The Liberal Democrat petition on additional Wembley Event Days will be presented to the next Brent Council Cabinet on Monday September 9th. This means that the petition will be heard before Wembley Stadium's planning application for extra events goes to Planning Committee.
The aim is to persuade the Council that this matter is so important that they should hold consultation meetings with local residents and businesses so that they are fully aware of the impact of events now and the potential disruption of extra days. This was done when Tottenham Hotspur applied to use the stadium. A Planning Committee with limited time for residents to speak is not sufficient.
If residents wish make their own representations about the impact extra event days would have on them personally they could write to Muhammed Butt, Leader of Brent Council, at: cllr.muhammed.butt@brent.gov.uk
THE PETITION (Now closed):
We the
undersigned petition the council to Consult and to Listen to concerns of local
residents and businesses about the impact of increasing the number of
"Large" Events at Wembley Stadium
Plans for the new Wembley Stadium were approved in
1999 with a limit of 37 Large Events per year. A few years later Brent Council
allowed an increase to 46 Large Events per year. The Stadium owners have now
applied for planning permission to increase this by another 8 to 54 Large
Events per year.
Large Events at the Stadium have a major impact on
the lives of local people and business - especially when as many as three
events are held on 3 successive days.
We call on Brent Council (jointly with representatives
of the FA) to carry out an extensive public consultation with Brent residents
and local businesses on the social and economic impacts of Wembley Stadium
Large scale events before the Planning Application is considered by the Brent
Council's Planning Committee.
We believe that local people and businesses have
the right to be properly consulted and informed about these possible changes
and for their views to be assessed and documented before any decision is made.
The petition will also be referred to the relevant Director and Lead Members as well as the appropriate Scrutiny Committee.
The Quarter 4 Gifts and Hospital Return tabled for yesterday's Audits and Standards Advisory Committee revealed the Brent Council leader had received match tickest to the total value of £720 from the Football Association.
He is topped by Cllr Bhagwanji Chohan with an £800 value gift to attend a Gujarati diaspora event. LINK The entry states:
8.2.2024 to 11.2.2024 - Paid trip to Ahmedavad, India for Pravasi
Gujarati Parv 2024 second edition - Guest speaker. Air Travel &
hotel approximate value £800. Gift from Pravasi Gujerati Parv.
The event was sponsored by the controversial Adani company. SEE LINK
Cllr Chohan (Chauhan) was one of many speakers, including the Mayor of Harrow.
Publicity for the event included a message from Indian Prime Minister Nahendra Modi
The controversy over Adani included questions about its alleged close relationship with Modi. LINK
The impact of Wembey Stadium on the local community has always been controversial. On the one hand complainants are told, 'There has been a stadium here for more than a hundred years. Why live near a stadium if you are going to complain about it?' to, 'We are imprisoned in our homes on Event Days and the number keeps increasing.' Views vary from, 'The stadium brings in money for the local economy and puts Wembley on the map', to 'We have to pay for clearing up all the litter, put up with public urination and disruption of public transport.'
So the news that Wembley Stadium is seeking to apply to Brent Planning Committe to increase the cap on the number of non-sporting events from 46 to 54 is likely to reignite debate.
In a circular to residents Wembley Stadium says:
Wembley Stadium
is looking to adjust the annual stadium event cap to provide more flexibility
to attract additional non-sporting major events.
The current
permission of 46 events per year limits the number of dates Wembley Stadium can
offer to non-sports acts or events. Increasing the cap to 54 major events per
year would provide increased flexibility to attract major international acts to
the stadium.
The application
will retain a cap on the number of major sporting events to no more than 25 per
annum, with a minor variation to the definition of a major event as a stadium
bowl event with a capacity in excess of 60,000 people.
A planning
application will be submitted to Brent Council shortly. Full details of the
application will be available for viewing on Brent’s planning portal in the
coming weeks.
If you have any
initial comments or queries about the proposal, please let us know by
submitting your response HERE before 1 pm on
Wednesday 21st February.
We will also be
holding a drop-in session for more information from 6 pm on
Thursday 22nd February in Wembley Stadium’s Club Wembley Main Reception.
Please come along for more information and a chance to discuss this in person.
Meanwhile Brent Council's 'Healthy Streets and Parking Resident Services' is asking for the views of councillors (not the public) on Event Day Traffic Management Orders
In order to
accommodate events and games being held at the stadium, it is proposed to adddates for the 2024calendar year tothe existing Wembley Stadium Event Day
Traffic Management Orders which have been made and are currently enforced.
We need to prepare for the eventuality
for all of these dates to be included within our Traffic Management Orderseven though on some dates no event
will take place. This is mainly due to the fact that the dates cannot
precisely be identified with certainty yet, at the time of this proposal.
Please note that on the date that
enforcement will take place, signs will display the restrictions that are in
place.
The proposed events are planned on the
following dates, inclusive of the South Waytwo-way
traffic flow:-
25th February 2024,
23rd and 26th March 2024,
7th, 20th and 21st April 2024,
4th, 5th, 11th, 12th, 18th, 19th, 25th and 26th May 2024,
1st, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 15th, 16th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th and
29th June 2024,
3rd, 7th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 25th, 27th, and 31st
July 2024,
1st, 2nd, 3rd, 10th, 11th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 19th, 20th and 25th
August 2024,
2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 28th and 29th
September 2024,
Shortly after UEFA announced an investigation into Sunday's events at the Euro2020 match at Wembley, Brent Scrutiny Committee attempted to find out whether Brent Council was going to hold a review of its own responsibilities in the matter.
Brent Council is responsible for scrutinising all the public safety arrangements at the Stadium and for issuing the safety licence. The Council also chairs the Wembley Stadium Advisory Group.
Recording of yesterday's meeting
Committee Chair, Roxanne Mashari, had to repeatedly remind officers that the Committee had a right and a duty to scrutinise these issues in the light of the seriousness of what had taken place. Residents need to be reassured that concerns were addressed and that similar events would not happen again.
In response officers said it was too soon after the event to consider these issues and wanted to wait until Tuesday's meeting with partners in the SafetyAdvisory Group for information that would be forthcoming. The Advisory Group includes the Council, Police, Wembley Stadium and the Football Association. It was evident that Chris Bryant, representing the FA, had been taken by surprise by the UEFA announcement.
Chris Whyte for Brent Council outlined the Council's role and particularly the activities of the Council's two Public Safety Officers who were present before, during and after events to check arrangements both inside and outside the stadium. Such arrangements included how the checking of tickets at turnstiles was managed; management of licensed premises inside the stadium; management of the seating arrangements once the match started; crowd management outside the stadium including the enforcement of Public Space Prohibition Orders over illegal trading, advertising, ticket touting; and working with partners via the Stadium Control Room bringing any incidents to their attention. No councillor questioned whether two Public Safety Officers were sufficient for such a large stadium with 60,000 plus attending.
Whyte clarified it was only the Council's operation alplan that he was responsible for signing off, and not those covering policing and stewarding. The plan was forwarded to the CEO and Council Leader. The police and Wembley Stadium made their own risk assessments for specific events and subsequent deployment decisions.
Cllr Hassan wanted to know the terms of reference for any inquiry and what it would cover and whether the Council deployed different numbers for different events. Chris Whyte said it was too early to discuss terms of reference for an inquiry and the Council should wait for the meeting with other stakeholders. The level of resources that the Council had deployed recognised the importance of Euro2020 ands was well in excess of the number that would be deployed at a Spice Girls concert.
Cllr Mashari was frustrated at not being able to get a clear commitment to a public review by the Council itself and her suggestion that the Committee recommend that Tuesday's stakeholders meeting should be held in public was rejected. Cllr Janice Long suggested that this demand amounted to grandstanding and Mashari should not believe everything she read in the papers. Cllr Mashari said the allegation of grandstanding diminished the seriousness of the incident where people were injured and a tragedy could have happened.
After further discussion when most members agreed to wait for more information, the Committee agreed that information from the Safety Advisory Group, including the Minutes, should be brought to the next Scrutiny Committee meeting and made a recommendation that the Cabinet undertake a public review of lessons learnt from Sunday's incidents.
The leader of the Council, Muhammed Butt, was present latterly during the discussion but did not take part.
Welcome to the 6th and final part of Philip Grant's Story of Wembley Park
Welcome back to this final part of Wembley Park’s story.
In Part 5 (“click” if you missed it) we reached the point where Wembley had won
the bid to be the home of England’s new football stadium. In 1999, the Football
Association bought the old stadium for £103million, through a new company,
Wembley National Stadium Ltd.
Even though the plans for the new stadium were
still vague, an Australian company, Multiplex, agreed to build it for £326.5m,
just before the old stadium’s final match (an England v. Germany international)
in October 2000. Many people had thought that Wembley’s iconic “twin towers”,
which were Grade II listed buildings, would be retained. However, Brent Council
agreed to the whole stadium being demolished, although work did not begin on
that until 2002.
1. Wembley's "twin towers", about
to be demolished in January 2003. (Photograph by Pete Tomsett)
Although the old Wembley Stadium estate included over
100 acres of land and buildings, the F.A. had decided that they were ‘not in
the business of regeneration’. By 2002, around 85 acres, including Wembley
Arena (in 1978, the former Empire Pool was officially renamed), had been sold
to the developers, Quintain Estates. They began drawing up a masterplan for the
regeneration of Wembley Park, in consultation with Brent Council.
Early in 2003, the world watched as the towers of
the old stadium were demolished. Rubble from them was used for part of the
foundations of the new Wembley. What I didn’t know, until a few years ago, was
that a concrete flagpole base, from the top of one of the “twin towers”, was
saved as a memory of the old Wembley. If your “lockdown” exercise walk takes
you to Brent River Park, you can see it by the footpath on the east side
of the river, near Pitfield Way.
2. The “twin towers” flagpole base, at Brent
River Park.
The demolition of the old stadium
While work was underway to build a new stadium on the site of the old, Quintain were also beginning their efforts. The
Arena was still a thriving venue for over 150 shows a year, but it too was
getting old. By 2005, a £20million upgrade was in progress, and you can see
this in the photograph below. The 1934 building is having a facelift, with its
entrance being moved to the eastern end, from a new Arena Square, while in the
foreground is the roof of the former Palace of Industry. You can also see the
round Conference Centre, the triangular office building Elvin House, and the
exhibition halls and multi-storey car park of the 1970s Wembley Complex.
3. Aerial view of Wembley Arena and
surrounding buildings in 2005. (Image from the internet)
The Arch, which was to be the distinctive feature
of the new Wembley Stadium, was raised into place in 2004. However, there were
problems and delays with the construction project, and it was not until March
2007 that stadium was ready, at a final cost of £757m. A new “White Horse
Bridge” provided improved pedestrian access from the High Road, and Wembley
Central and Stadium stations. Local residents got the chance to look at the new
stadium, before the start of what it was hoped will be a legendary history to
match that of the “twin towers”.
4. Brent residents crossing the White Horse
Bridge, after a March 2007 Community Day at the Stadium.
(Photograph by Malcolm Barrès-Baker. Brent Archives online image 7057)
5. Forum House, in 2009, with construction on
the former Conference Centre site underway beside it.
The refurbished, 12,500 seat Wembley Arena had
reopened in April 2006, hosting the London leg of Depeche Mode’s “Touring the
Angel” tour. Other construction work, for what Quintain originally called Wembley
City, was going on nearby. Forum House, between the Arena and Empire Way, was
their first residential block to be finished. By 2007, the Conference Centre
next door, and other 1970s buildings, were being demolished to make way for
larger schemes.
6. Wembley Conference Centre being demolished
in 2007. (By M.
Barrès-Baker. Brent Archives image 7070)
Among the projects completed over the next few
years were the 4-star Hilton Hotel, across Lakeside Way from the Arena, the
Quadrant Court flats and several blocks of student accommodation. With more
people living in the area, a gym and small branches of Tesco and the Co-op on
the ground floors of several new buildings helped to provide amenities.
However, the most striking student block in Wembley Park, Victoria Hall (or
“the helter-skelter”), which opened in North End Road in 2011, was not one of
Quintain’s buildings.
7. The Victoria Hall student accommodation
building, as seen from the stadium in January 2012.
The Olympic Games returned to Wembley in 2012.
Although the main venues were at the Olympic Park, in East London’s Stratford
district, both the stadium and the arena hosted sports events. For the
90,0000-seater stadium it was, of course, football matches, with three group
games involving Great Britain’s men’s and women’s teams, two semi-finals and
both finals. Wembley Arena hosted both the badminton and rhythmic gymnastics
competitions. These required extra facilities, which were housed in temporary
buildings on the former Palace of Arts site, with a special footbridge built
over Engineers Way to link them to the arena.
While new buildings were going up, one of Wembley
Park’s oldest buildings was almost destroyed by a fire in 2013. The Lodge to
Richard Page’s estate (at least a century old when it was pictured at the start
of Part 3) had already seemed accident-prone after it was
hit by a runaway bus in 1973. Sadly, this Grade II listed cottage, at the
corner of Wembley Park Drive, is still in a terrible state, with its repair
hampered by the alleged arson that started the fire.
8. Wembley Park Lodge, with the bus accident
in 1973 (Brent Archives
image 9091), and in 2017.
2013 was also a milestone year for the regeneration
of Wembley Park. Quintain’s London Designer Outlet (“LDO”) opened in October.
This large development of shops, eating places and a multi-screen cinema was a
visitor attraction, and a facility for local people. Under an agreement with
the Council, Quintain were allowed to cover the Bobby Moore Bridge tile murals
with large vinyl sheets advertising the LDO. That autumn also saw Brent Council
move its 2,000 staff from the Town Hall in Forty Lane, and other buildings,
into a brand-new Civic Centre.
9. Brent Civic Centre, from Arena Square,
July 2014.
Brent’s new civic home had been built on part of
the former Palace of Industry site, and the last section of this final relic of
the 1924 exhibition had been knocked down in 2013. One of the first events put
on by Brent Museum in the Civic Centre was a display marking the 90th
anniversary of the British Empire Exhibition. Quintain had saved some of the concrete
decorative lion heads when the “Palace” was demolished. Wembley History
Society, and the Exhibition Study Group, worked with Quintain and Brent Council
to put a “Wembley Lion” on permanent public display. It was unveiled in
July 2014, on the green space in Wembley Hill Road, near the LDO.
10. The Wembley Lion (selfie opportunity!), with BEE
information panel, in Wembley Hill Road, July 2014.
The use of the site opposite the arena for the 2012
Olympics had delayed its redevelopment by Quintain. Their large development of
“Tipi” branded rental apartments, finally came on stream in 2016. The
brick-faced blocks were around a private green space, and were known as Emerald
Gardens. A road behind them was intended to commemorate the Palace of Arts, which had previously been on that site, before
being demolished in the early 2000s.
Although Quintain still had plenty of land at
Wembley Park to develop, they acquired some more in early 2016, when they
bought Fountain Studios. From 1993, Fountain had been using the former
Studio 5 building, and hosted the production of many famous TV shows. They had
to close by the end of the year, with their last ever broadcast the live
semi-final of that year’s “X-Factor”. Plans have since been put forward to
redevelop the area as the Fulton Quarter, but the building reopened as
Troubadour’s temporary Wembley Park Theatre in October 2019.
11. An aerial view across Wembley Park in 2017.
(Courtesy of
Julian Tollast / Quintain Plc)
At first sight, Wembley Park seems to be drowning
under a sea of tall buildings in recent years, but there are some mitigating
factors in its planning. Just as at the 1924 exhibition, there are green spaces
between the concrete buildings, such as Elvin Gardens, behind the Civic Centre.
A seven-acre park will soon be open, including a water feature. A community centre, The Yellow, has been
provided, in a road remembering Wembley Park’s heritage. The long-promised
primary school has yet to be built, however, and I am one of those who believe
its proposed site, on York House’s car park, beside a main road with poor air
quality, is a mistake.
12. The Yellow community centre, in Humphry
Repton Lane, Wembley Park.
A major upgrade of Olympic Way was announced in 2017, with Brent Council agreeing
to give Quintain a £17m contribution to its cost out of Community
Infrastructure Levy payments. In April 2018, Wembley History Society asked both
parties to put the Bobby Moore Bridge tile murals back on permanent public display, as part of those
improvements. Among the features that have appeared beside the main route to
the stadium, along with new trees, is the BoxPark food hall and entertainment
venue.
13. Olympic Way improvements in progress,
January 2019, with the new BoxPark and blocks of flats.
Despite strong opposition from local historians and
residents, Brent’s Planning Committee agreed in July 2019 to allow the tile
murals in subway to be covered with LED panels that can be used for
advertising. Quintain had agreed to put one of the mural scenes, showing
England footballers at the old “twin towers” stadium, on display as part of
their public realm upgrade. In January 2020, three more scenes were put back on display for a few weeks, at the start of Brent’s London
Borough of Culture year. Wembley Park’s sports and entertainment heritage
covers more than just football, and I hope that its story will, in time, be
properly celebrated!
14. The Bobby Moore Bridge subway in November
2019, with lights, and one tile mural scene on show.
Thank you for reading Wembley Park’s story; I hope
you’ve enjoyed learning some interesting things about it. This series has
ended, but there will be more local history next weekend!
Philip Grant.
Thank you very much Philip for all your work on this really interesting series of article.
The FA has circulated a report on the economic impact of the Wembley Stadium 2017-18 season. One local resident immediately said, 'Do you belive any of this? I am sceptical.' I leave it to readers to make up their own minds and welcome your comments.
I wanted to share with you the Wembley Stadium economic
impact study we commissioned on the back 2017/18 season – a unique season for
Wembley Stadium marking the 10 year anniversary of the new stadium, welcoming
our 10 millionth stadium visitor and of course hosting Tottenham Hotspur FC for
a full Premier League season.
We entrusted Deloitte to analyse the economic impact of
the stadium during this period – 58 major events, which, in addition to
football, saw boxing, Rugby League, NFL and music concerts come to London.
We are looking forward to building on these successes with
some of the biggest events in world entertainment, such as UEFA EURO 2020 and
UEFA Women’s EURO 2021, just around the corner.
Report Summary
§The
2017/18 season at Wembley saw a record 58 events and was the first time a
Premier League football team had taken residency at the stadium. This higher
number of event days resulted in an unprecedented amount of visitors to Wembley
Stadium and the surrounding area.
§Findings
shows that Wembley’s events led to a boost of £150m to the local economy of
Brent, £424m to London and £615m to England.
§The
58 events attracted 3.8 million spectators, including 350,000 visitors from
overseas. The project therefore reaffirms Wembley’s status as one of the
leading event venues in the world that attracts significant numbers of visitors
to England, London and Brent.
§Deloitte’s
analysis shows that the economic impact from the 58 events supports 1,800 FTE
jobs in Brent, 4,900 across London and 6,100 across England.
§Gross
Value Added (GVA) is a common way to look at the value added to GDP by the
production of goods and services. The GVA contribution of the 2017/18 event
season was £83m to Brent, £231m to London and £334m to England as a whole.
The full report is below. Click bottom right for full screen version.
We have a large number of furniture items that we no longer need and are therefore in the process of donating them away. We have made contact with a few charities but it would be great if we could find a local home for most of it.
List of items
·Purple chairs, Circa x 600-650
·Artificial wall x 2
·Coffee tables x 10
·Plastic stools x 30
·White Atrium chairs x 15
·Pouffes x 25
·Bar sofas x 10
·Bar glass tables x 6
·Round tables x 8
·Red and white sofa x 8
·Brown stools x 40
·Blue chairs x 2
·Red chairs x 20
·Little black stools x 40
·Tours stools x 10
·White poser tables x 20
·3 seater sofas x 2
·Box sofas x 2
·Light boxes for Wembley suite x 8
·Big red sofas x 2
·Lollipop signs x 7
·Lamp x 1
With the exception of a small number items, most pieces are in good used condition.
Please note that if you are interested in taking some of this furniture, you would need to make plans to have it collected by the end of next week. You can do this by simply emailing Community@thefa.com Subject line **free furniture**
Community
The FA GroupPostal address: Wembley Stadium, PO Box 1966, London, SW1P 9EQ
