2"), but spelt out in an email of 2 May 2025 what that statement should say. This instruction was clearly designed to enable the Case Officer to claim that policy BHC1 had been complied with (as if the application did not comply, Planning Officers could not recommend its approval to Planning Committee);
· the RHS2 was sent to the Case Officer on 27 May 2025, and because a more senior Officer decided that this should trigger a new public consultation period, the Case Officer issued letters and notices about the consultation on 10 June;
· however, the RHS2 document, which the consultation was meant to be about (with a closing date of 10 July) was not published on the Council's planning webpage for application 25/0041 until 9 July 2025. This did not seem to have been accidental, as I had emailed the Case Officer on 10 June saying that the revised heritage statement on the website was the April RHS (I was not aware until late July that there had been an RHS2!).
Although I believe that the Case Officer has breached the Planning Code of Practice, I would only ask that, if my complaint is upheld, he should be given a formal reprimand, not anything more serious. This is because, from past experience, I believe that problems over how adopted planning policy and practice are dealt with at Brent Council are not just down to this single Officer.
If you agree, on reviewing all of the evidence provided in the attached document, that the Planning Code of Practice has been broken in this case, I would ask that a written warning be given to Brent's Head of Planning, to be passed on to all of the Officers in his Department, that any future case of failure to consider and decide an application fairly and impartially will be treated as a misconduct offence, with serious consequences.
2. As Director of Law:
My wider concern, and hopefully yours as well, is that when the evidence which I have included in the comments document attached was presented to Brent's Head of Planning last October, in a complaint made by Kensal Green Residents' Association, his response was summarised in the words: 'I do not consider that the local planning authority has acted in a biased manner.' The details about this are set out at section 4 of the attached document.
I realise that a Head of Department is likely to try to protect his Officers, and the reputation of his Department, but in order to do so he has either failed to look at the detailed evidence provided, or has decided to ignore it, and try to deflect attention away from it in his response (an email of 24 October 2025 to Kensal Green Residents' Association, which they forward a copy of to me).
That approach undermines the credibility of any Report to Brent's Planning Committee put forward in respect of this application, if that Report is prepared or presented by Officers who have been involved in any way with the clear bias and perceived pre-determination which I have uncovered and commented on.
If such a Report, which would almost certainly recommend approval of the application, were to be made, and the Planning Committee were to accept the Officers' recommendation, then there would be strong grounds for an appeal against the decision to the High Court by objectors. Would you, as Director of Law, wish to take that risk?
The alternative that I can see, if the application is to be considered by Brent's Planning Committee, is that Brent Council should engage an independent planning consultant, perhaps nominated by a body such as the Royal Town Planning Institute, to review all of the planning application documents and comments on the application, and prepare a report and recommendation which is not influenced by the "procedural improprieties" which I have drawn attention to.
I look forward to receiving your response to this email, before any further action is taken by Brent Council (as local planning authority) over application 25/0041. Thank you. Best wishes,
Philip Grant.’
I had not received any acknowledgement to that email when I wrote a second time, after learning that application 25/0041 had been listed for a decision at the Planning Committee meeting next Wednesday, 11 February. Having read the Officers’ Report, on which Committee members are expected to base their decision (which is usually to approve the application, as recommended by Brent’s Planning Officers), it continued the bias previously complained about. This is what I wrote on 5 February:
Bias by Brent Planning Officers in their Report to Planning Committee on application 25/0041
This is an open email
Dear Ms Henry,
Further to my email to you on Monday 2 February, about bias and perceived pre-determination by Planning Officers in this case, I have been advised that application 25/0041 has been listed for determination at the Planning Committee meeting on Wednesday 11 February.
Having read the Officers' Report, it is clear that the bias By Planning Officers in favour of the application, and against those objecting to it, has continued in that Report. As a result, it is unlikely that there could be a fair and impartial consideration of the application, and I would strongly urge that application 25/0041 (26 & 28 Hazel Road, London NW10) be adjourned from next week's Planning Committee meeting, and only returned to the agenda when a Report and recommendation has been commissioned and prepared by an independent planning consultant, as suggested at the end of my 2 February email.
Because of my request for an adjournment, I am copying this email to the Chair and Vice Chair of Planning Committee, and to the Governance Officer for that meeting, for their information. I am also copying it to the Chief Executive, who may well be concerned by its contents as Brent's Head of Paid Service.
I realise that this email involves serious allegations, so I will seek to justify them, by reference to the Officers' Report to Planning Committee.
The Report's "summary of concerns raised" does include a mention of the detailed comment document which I included with my 2 February email, which it describes as: 'Planning officers being bias and pre-determining application.' However, the "Officer Comment" on this concern does not deal with the detailed evidence which I had provided, showing that there had been clear bias by the Case Officer. Instead, it suggests that any such bias would be immaterial:
'All planning applications are required to be determined in accordance with planning policies set out within the development plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise. The assessment of the planning application would also consider any comments received from the public or internal/external consultees, when forming a recommendation on a proposal.'
I agree entirely that planning applications should be determined in accordance with Brent's adopted Local Plan policies, but those policies have not been set out in the Report 'in a fair impartial and transparent manner’, which is a vital requirement for both Officers and Members in considering and deciding planning applications.
In addition to showing that application 25/0041 did not comply with Brent's heritage policy BHC1, my Alternative Heritage Statement ("AHS") comment of February 2025 listed three other Local Plan policies that the application breached. This is the relevant extract from para. 4.5 of the pdf document version my AHS that was emailed to Planning Officers:
That objection, highlighting the application's failure to comply with three identified Local Plan policies, is not included in the Report's "summary of concerns raised". That is a serious omission when applications need to be determined in accordance with planning policy, and another example of the bias by Planning Officers in favour of the application which they want to see approved.
The Report's list of "Key policies of the Brent Local Plan 2019-2041" does not even include policy BP6 South East, which is the specific development management policy covering the Kensal Green area of the borough. When dealing with the other two policies in the body of the Report, Planning Officers have been very selective with the parts they refer to. This is a screen shot from the Report:
Para. 40 of the Report fails to include the requirement in policy DMP1 that 'complements the locality' includes the requirement to 'conserve and where possible enhance the significance of heritage assets.' Para. 48, at the end of that section of the Report, actually claims: 'The proposed contemporary design is therefore considered as high quality and would comply with policy DMP1.' But the character of the locality which policy DMP1 states the proposed development needs to complement is a street of two-storey Victorian terraced homes. A square modern four-storey office block (in place of a Victorian heritage building) would detract from the locality, rather than complement it.
Para. 41 of the Report does admit that policy BD1 states: 'innovative contemporary design will be supported where it respects and complements historic character,' then goes on to seek to negate that requirement by adding: 'but is also fit for the future.' It is not disputed that the proposed building has an 'innovative contemporary design', but it does not respect the historic Victorian character of Hazel Road. That requirement of Brent Local Plan policies DMP1, BP6 South East and BD1 should mean that application 25/0041 IS NOT recommended for approval, but Planning Officers have failed to represent those policy points fairly in their Report.
The section of the Report dealing with the heritage aspects of the application "copies and pastes" extensively from the Further Heritage Comments document prepared by Brent's Principal Heritage Officer ("PHO"), which was published in November 2025. However, the PHO was quite new to Brent, and had not known or had misunderstood several important points from the borough's Historic Environment Place-making Strategy ("HEPMS"), a 2019 supporting document for the Local Plan.
One misunderstanding was his view that because 28 Hazel Road had not been added to the Local List after a 2016 project, it did not merit being on that list, and so should have a heritage significance score of no more than 5 (and his assessment gave it that score, out of 12). I wrote to him on 25 November, explaining with supporting evidence how he had misunderstood the HEPMS, and showing him that as 28 Hazel Road was included on the list at Schedule 3 of the Strategy document, it was considered to qualify for addition to the Local List, with a score of at least 6 out of 12, even though none of the 100+ properties on that list have been formally added yet.
The PHO replied to me on 27 November with this email:
As can be seen, the PHO thanked me for bringing the misunderstanding to his attention, and said that would share the information 'with the relevant planning case officer.' However, the Report does not take into account that information, and still includes the original, and false, claim: 'It must be emphasised that, following LB Brent’s 2016 round of the local list review process, that the site building was not locally listed, as it was not considered to have reached the necessary threshold for local listing.'
The Report also continues to claim that the former Victorian mission hall has a heritage significance score of 5 out of 12, despite the fact that if it had a score that low the HEPMS would not have treated it as a non-designated heritage asset! This is yet another example of the bias shown by Planning Officers against genuine grounds for objection by myself and many other Brent residents in their consideration of this planning application.
The application should not be allowed to proceed to a decision at next week's Planning Committee meeting, and I look forward to hearing that it has been withdrawn from the agenda, pending an independent Report which can be relied on to be fair and impartial, rather than the current Report by Brent Planning Officers which cannot. Thank you. Best wishes,
Philip Grant.’
Is it worth all this effort, trying to oppose the Brent Council “machine”? I believe it is, and that ordinary citizens, like us, sometimes have to make a stand on important issues. If what I have uncovered is happening on this application, how much trust can residents have that Brent's Planning Officers will deal with any application fairly and impartially?
Philip Grant
