Labour Leadership incompetence in the management of the Barham Park Trust could have lost residents up to £100,000 in income, claims Paul Lorber

Another potential  failure in the effective and responsible management of the Barham Park Trust has been revealed by Brent Liberal Democrat Leader, Paul Lorber. Readers will know that the Trustees are all members of the Brent Labour Cabinet with no representation from the community that is supposed to benefit from the Barham bequest.

In an email to Brent CEO, Kim Wright, Lorber alleges that the Trust failed to arrange a lease and collect rent from a Barham Park building occupied by the Young Brent Foundation, thus depriving the Trust of income.

Cllr Lorber asks for an Internal Audit based on the following:

1.  The Council has had a Lease of the former Children Centre space in Barham Park Complex for many years.
2. When that use ceased the space was made available to Brent Young Foundation who were allowed to take occupation before a Lease was prepared and signed.
3. Officers were instructed to prepare and finalise a Lease some 4 years ago but never did. (I expect there were exchanges documenting the terms and basis on which YBF could use the building in advance of the Lease - an unusual situation not available to others). They were due to pay a rent equal to the rent paid by the Council to Barham Park Trust - originally £11,300pa but at some point subject to a review. 
4. Young Brent Foundation were in occupation until now - it is not clear if proper legal process for termination was followed and the space is still being cleared as I write. (Termination was referred to at a recent Barham Park Trust Meeting). 
5. The answers received to date (but not complete and slow in coming) suggest that Young Brent Foundation did not pay any rent, any business rates, any service charges and possibly no utility costs for electricity, gas or water or contribution to insurance.
6. It is also not clear who paid for any of the above.
7. I estimate that the loss mainly to Brent Council but also partly to the Barham Park Trust may be in the region of £100,000.
8. An independent investigation is required as Property and Finance are implicated and YBF clearly has other debts owing to the Council and others including possibly HMRC and the Pensions Authority.  Letters from all these are coming through Barham Community Library and have been passed by me to the Property Unit.
9. The investigation needs to ask a number of questions including why was occupation by YBF allowed without a lease being in place, why was no rent collected, who paid the costs of the business rates and utilities and others. What action is being taken to recover all the debts and losses sustained by Brent Council and Barham Park Trust.
10. I consider this a major failing by various Units of Brent Council. It seems that if you are well connected as people in YBF were you get anything and you get away with anything without effective scrutiny or action. 
11.  It is particularly galling because well established organisations in my Sudbury Ward or in Barham Park which have provided services to local people for years - East Lane Theatre Club, LNER Sports Club and Barham Veterans Club are under threat of closures because of unfair and unrealistic rent demands from the Brent Property Unit. All of these should have had lease renewals a long time ago well before the new Brent Council Property Strategy was out in place which fails to take into account the contribution these organisations provide for local people.  
    

 Cllr Lorber adds:

In view of the above I trust that you will instruct Internal Audit to investigate and for Property and Finance respond fully to my outstanding enquiries.

I am making my request public as part of my Scrutiny duty as the Scrutiny arrangements in Brent Council are ineffective and frankly a waste of time as recent Call Ins clearly show. Labour Councillors are cleared whipped and will never agree to refer an item back to Cabinet however flawed the original decision.

 

How many affordable homes did Brent deliver in 2024/25? The Council's response. Judge for yourself who was right.

  

From Philip Grant's original post. Read it HERE

 

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

As I had written a guest post critical of the Brent Council claim to have delivered 530 affordable homes in 2024/25, when the number delivered by the Council itself was only 26, I felt it only fair to send a copy of the article to Brent's Chief Executive, Kim Wright, and offer her a right of reply. She has taken up that offer, and the full and unedited text of her reply is set out below. 

Readers can judge for themselves which version of the facts, and their interpretation, they choose to accept, those in my original article, or the Council's:-

Dear Mr Grant

 

I hope you are well and had a good Easter. Thank you for giving me the right of reply here.

The figures in the council tax leaflet were correct at the time of printing, based on projected housing completions for the last and current financial year. 

 

At the time of publishing the council tax booklet we were on track to oversee the delivery of 530 affordable homes in 2024-25. Construction projects are rarely straightforward and some of these homes will now be completed slightly later. Due to construction delays, 434 new affordable homes ended up being delivered and the remaining 96 are all due to be completed shortly. While the leaflet was due to be delivered at the end of the financial year, the lead-in times for printing and distribution meant that the artwork was finalised and sent to print on 20 February so the team had to rely on projections.

 

It is true that the council directly delivered 26 affordable homes (the figure you quote from the FOI response) in 2024-25. However, the infographic in the council tax leaflet was an attempt to give a very high-level summary of the breadth and depth of what the council has delivered in the past financial year on just two pages, and to describe these services and outcomes in ways that are accessible to everyone. In the process, ‘oversee the delivery of’ was simplified to ‘delivered’. I accept that this is an oversimplification where the language could have been clearer and we will bear this in mind, being more careful in the future. Making communications more accessible sometimes means using less precise, less technical language and this simplification was certainly not an attempt to mislead but was about better accessibility.

 

The article you have shared states that, since the council did not directly deliver many of these homes, they should not have been included in a summary of how residents’ council tax was spent – in fact, officers are actively involved in the delivery of these homes in all sorts of ways, from planning officers and others who negotiate with applicants to increase the percentage of affordable homes that form part of regeneration schemes across the borough, to housing colleagues who work with registered providers and residents on our housing waiting list, so council tax was used to get these homes delivered in the form of officer time.

 

All of these homes meet the definition of affordable housing under the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and Greater London Authority (GLA) guidelines. 

 

Regarding the 1,000 new council homes scheduled for completion this year, delays mean the projection has been adjusted to 899, with the remaining homes to follow. We're delighted our development in Church End with 99 new council homes, is on track to be completed soon. In a housing crisis, councils need to use all methods at their disposal to increase the supply of homes - buying homes from developers is standard practice and local people then benefit from genuinely affordable rents. Whether built by a registered provider, directly by the council or acquired through planning agreements, these homes form part of our commitment to increasing affordable housing.

 

Brent has one of the best records in London for housebuilding, we were one of only three London boroughs to exceed our housing delivery target last year and approved a total of 3,266 new homes, making us the second highest borough for housing approvals overall.

 

In relation to the ‘Your Brent’ magazine and the Council Tax leaflets, we ensure that the content complies with the Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity, and this is,  in fact, included within Brent’s constitution.

 

The principles contained within the Code specifically refer to the need for such publications to be lawful, cost effective, objective, even-handed, appropriate, have regard to equality and diversity and ensuring that publications are issued with care during periods of heightened sensitivity.

 

The content contained within the magazine and the Council Tax leaflet is factual. Officers obtain quotes from members acting as the official council spokesperson for the topics covered. The council does not routinely state what political party members represent (unless reporting on election results e.g. page 7 of the spring Your Brent Magazine reports on the Alperton by-election result) and care is taken to ensure that the issues covered are topics that are important to the people in the Borough.

 

Best wishes to you

Kim

Kim Wright (she/her)

Chief Executive

London Borough of Brent

When is complaint not a complaint? – Part 2 Is there a 'cover up culture' at Brent Council

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Opening paragraphs of Kim Wright’s email to me of 27 September 2024.

 

On 2 October, Martin published my guest post “Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease – When is a complaint not a complaint?” The email of 27 September above from Brent’s Chief Executive had been sent in response to my request for her to conduct a Final Review of the formal complaint I had made on 30 August. I requested that as I was not satisfied with the initial reply of 9 September from a Corporate Director, which did not even mention the word “complaint”.

 

The grounds for my complaint were detailed in a guest post a month earlier, “Bobby Moore Bridge – formal complaint submitted over advertising lease award”. Briefly, they were that the Officer Report to the Cabinet meeting on 28 May, and the recommendation to make the award under Option B, were biased, and that the main author of that report had an undisclosed conflict of interests, which had only come to light months later.

 

 I wanted to understand the reasoning behind the Council’s decision not to treat my “concerns” as a formal complaint, which had apparently made before the first response to that complaint on 9 September, and what evidence it had been based on. I requested some details in an email to Kim Wright on 11 October (the text is in the comments section under the 2 October guest post). The Council decided to treat this as an FoI request, and I received the response to that on 11 November.

 

If the information provided is correct (and you would expect it to be, as the response came from a Senior Brent Council Lawyer), the decision (that my formal complaint was not a complaint) was made between 30 September and 3 October, after the Chief Executive had told me of the decision.

 

In reply to my questions about what information the decision had been based on, that the matter I’d formally complained about ‘had not affected me personally’, and ‘had not caused me an injustice’, the response in both cases was: ‘Please refer to council officer’s emails sent to you dated 27/9 and 3/10.’ In other words, if Brent’s Chief Executive said that I had not suffered any personal injustice as a result of actions by the Council, or one of its Officers, that was sufficient evidence on which to base a decision justifying her claim!

 

Extract from Brent’s FoI response of 11 November 2024.

 

The response had already told me that the (apparently retrospective!) decision had been made by ‘The Complaints and Casework Manager in conjunction with the Corporate Director, Law & Governance.’ My final request had been for ‘any documentary evidence relating to’ the decision, and ‘any communications, and any advice sought or given, in respect of it.’ I was informed that the only documents were Kim Wright’s email to me of 27 September and the Council’s Complaints Policy (a copy of which was attached). ‘No further communication is held.’

 

I have set this out in detail so that any reader who is interested can see how Brent Council operates. If it does not want to deal with a complaint, it says that it is not a complaint, without having to provide any evidence. It hopes that you will give up and go away, rather than admitting that something has been done wrongly, and trying to put it right! 

 

Anyone who knows me will realise that I am not put off by such tactics. This is the full text of an open email which I sent to Brent’s Chief Executive on 12 November:-

 

This is an Open Email

Dear Ms Wright,

 

Further to my email of 25 September, requesting a Stage 2 Final Review of my formal complaint to you of 30 August 2024 (see copy attached), you will have seen my Internal Review request (sent yesterday evening) to the FoI response of 11 November, to the questions I raised in my email to you of 11 October.

 

This is getting complicated, and is taking up quite a lot of Senior Council Officer time. The reason for that is that you and other Council Officers appear to be trying to "give me the run-around", hoping that I will give up, so that you do not have to deal with a perfectly reasonable and genuine complaint that I raised.

 

This latest letter, from Brent's Senior Constitutional & Governance Lawyer, exposes that there is no valid basis in evidence to show why Brent Council should not treat my complaint of 30 August as a complaint within the Council's Complaints Policy.

 

It appears from her FoI response that the "decision", 'that this issue does not fall within the scope of the Council's normal complaints procedure', set out in your email to me of 27 September, was not made until several days after you had sent that email, rather than before Minesh Patel's original email reply, in your absence on leave, of 9 September, which is what you had suggested.

 

And that "decision", for which there is no documentary evidence, appears to have been founded solely on a claim in your email of 27 September that: 'In this particular case you have not suffered a greater degree of personal injustice than anyone else affected by the matter raised.'

 

There was no supporting evidence for that claim. In fact, you already knew that the open tender process for the new advertising lease from 31 August 2024, seeking best value for the Council, with separate bids that would give the opportunity for Cabinet to properly consider the tile murals in the Bobby Moore Bridge subway, had been my suggestion in 2021, which had been accepted by your predecessor, Carolyn Downs.

 

The process was meant to be fair and transparent, and I had put in a great deal of effort to try to ensure that it was. My complaint (there can be no other valid description for it) was that the Report and recommendation, which Cabinet accepted, had been biased, and that its main author had an undisclosed conflict of interests. How could that not affect me personally, or give rise to an injustice, not just to the people who signed the petition which I presented on 28 May, but to me personally?

 

I would ask you again to carry out a Stage 2 Final Review of my formal complaint of 30 August, in the hope that this matter can be satisfactorily resolved without my having to refer it to the Local Government Ombudsman.

 

In answer to another FoI request, which I received on 14 October, I was told that the new advertising lease agreement between the Council and Quintain from 31 August 2024 had not yet been signed. If that is still the case, then my suggested remedy No.1 still applies (as does the second suggested remedy in my open letter of 30 August attached).

 

I look forward to receiving your reply. Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant.

 

The Leader Foreword from the Cabinet Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease report, 28 May 2024.
(The “supplier” referred to is Quintain Ltd, through its Wembley Park subsidiary)

 

You will notice a reference to some other FoI requests I made, to which I have received some partial responses. Among the information gleaned on the Report to the 28 May Cabinet meeting is that the “Leader Forward” in it was not actually written by Cllr. Muhammed Butt himself (but by the Officer with the alleged undisclosed conflict of interests):

 

‘The foreword for the report was discussed by the Leader and Head of Communications, Conference and Events at a face-to-face meeting and the steer the Leader provided was included in the report and cleared by the Leader.’

 

My request for ‘copies of all email or other documentary contacts between the Contact Officers and the Leader … in the preparation of the Report’, was denied. The reason given was that:

 

‘complying with this request would exceed the cost limit set by the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Under Section 12 of the Act, public authorities are not required to comply with requests if the estimated time to locate, retrieve, and extract the requested information would take more than 18 hours.’

 

I doubt whether it would cost that much to provide the relevant emails etc between two people from 1 April and 14 May 2024, so I have asked for an Internal Review of that response!

 

There was an Appendix to the Report, headed "Advertising Lease Bid Evaluation", and I had also asked for ‘all the information in that Appendix 1 which was not exempt information.’ That request has also been refused:

 

‘The appendix includes commercially sensitive details related to an ongoing procurement process, as well as market-sensitive information. The public interest in keeping this information confidential outweighs the interest in disclosing it, as premature disclosure could harm the commercial interests of the bidders and the council.’

 

But the procurement process is not ongoing (it ended at the Cabinet meeting on 28 May!), and I had only requested the non-exempt information, not any commercially sensitive details. Again, I’ve asked for an Internal Review of this response. What is Brent Council trying to hide?

 

I feel that the treatment I have received in trying to pursue my complaint demonstrates a “cover-up culture” at Brent Council, which appears to go right to the top of the organisation. That is not a healthy state of affairs, especially for a public body paid for at our expense!

 

Philip Grant.

 

Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease – When is a complaint not a complaint?

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Final slide from petition presentation, asking 28 May Cabinet meeting to choose Option A.

 

On 2 September, Martin published a guest post, giving details of the formal complaint I had made to Brent’s Chief Executive over the advertising lease award. The main grounds for the complaint were that as well as being biased in favour of “Option B”, the main author of the Report and recommendation, which Council Leader Muhammed Butt had accepted (in the name of his Cabinet), had not disclosed his conflict of interests, in that he was the Head of the Council Department which benefitted financially from “Option B”.

A further guest post on 11 September set out Brent Council’s response, from the Corporate Director Finance and Resources (covering for the Chief Executive). He told me ‘that the report was drafted and agreed in accordance with the council’s standard practices,’ and expressed his confidence ‘that this procurement was open and fair and that the award of the contract will therefore stand, as formally agreed by Cabinet.’ 

“How complaints are dealt with – Stage 1” from Brent Council’s website.

 

The email did not actually address the main points I had raised, and did not even refer to my open letter of 30 August being a formal complaint, or what I should do if I was not satisfied with the Council’s response to it. I ended that article by asking (jokingly, I thought!): ‘Is Brent Council now dealing with complaints by not even treating them as complaints?’

 

As I found out that Kim Wright, Brent’s Chief Executive, was on leave until 25 September, I waited until then to write, requesting a Stage 2 final review of my complaint. I included the text of my email to her as a “for information” comment under my 11 September guest post, but this is the relevant section of it:

Extract from my email to Kim Wright of 25 September 2024.

 

Earlier in my email, I had said: ‘I realise that there will be other matters awaiting your attention on your return from leave, so do not mind waiting for up to twenty working days for your final review response.’ I was surprised when I received her response only two days later, and even more surprised by what it said:

 

‘Dear Mr Grant

 

Thank you for your emails. I understand that my office and Minesh Patel, covering for me, replied to you on 9 September outlining a response.

 

Whilst I do not dispute the significance of the issue at hand, I regret to inform you that this issue does not fall within the scope of the Council's normal complaints procedure. The complaints procedure is intended to deal with cases where a member of the public has suffered personal injustice as a result of the Council's actions or inactions. This is also the criteria that the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) uses to decide whether to investigate a complaint. This is mentioned on the LGSCO’s website and in the Council’s Complaints policy.

 

The policy states under section 3.2 “Who can make a complaint? Anyone who uses and/or is individually affected by our services can make a complaint. We cannot investigate complaints where there has been no personal injustice (in other words, where the complainant has not been directly affected by the matter raised).” In this particular case you have not suffered a greater degree of personal injustice than anyone else affected by the matter raised. Your concerns were therefore not logged as a formal complaint but were addressed in the response provided to you by the Corporate Director of Finance and Resources whilst I was on a period of annual leave. I do apologise that this was not explained to you at the outset. If you disagree with the way we have addressed your concerns, you can if you wish approach the LGSCO to ask them to review our decision to not treat your concerns as a formal complaint.

 

I understand that you have submitted a number of FOI requests concerning the Bobby Moore Bridge lease, including one relating to the signing of the lease, and you will receive replies to these within the usual deadline.

 

Kind regards

Kim Wright (she/her)

 
Chief Executive, Brent Council’

 

The Policy Statement from the Brent Council Complaints Policy (August 2024).

 

That response does not fit well with Brent Council’s stated policy of welcoming complaints, aiming to resolve them quickly and using the information gained from them to improve the quality of what they do!

 

I don’t agree that I have not suffered any personal injustice, (or as the Local Government Ombudsman’s website actually describes it ‘not affected you personally or caused you an injustice), but if I try to argue with the Chief Executive on that point she will just “kick the problem down the road”. 

 

I believe that there has been an injustice in this case, not just to me personally, but to everyone who signed the petition (which was ignored and not even considered by Brent’s Cabinet) in support of “Option A”, and also to every Brent resident and visitor to Wembley Park who continues to be denied the enjoyment of the tile murals in the subway from the station to Olympic Way which celebrate Wembley’s sports and entertainment heritage.

 

If Brent won’t consider my complaint, by abusing the words of its Complaints Policy to pretend that it is not a complaint, how else can that injustice to be dealt with? That is the issue I took up in my reply to the Chief Executive on 27 September:

 

‘Dear Ms Wright,

 

Thank you for your email.

 

Without prejudice to the question of whether or not I have suffered a personal injustice in this matter, please to me have your answer to the following question.

 

If this significant issue does not fall within the Council's complaints procedure, under what Brent Council process can the 114 citizens of the borough, who were signatories of the petition which I presented at the Cabinet meeting on 28 May, seek redress for the collective injustice which they suffered, as a result of the actions by Council Officers (and the Council Leader) set out in my formal complaint letter to you of 30 August 2024?

 

Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant.’

 

Please feel free to add your comments below on this particular matter, or on how Brent Council has dealt with (or not) a complaint that you have made.

 

In answer to my own question of “When is a complaint not a complaint?”, I would say “When Brent Council knows it is wrong, but is afraid to admit it, or to put it right.”

Philip Grant.

 

Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease - Brent’s response to complaint. Have you had experience of trying to complain to Brent Council?

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Extract from Brent Council’s website on Complaints and Feedback.

 

On 2 September, Martin published an open letter of complaint that I had sent to Brent’s Chief Executive, Kim Wright, on 30 August, objecting to the undisclosed conflict of interests and bias in the Report and recommendation for the award of the new advertising lease for the Bobby Moore Bridge. I received the Council’s response on 9 September from Brent’s Corporate Director Finance and Resources, ‘(Covering for the Chief Executive)’, and in the interests of transparency and fair play I have asked Martin to publish that response in full below.

 

The response tells me that everything was done ‘in accordance with the council’s standard practices’, so that the process ‘was open and fair and that the award of the contract will therefore stand, as formally agreed by Cabinet.’

 

Have you ever made a complaint to Brent Council? If so, have they ever admitted that they made a mistake or did something wrong? I’d be interested to receive your feedback on this in the comments section.

 

My own feeling on the response below is that has been composed in a way that the Council can claim that they’ve answered all the points I raised, without directly answering any of them! If you feel inclined to read on, you can judge for yourself.

 

‘Dear Mr Grant,

 

In response to your letter dated 30 August 2024, I can confirm that the report was drafted and agreed in accordance with the council’s standard practices.

 

The information regarding the tiles was supplied by the council’s Heritage Officer. He noted that the tiled murals under the Bobby Moore Bridge and on the adjoining retaining walls, which depict various scenes of sports and entertainment events, have historic and artistic merit. They are considered a non-designated heritage asset within the meaning in the National Planning Policy Framework. The tiles are not statutory listed, but none-the-less the council will continue to ensure they are protected regardless of this fact during the contract period. The tile mural with plaque will remain on permanent display during the contract period. The tiled flank walls outside the underpass are also on display.

 

As you are aware, council officers did not make the final decision for this contract as their role was to make a recommendation. The final award decision was made solely by Cabinet and, despite your concerns, I am satisfied that the report was a fair representation of the facts, including the details of your petition.

 

Financial information is always provided in council reports to ensure Cabinet has the full information available to make rounded decisions. In the current national and local context, where council budgets are stretched like never before it is perfectly rational for the council to seek to generate external income where it can. There were also other, non-financial, benefits which the report outlined regarding the option which was agreed by the Cabinet.

 

Officers routinely and properly make recommendations about matters which are the responsibility of services they manage, or which may impact on those services financially or operationally. To suggest that officers should be precluded from involvement in such matters is unrealistic and unreasonable and would often prevent members from receiving advice from those best placed to give it. It is of course proper for an officer dealing with a contract award to set out any impact on the service budget of different options and to recommend that members take that into account in making their decision. The council’s communications service budget is used to support the delivery of essential services including ensuring residents are informed and engaged about issues that affect them and know how to access the services they need.

 

It should also be noted that Service Heads routinely work with officers to generate reports where income is allocated into their budget. In this case, there were many officers involved, besides the two officers stated in the Cabinet Report. This includes procurement officers, the heritage officer, highways officers, sales and marketing officer, finance officer, governance officers and colleagues from legal. The report was also agreed by the Corporate Director, Partnerships, Housing & Resident Services before it was presented to Cabinet. The two officers named in the report also made additional efforts to work with you in advance of the tender given your interest in the tiles.

 

In summary, I am confident that this procurement was open and fair and that the award of the contract will therefore stand, as formally agreed by Cabinet.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Minesh Patel (Covering for the Chief Executive)

 

Corporate Director Finance and Resources
Finance and Resources
Brent Council’

 

Extract from the “How your complaint will be dealt with” section of Brent’s website

 

My open letter to Brent’s Chief Executive was headed: “Formal complaint over the award of the Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease.’ You may have noticed that the response from Brent does not mention the word “complaint”, and the email subject line was simply ‘CRM:00000000488000000021’! And it does not inform me of my right to request a final review (or of my right to involve the Local Government Ombudsman if I am dissatisfied with the way my complaint was dealt with). Is Brent Council now dealing with complaints by not even treating them as complaints?

 

Philip Grant.