Council housing – Brent’s clarification on London Living Rent homes at Fulton and Fifth development

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

East elevation drawing and location plan for Fulton and Fifth development.
(From documents in planning application 22/3123)

 

When I wrote my guest post “Brent’s Council Housing – A Tale of Two Sites” last month, I gave some details of a type of “affordable” housing known as London Living Rent (“LLR”), which the Council will be using for a block of flats it is buying at the Fulton and Fifth development in Wembley Park. 

 

I used details of this type of tenancy given on the GLA website, that ‘it is designed to help people transition from renting to shared ownership.’ I sent a copy of my article to Cllr. Promise Knight, Brent’s Lead Member for Housing, and asked:

 

‘IF Brent goes ahead with letting tenancies at Fulton and Fifth as LLR, what length of LLR tenancy does it plan to award? 

 

What will happen to those LLR tenants when their LLR tenancy comes to an end, if they are unable or unwilling to convert it to a Shared Ownership lease?’

 

I have now received a reply from Brent to that query, and as it clarifies the position (thankfully, these Council homes will not be converted to Shared Ownership!) I am setting out that response here, so that the correct information is available:-

 

‘I’m responding to your email below on behalf of Councillor Knight.

 

Thanks for your questions, your article is based on the assumption the Council is delivering London Living Rent as described by the Greater London Authority.

 

On 06 February 2023, the Council published a Cabinet report outlining the plans for Fulton and Fifth.

 

In this report, we state that Local Authorities can request from the GLA to rent the properties in perpetuity. We can confirm that this permission has been sought and granted and so the London Living Rent homes will continue to be rented at London Living Rent levels rather than there being a requirement to convert to Shared Ownership. This means they are effectively Discount Market Rent homes but will use London Living Rent levels to dictate the levels of rent charged.

 

The Council agrees, social rent and London affordable rent will always be the preference and priority and the scheme includes 176 homes for London Affordable Rent.

 

Best wishes

 

Head of Affordable Housing & Partnerships’

 

 

Extract from the Report on the Fulton Road development to the 6 February 2023 Cabinet meeting.

 

Leaving aside the assurance at the end of the reply, that the Council regards Social Rent and London Affordable Rent homes as a ‘preference and priority’, and the claim in the February 2023 Report that the Fulton Road development will benefit meeting ‘current housing demand’ (the homes are expected to be ready by July 2026), 294 new Council homes for rent is to be welcomed. Here is the split of home sizes for the two blocks, and two rent levels:-

 

 

Extract from the Report on the Fulton Road development to the 6 February 2023 Cabinet meeting.

 

It is a pity that more of these homes could not be at the “genuinely affordable” LAR level, but they should, at least, be cheaper to rent than private rents for similarly sized accommodation. I included a chart in my earlier article, showing what the LLR rent levels are for different sized homes in each of the Wards in Brent. 

 

I will finish by comparing what tenants in each of the two “affordable” housing blocks would be paying in rent, if their tenancy began in April 2024. The figures will be different (higher) by 2026, and they do not include service charges or Council Tax.

 

In block E, they will be tenants of Brent Council, and 2024/25 LAR rents (converted to monthly figures, but with weekly rent shown in brackets) would be:

 

1-bedroom  -  £840  (£193.99 pw)
2-bedroom  -  £890  (£205.39 pw)
3-bedroom  -  £940  (£216.80 pw)

 

In similar sized flats next door in block D, where the tenancies would be from one of Brent Council’s wholly-owned companies (First Wave Housing or i4B Ltd), the 2024 LLR monthly rents would be:

 

1-bedroom  -  £1,080
2-bedroom  -  £1,200
3-bedroom  -  £1,320

 

In theory, the LLR homes are for people who have a higher income (household income of up to £60,000 a year), but it would be interesting to know how the Council will decide who gets offered block D, and who is offered block E. It makes quite a big difference!

 

Philip Grant.

Kilburn Square – Brent planners seek to reduce Affordable Housing by stealth

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

The recent guest post by the Chair of Kilburn Village Residents’ Association, Kilburn Square – Decision time (Chapter One) is finally here this Wednesday, ends with a reference to a future decision which will have to be made if planning permission for Brent Council’s proposed scheme is approved. But if Planning Officers get their way, there will be no Chapter Two.

 

Martin’s earlier blog about the various Brent infill housing applications on the agenda for Wednesday evening’s Planning Committee meeting, Say after me, 'The benefits of the scheme outweigh the harm/impact/conflict with policy', showed how Brent’s Planning Officers are using claimed “public benefits” to justify ignoring any objection points against the applications they are recommending should be accepted.

 

The main “public benefit” which they say would ‘far outweigh any harm’ on the Kilburn Square application (despite the many valid objection points set out in the KVRA Chair’s recent article) is that the proposed 139 new homes would all be affordable housing. That is what the application’s Affordable Housing Statement (Final) says, despite Brent’s Cabinet giving the green light to some of them being "converted" to shared ownership or even outright sale at its meeting in November 2022.

 

The rent details from the application’s Affordable Housing Statement (Final)

 

The affordable housing proposed in the Kilburn Square application is 99 "general needs" homes at the genuinely affordable London Affordable Rent ("LAR") level, and 40 New Accommodation for Independent Living ("NAIL") flats at the "intermediate" Local Housing Allowance rent level.

 

Other local Brent housing estate applications (Watling Gardens and Windmill Court) approved in 2022, under the current Brent Local Plan policies, also showed that all of their new homes would be for genuinely affordable housing (LAR, or Social Rent level for returning existing tenants). The affordable housing condition (Condition 3) in their planning consent letters made clear that 100% of the homes would be affordable housing, as set out in those applications. The reason given for this condition was: 'In the interests of proper planning.'

 

There have been no changes in planning policy or law since those consents were issued in April 2022, so the position should be the same for Kilburn Square.

 

However, if you look closely at the proposed Condition 3 in the draft decision notice, tucked away at the end of the Planning Officers’ Committee Report for Kilburn Square, it says:

 

'The development hereby approved shall contain 139 residential dwellings. A minimum of 50 % of those dwellings (measured by habitable room or number of homes) shall be provided as Affordable housing ....'

 

I submitted an objection to this proposed condition, and I will ask Martin to attach a copy of the pdf version of it (which I submitted online, and emailed to the three key Planning Officers - Head of Planning, Development Management Manager and Case Officer – on Sunday evening) at the foot of this article, for anyone to read if they are interested. 

 

I also objected to a weird Condition 4 in the draft decision notice, also concerning affordable housing, for which there was no mention or explanation of in the body of the Committee Report:

 

The opening part of the proposed Condition 4 from the draft decision notice.

 

If the application is approved on Wednesday, as recommended by Planning Officers, allowing affordable housing Condition 3 to stand would totally undermine the "public benefits" which the application is meant to provide. 

 

A minimum of 50% of the proposed new homes would be 70, leaving 69 which Brent's New Council Homes team could "convert" away from genuinely affordable LAR rent to local people in housing need. They could even be “converted” from affordable housing to private sale, leaving as few as 30 of the 99 “general needs” homes at LAR rent level, promised by the application, actually delivered by Brent Council’s Kilburn Square project.

 

What is equally as bad is that Planning Officers are trying to do this "by the back door". When Brent wanted to "convert" some of the Watling Gardens LAR homes to shared ownership, they had to make a fresh planning application to change Condition 3 in the 100% affordable housing consent they'd received for the scheme.

 

My objection is seeking to have Condition 3 of the planning consent, if Planning Committee approve the plans, require that 100% of the 139 homes should be affordable housing, as set out in the application itself. 

 

I am also seeking that the Condition(s) should include a requirement that any change the applicant (Brent Council!) wishes to make to that affordable housing condition should be made by way of a “material change” application under Section 73, Town and Country Planning Act 1990. That type of application requires public consultation (so the chance to object), and detailed consideration of the reasons and evidence given for seeking a change.

 

I had drawn attention to the discrepancy between what the Kilburn Square application promised for affordable housing and the November 2022 Cabinet decision on “conversion” of units from LAR last February (Kilburn Square – Brent must come clean on affordable housing!). When Brent’s planning agent did not submit revised affordable housing details, Brent’s Head of Planning promised that the application would be ‘considered as submitted’. 

 

This should have meant that the affordable housing condition would specify 100% affordable housing. To change that, by stealth, to ‘a minimum of 50% affordable housing’ feels like a dirty trick, which Brent’s Planning Officers should be ashamed of!

 

Philip Grant

 

 

 

Brent’s Wembley Housing Zone – 'Some' Good News! (But what is Brent Council's policy now on unaffordable Shared Ownership?)

Guest Post in a personal capacity by Philip Grant 

 

Architect’s view of Brent’s 250 home Cecil Avenue development.

 

On 14 March this year, Martin’s post “Wembley Housing Zone: Never mind the gloss – what are the details?” shared with us a Brent Council press release, about its deal with Wates to finally build the 250 homes at Cecil Avenue, which it had received full planning consent for in February 2021. The blog included “links” to several of the guest posts I’d written since August 2021, urging the Council to include more genuinely affordable homes for rent in the project, especially homes at Social Rent level which the 2020 Brent Poverty Commission said should be the priority.

 

My “parody” Brent Council Homes publicity photograph (from November 2021).

 

Since 2021, Brent’s plans had been to allow its “developer partner” to sell 152 of the homes on the former Copland School site privately, with only 37 of the 250 for London Affordable Rent, and the other 61 as “intermediate” Council housing (either shared ownership or Intermediate Rent level). 

 

You would have thought that when they arranged additional funding from the GLA, to allow for more affordable homes to be delivered as part of this Wembley Housing Zone project, Brent would have celebrated with another press release, telling us about this “good news” story. Instead, I only discovered it when I spotted an item on the Forward Plan page of the Council’s website, as I was checking whether another item had been included there. It was about a Key Decision made by the Corporate Director, Communities and Regeneration, in April 2023:-

 

There was a “Officer Key Decision Report” on the website, but (true to form) the appendices to it were both “exempt”, so that the press and public were not allowed to find out ‘information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (including the authority holding that information)’. The Report did, however, give an outline of what the amended agreement with the GLA involved:-

 

 

My various attempts, since August 2021, to get Brent to include more genuinely affordable homes at Cecil Avenue, using additional GLA funding where possible, have been ignored, dodged or blocked. I was told that anything other than what the Council already planned would be impossible, because the scheme would not be viable. Now they had an extra c.£10.5m, how many extra affordable homes would they be able to provide? 

 

I had to submit a Freedom of Information Act request to find out, but “Wembley Matters” can (at last) share the Good News!

·      Instead of only 37 of the Cecil Avenue homes for London Affordable Rent, there will now be 59. 35 of these will be family-sized (3 or 4-bed) homes.

·      36 of the Cecil Avenue Council homes will be for Shared Ownership (of which 9 will be family-sized).

·      3 of the Cecil Avenue Council homes will be “Other” affordable homes. (Does that mean at Intermediate Rent?)

·      As before, 152 of the homes being built by Brent Council at Cecil Avenue will be for private sale by Wates (including 20 family-sized).

My title does say ‘Some Good News’. The other part of the Wembley Housing Zone project, across the road at Ujima House, was meant to have ALL of its 54 flats for London Affordable Rent to Council tenants. The revised figures for this block are now:

·      32 for London Affordable Rent (including all 8 family-sized flats).

·      22 for Shared Ownership.

So, the original proposed number of Wembley Housing Zone London Affordable Rent homes was 91 (37 + 54), and the revised number is 91 (59 + 32). Perhaps that is why Brent did not want to draw attention to the extra funding they’d negotiated from the GLA!

The only improvement from the extra GLA funding, and that is genuinely to be welcomed, is that more of them will be family-sized homes for affordable rent, and more will be delivered earlier (Ujima House still only has the outline planning permission approved in February 2021).

Of the original proposed 61 “intermediate affordable homes”, 58 have now been positively identified as being for shared ownership. But didn’t Brent’s Cabinet, just last week, decide to sell off the 23 shared ownership homes it had acquired at the Grand Union development,  because the Council does not have 'the knowledge, experience and the capacity to effectively sell and manage' shared ownership homes?

 

Placard from a demonstration against Shared Ownership.

 

The Report to the 17 July Cabinet meeting clearly showed that shared ownership is well above the affordability level of most families in Brent, and admitted:

 

‘… the market and demand for Shared Ownership, particularly in the latter quarter of 2022 was and has remained turbulent. This is both in terms of too many shared ownership homes available in the market and appetite and demand for these homes reducing.’

 

In a November 2022 guest post, I set out the reality of Brent’s Affordable Council Housing programme, and why they should not include any shared ownership homes. But the decision makers at the Civic Centre are still pressing on with their flawed policies!

 

Cllr. Shama Tatler fronting a publicity photo at the Cecil Avenue site in March 2023.

 

Brent’s March 2023 press release about its Wembley Housing Zone deal with Wates began by claiming: ‘More much-needed housing will soon be a reality following an agreement to build 304 new homes in Wembley.’ From the hard hats and “high-vis” jackets in the photograph that came with it, you might believe that heavy machinery was already at work on the Council-owned Cecil Avenue site, which has been vacant for at least three years.

 

 

The Cecil Avenue site from the top deck of a bus, 26 June 2023.

 

In the extract from the April 2023 Key Decision Report above, it says that ‘start on site [was] recorded on 27 March 2023’. When I went past on the last Monday in June, there was no machinery, no workers and no progress on the Cecil Avenue site, just two portacabins. My recent guest post, 1 Morland Gardens – an Open Letter to the Mayor of London, explains what is required for a “start on site” for GLA funding, and it appears this has not yet happened.

 

It appears that the ‘will soon be a reality’ actually means ‘by 31 December 2026’. Some eventual good news, but I still believe that Brent could have done so much better than 59 “genuinely affordable” homes for rent to Council tenants as part of its 250 home Cecil Avenue development.

 

Philip Grant.

Kilburn Square – Would you believe it?

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

Extract from the Affordable Housing Update Report to Brent’s Cabinet, 14 November 2022.

 

In a guest post last week, Kilburn Square – Brent must come clean on affordable housing!, I let “Wembley Matters” readers know about the Council’s failure to update Brent’s Planners about the change from London Affordable Rent (“LAR”) homes to shared ownership in its Kilburn Square planning application, 22/3669.

 

It appeared that they were trying to get their application approved (probably at Planning Committee on 15 March) on the basis that all 99 of the proposed “general needs” homes would be for LAR. A Brent Cabinet decision on 14 November 2022 made it likely that around 40 of those homes would be “converted” to shared ownership. On those “true” figures, the application would be likely to fail Brent’s Local Plan affordable housing policy BH5.

 

In comments below that article, I kept readers up to date with correspondence between myself and Head of Affordable Housing and Brent’s Lead Member for Housing. However, Martin has agreed that the latest exchange of emails is sufficiently important to deserve a guest post of its own.

 

I have previously drawn the attention of Ms Baines and Cllr. Knight to a letter I had published in the “Brent & Kilburn Times” on 19 January, calling on the Council for honesty over its Kilburn Square affordable housing proposals:

 

My letter published in the “Brent & Kilburn Times” on 19 January 2023,

 

On 9 February, after several brief exchanges of emails, I had written to Brent’s Head of Affordable Housing (with copy to the Cabinet Lead Member for Housing) saying:

 

‘Please confirm that you have now instructed JLL to submit a revised Affordable Housing Statement for Kilburn Square (application 22/3669), giving the actual and updated tenure split for the proposed 139 homes, including those you intend to "convert" from LAR to shared ownership. 

 

If you cannot give that confirmation, please explain why, and what you intend to do over the tenure split on this scheme. Thank you.’

 

This is the full text of the reply I received on 10 February:

 

‘Hello Phillip,

 

I have previously confirmed we are still in a live procurement, this means we have not confirmed the market costs of this build and do therefore not know if a change in tenure would even be required. 

 

I can assure you as head of affordable housing and partnerships my role is to deliver as many social homes as possible. 

 

Best wishes

 

Emily-Rae’

 

I have to admit that I found the claim at the end of the first paragraph difficult to believe! If I had replied straight away, I’d probably have used words I might later regret. So I waited several days, and this is the full text of the reply I sent to Brent’s Head of Affordable Housing on 14 February:

 

‘This is an Open Email

 

Dear Ms Baines,

 

 

Thank you for your email of 10 February.

 

 

I was pleased to read of your determination 'to deliver as many social homes as possible.' I hope that by 'social homes' you mean homes at Social Rent level, as strongly recommended by the Brent Poverty Commission report in 2020, or at least the other form of "genuinely affordable" Council homes, at London Affordable Rent ("LAR") level.

 

 

I was surprised to read that you 'do not know if a change in tenure would even be required', for the 99 "general needs" homes proposed for Kilburn Square in your planning application 22/3669.

 

 

That is entirely the opposite of what was set out in the "Update on the supply of New Affordable Homes" report ("the Report") to the 14 November 2022 Cabinet meeting, for which you were the first named Contact Officer.

 

 

At para. 1.1 of the Report it stated:

 

'This report specifically outlines viability gaps across 10 schemes, which are not yet in contract and sets out options for cross subsidisation where possible for the Council’s consideration.'

 

 

Paragraphs 4.17 to 4.30 of the Report dealt with 10 New Council Homes Programme ("NCHP") schemes which were not yet in contract, with para. 4.18 stating:

 

'To better understand the Council’s options, officers have reviewed all 10 of these schemes to explore possible options for making schemes viable. This in real terms means the conversion of some social rented homes to shared ownership or other tenures in order to cross subsidise the scheme.'  

 

 

Four of the ten schemes were identified from this review as being suitable for "conversion", and Kilburn Square was one of the four. From the information supplied in the Report, it appears that details of the review's evidence and conclusions, from its assessment of the ten schemes, were set out in an "exempt" appendix to the Report, which was made available to Cabinet members and some Officers, but not to the public. 

 

 

Para. 4.19 of the Report gives that information, as follows:

 

'Appendix 2 sets out a summary table of this assessment and overall, there are four schemes which allow for conversion of some homes (50% or under in keeping with planning requirements) and result in a positive net present value which mean they are financially viable.

 

These schemes are: 
· Kilburn Square
· Windmill Court
· Seymour Court
· Rokesby Place '

 

 

Specific details of the number of homes involved in those four schemes, and the total number to be "converted", were stated in para. 4.20:

 

 

'Across these four schemes, there were 204 affordable homes due for delivery either at Social Rent or London Affordable Rent. This conversion would see this number reduce to 145 homes for London Affordable Rent and 59 homes for Shared Ownership.'  

 

 

Paragraphs 4.22 and 4.23 appear to make clear that only two homes from the small schemes at Seymour Court and Rokesby Place could be "converted" from LAR to shared ownership. That would leave 57 of the LAR homes proposed for Kilburn Square and Windmill Court to be converted to shared ownership, according to the November 2022 Report.

 

 

Given that detailed information, from just three months ago, it is difficult to understand how you can now claim that Officers involved in the NCHP 'do not know if a change in tenure would even be required' for Kilburn Square (which has roughly twice the number of proposed LAR homes than those approved for Windmill Court).

 

 

As the Report was signed off by the Corporate Director, Resident Services, and recommended (and received) greater delegated powers for him in respect of the tenure split for NCHP schemes, I am copying this email to him, and to the Council Leader (as well as to the Cabinet Member for Housing).

 

 

Mr Gadsdon may wish to explain to the Council Leader (and Cllr. Muhammed Butt may wish to receive that explanation) what has changed so much in the past three months to make the previously unviable Kilburn Square scheme, where perhaps around 40 LAR homes would need to be "converted" to shared ownership, now potentially viable, so that no such "conversion" might be needed.

 

 

I am sure that a number of other councillors, and interested local residents, would like that explanation to be made public. 

 

 

As things currently stand, the apparent difference in the situation over the affordable housing tenure split at Kilburn Square, between that set out in the Report in November 2022 and that suggested in your email of 10 February, could be seen as an exaggeration of the viability problem last November, in order to mislead elected councillors into transferring some of their powers to Senior Officers. Some clarification is surely needed!

 

 

Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant.’

 

 

Has there genuinely been a massive change in the viability of Brent’s proposed Kilburn Square housing scheme in the past three months? Was the “viability gap” on New Council Homes schemes overstated by Council Officers in their report to Cabinet in November 2022? 

 

Or has the true position over the tenure split of the proposed homes at Kilburn Square not been disclosed in the email sent to me on 10 February, in an attempt to maintain an unfair advantage over affordable housing when the Council’s planning application is considered? You can decide which version you believe!

 

Philip Grant.