Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity
Philip Grant has sent this email to Brent Council. He has been trying to get the General Purposes Committee returned to its proper status, as a mainly "backbench" committee independent of the ruling Cabinet, since 2016, as shown in his March 2026 guest post https://wembleymatters.blogspot.com/2026/03/proposed-stopping-up-order-near-olympic.html
This is an open email
Dear Mr Patel, Ms Nassr, Mr Kinsella and Ms Wright,
In looking at the agenda for the Annual Meeting, and item 11, I am writing to suggest that the timing for meetings of the General Purposes Committee in the Calendar of Meetings will have to be changed. 9.30am on a Monday morning is no longer appropriate, and it should now be at 6pm, and possibly on a different day.
The time of 9.30am, before a Cabinet meeting at 10am, only came about because the General Purposes Committee had effectively become a sub-committee of Brent's Cabinet. It should never have been that, as the General Purposes Committee makes decisions on matters which are not part of the Cabinet's remit, and there should be a clear "separation of powers".
I am including Ms Wright in this email as she chairs the Constitution Working Group, and copying it to the Leaders of the four Groups on the new Council, as I feel strongly that it is time that the General Purposes Committee was put back to its proper role as an independent, mainly "back bench" committee. I would suggest that the make-up of the committee in the Constitution, whether it has eight or six members, should be restricted to no more than two Cabinet members, and at least one member of each Group on the Council.
The downside of the way the previous "Cabinet" model of the GPC operated is that its members had only a maximum of 30 minutes to consider important decisions, and these could be based on detailed Reports, which they had to read in addition to even more Reports ready for their Cabinet meeting at 10am.
An example of how this had an adverse impact on Brent Council is the Section 116 Highways Act application, which I was involved in opposing earlier this year. The go-ahead for this application was given at a General Purposes Committee meeting in March 2022, which had six substantive items on its agenda, yet lasted only 19 minutes.
If the committee members had considered what they were recommended to approve more closely, they may have seen what was obvious to me immediately when I saw the plan and draft order for the first time last December. If they had then questioned what exactly was being proposed, it might have made the Officers involved reconsider whether the "generic" wording of a Section 116 Order was appropriate for the specific circumstances of the situation on the south side of Engineers Way.
As it was, it took many hours of Officer time, and a detailed hearing before a Magistrate, taking a whole afternoon of time for the barrister representing Brent Council, to get to a sensible solution, which gave the Council and Quintain the permission to swap maintenance responsibilities for small areas of pavement, but did not take away the legal right for people to pass across those areas:-
I trust that the timing of GPC meetings will be amended, and look forward to hearing that the Constitution will be changed to reflect the proper status of Brent's General Purposes Committee. Best wishes,
Philip Grant.
