Guest blog by Philip Grant in a personal capacity:-
Council housing at Cecil Avenue – a reply from Cllr. Muhammed Butt
At Monday’s Cabinet Meeting, Kilburn Village Residents’ Association presented a petition expressing their opposition to the “infill” housing plans which the Council seems determined to push through for Kilburn Square, and dissolution with the consultation process, in which residents views had been ignored.
After watching the webcast for this item, I was struck by the way in which the Council Leader, and Chair of the meeting, seemed to dismiss the residents’ concerns. The most important thing for him was to build the Council homes that families in temporary accommodation urgently need, and he made no excuse (or apology?) for building them.
Architect’s diagrammatic view of Brent’s planned Cecil Avenue development
That struck a chord with me, because for the past six months I’ve been trying to find out why Brent’s Cabinet decided, in August 2021, that 152 of the 250 homes the Council plan to build, on land they own at Cecil Avenue in Wembley, would be for a developer to sell at a profit, and not for people in urgent housing need on the Council’s waiting list.
I sent an email to the Council Leader, Cllr. Muhammed Butt, referring to the passion he had expressed in Cabinet for building Council homes, then asking about Cecil Avenue:-
‘Let me ask you a straight question, and ask you for a straight reply to it:-
What excuse are you making for not building all of the 250 homes on Brent Council's Cecil Avenue site in Wembley as affordable Council homes for rent, and only using 98 of the 250 as Council homes for Brent people in housing need?
Cecil Avenue is a vacant, Council-owned site. Full planning permission for the 250-home development on that site was given a year ago, and the Council could by now have a contractor building those much-needed homes there.
Instead, your Cabinet resolved last August to adopt a "developer partner" option, under which the contractor who would be appointed, and paid by Brent Council to build those 250 homes (plus 54 at the Ujima House site across the High Road), would be allowed to purchase 152 of the 250 homes at Cecil Avenue and sell them for profit.
People in the borough, including those in temporary accommodation that you spoke so passionately about, deserve to know why. I look forward to receiving your response, and sharing it publicly. Thank you.’
To his credit, Cllr. Butt sent me a reply at lunchtime today (Wednesday 9 February), and agreed that I could publish it, as long as it was unedited. That is what Martin has agreed to do, and you can read it in full below.
You will see that much of it has been written in the form of a party political speech for the Local Council elections in May, but there are parts which relate directly to my question about the Cecil Avenue development. I will give my response to those – readers can comment on his other claims, should they wish to.
I do appreciate that the Cecil Avenue site is part of Brent’s Wembley Housing Zone scheme. I made that clear in my very first “guest blog” about this issue, last August.
In case it leads to confusion, I should clarify that when Cllr. Butt says: ‘This site intends to deliver 100% affordable housing and a target of 50% across both sites’, the site with 100% affordable housing is Ujima House. This still only has outline planning permission, and will need to be demolished before a ten-story block of 54 homes (only 8 of them family-sized) can be built on the site, above affordable workspace on the ground floor.
Outline plan for Ujima House, currently an office block on the High Road.
The key answer given by Cllr. Butt, to justify the planned “giveaway” of 152 homes at Cecil Avenue to a developer, is this: ‘The Council needs to ensure the entire programme is financially viable within the GLA grant made available by the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, hence the requirement for a mixed tenure development in order to subsidise the delivery of the affordable elements.’
That may be Brent’s “excuse”, but Cecil Avenue is a Council housing development on Council-owned land. Brent Council will be borrowing the money, at low interest rates, to build the homes there, just as it would for any other Council housing scheme within its Housing Revenue Account, to provide homes for rent to Council tenants. Why does it need to sell 152 of those homes to a private developer, at a pre-agreed fixed price, rather than using them to house local people in housing need? I still don’t understand that.
After all, it appears
to be acceptable, to the Council and its Cabinet, to borrow at least £48m,
charged to the Housing Revenue Account, to purchase 155 leasehold
flats in an Alperton tower block, from a secretive “Asset Special Purpose
Vehicle”! I’m still waiting for an answer on that.
Artist’s impression of the courtyard garden at the Cecil Avenue site.
My final comment on Cllr. Butt’s reply is his reference to ‘a new publicly accessible open space’. 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.
This shared public open space makes the Cecil Avenue site much more desirable than the 100% affordable Ujima House site, where the flats will just have tiny balconies (plus a play area on the flat roof of the block). 152 of the Cecil Avenue homes would be for private sale, and 61 of the remaining 98 “affordable” Council homes would be either for shared ownership or intermediate rent, leaving only 37 of the 250 for affordable rent to Council tenants.
I’ve had my say, but please read what Cllr. Butt has said, and make up your own minds. This is his reply to my question above, in full and unedited:
‘Dear Mr Grant
Thank you for watching the live stream, and for your comments.
I hope that you can appreciate that the Cecil Avenue site is part of a wider development in the Wembley Housing Zones Programme and includes the adjacent site Ujima House - which is being used for affordable workspace so that it remains in use until things have been finalised.
This site forms part of our New Council Homes Programme to deliver at least 5,000 affordable homes with partners and at least 1,700 council homes directly ourselves, by 2024. Brent is one of a handful of councils that is meeting its targets, that means people desperately in need of housing get safe secure housing, something that surely not even you can be against.
This site intends to deliver 100% affordable housing and a target of 50% across both sites. We have always strived to achieve the best that we can on any given site – it is the responsible thing to do, to deliver homes today not years down the line. What this means in plain English, is that a mixed development at Cecil Avenue will enable the Ujima House site to be 100% affordable housing.
Our vision is for a development that will also include workspace to support job creation and growth in the local economy, a community space for everyone, highways and public realm improvements. I hope that you will have seen some of the works for the public realm improvements have already started on Wembley High Road, aiding the local economy, footfall and turbo-charging our recovery from Covid-19. We also want to include a new publicly accessible open space during this latest development. A positive outcome for the residents of Brent.
This is the commitment that we gave about making improvements for the residents of Brent and Wembley and this is what we are delivering, this is what a responsible Labour council can do, focussing on action and outcomes for today, to bring the future forward faster.
The Council needs to ensure the entire programme is financially viable within the GLA grant made available by the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, hence the requirement for a mixed tenure development in order to subsidise the delivery of the affordable elements. Your suggestion would jeopardise any affordable homes that are needed today; and would mean the people who desperately need those homes we are planning to build, would remain in poor quality accommodation, surely you would not want anyone to remain in poor quality accommodation?
As you point out, I care passionately about the people who need help to get a roof over their head; it is what I come to work for, to make a real difference to people’s lives. Creating the opportunities for people to upskill themselves through Brent start and Brent works.
Making sure that we work with all our schools to reach point today where about 97% of our schools are rated good or outstanding.
Investing in our high streets to create the strong local economy.
Our commitment to the green agenda with our climate emergency strategy and not forgetting the changes and improvements we are making to engage and interact with the good citizens of Brent with our new portal Citizen lab.
There is so much more that this Brent Labour administration has achieved and will absolutely strive to do more, despite what the Lib Dem and Tory coalition started and this party gate Tory government has taken away from us in Brent.
I need to remind you that over the last 10 years an average of £15.5 Million a year has been taken out from this councils funding. I hope that you find that truly distasteful, because I truly do.
This labour administration has worked diligently to deliver and support the residents that need our help, we have been the dented shield that has protected our residents.
We make the promise that we will continue to do whatever is in our remit and responsibility for the most vulnerable and needy in our society.
Sometimes this means taking decisions that people may disagree with, but I have always appreciated that.
Brent is a borough of ambition, aspiration and opportunity, that is what a good Labour council like Brent will deliver for its residents
I have answered your question; please feel free to post this on any site you wish to publish my response on; in the interests of transparency I hope unedited.
I look forward to hearing that you will be watching the next Cabinet meeting; it is a fantastic thing to see more people actively involved with local democracy.
Regards
Muhammed
Cllr Muhammed Butt
Leader of Brent Council.’
