I watched the council's livestream of the Planning Committee earlier this week but the sound was so poor i could not hear the two presentations at the begining of the meeting. They just happened to be presentations against the controversial replacement proposals for the Victorian community centre in Hazel Road.
I tried the recording of the meeting but that was just as bad so I have asked the two speakers for copies of their presentation to publish. The public have a right to know what they said.
Unofficial impression of the current building and the new
Phil O’Shea’s spoke to the Planning Committee on behalf of Kensal Green's Residents Association.
Good evening. I’m Phil O’Shea, speaking for Kensal Green Residents Association. I live on Hazel Road.
There are clear reasons why this application has attracted 151[1] objections.
Even the committee report acknowledges that this proposal falls short of required standards. That alone means this is not the right development for this site. Hazel Road is in a two-storey Victorian neighbourhood.
Brent’s Historic Environment Strategy is clear. Once much-loved heritage buildings like Harriet Tubman House are demolished, their value to the community is lost forever.
The proposed glass and aluminium block is wholly out of keeping with a brick Victorian neighbourhood. At four storeys, it would be over-dominant and harmful to local character.
The committee report misrepresents Brent Local Plan Policies which support contemporary design - where it respects and complements historic character and require development - to conserve and enhance heritage assets’.[2] This proposal fails those tests.
The demolition of our Community Centre - which supports playgroups, exercise classes, warm-space provision, counselling, arts, church groups, community christmas lunches - means more than a halving – a loss of over 53% - of dedicated community space – and once the new hallway and toilet are deducted – we’re left with a space 10 by 11 metres.[3] The suggestion that these groups can instead hire a training room, IT suite, or roof terrace from Making the Leap - is simply not viable.
The report tries to suggest that the scheme will improve local safety, yet the proposed Hazel Road frontage includes a covered porch and alcoves that are likely to attract anti-social behaviour after dark.
Residents opposite the proposed block would suffer up to a 36.5% loss of daylight, including in homes occupied by some vulnerable people. The daylight consultant did not visit number 31a. Users of the proposed roof terrace would be able to look straight down through their skylight and onto their bed.
A large part of Hazel Road Open space will be lost during construction and - Making the Leap - propose to “reclaim” an area of the parkland adjacent to the children’s play area.
Network Rail objected to this proposal in January last year because the Bakerloo and Lioness lines run approximately five metres beneath the proposed development. That objection was withdrawn last month - without any publicly available explanation - and it is unclear what assurances or technical information were provided by the applicant.
Taken together, the proposal causes clear harm to heritage, amenity, safety and community provision. For these reasons —residents believe this application should not be approved.
[1] 163 in total, 151 objections, 10 in favour, 2 neutral
[2] Local Plan Polices BD1, DMP1 & BP6 South East – and see KGRA 100226, how the Committee Report misrepresents DMP1 & BD1
[3] From 247 square metres to 115msq. The new community centre will have a hallway of 13msq, toilet & store of 15.5msq leaving 105.6msq
Application 25/0041 – Philip Grant’s heritage presentation
to Planning Committee:
I only have time to outline the heritage objections. Please ask me for details at the end.
Part e) of policy BHC1 is key to deciding this application. It says: “proposals affecting heritage assets should … seek to avoid harm in the first instance. Substantial harm or loss should be exceptional, especially where the asset is of high significance.
Any proposed … loss of a heritage asset … should require clear and convincing justification, and can be outweighed by material planning considerations in the form of public benefits, but only if these are sufficiently powerful.’
This proposal would demolish a heritage asset, which my detailed February 2025 Alternative Heritage Statement showed has high significance. It also explained why the applicant’s main public benefit claim was no benefit at all!
I’d shown the proposals failed the part e) test, but the Case Officer wanted the application approved. He asked the agent to send a revised heritage statement, and when that wasn’t good enough, he spelt out what it needed to say. Consultation on this second revised version was invited on 10 June, but the document wasn’t published until 9 July!
The Heritage Officer’s November comments included a serious error, saying 28 Hazel Road ‘was not considered to have reached the necessary threshold for local listing.' If true, its significance score could be no more than five, and that was the score he gave it.
I drew this error to his attention, but the Committee Report still used the false claim. Now the Supplementary Report tries to “spin” its correction, but all the non-designated heritage assets identified in 2016 would have scored at least six. I believe the true score is nine.
The Report uses the agent’s claimed public benefits, but doesn’t mention my counter views. The proposal cuts community space in half, to just 115sqm, but the agent claims we should treat it as 450sqm. That includes training rooms which might occasionally be hired out. The proposed Access Plan condition would only cover use of one small community room.
The heritage asset IS of high significance, and the public benefits are NOT ‘sufficiently powerful’ to justify its demolition. The application should be refused.
Philip Grant’s thoughts about the Planning Committee consideration on Hazel Road:
I realise that I could be accused of bias, because I was at the meeting as an
objector, but I have tried to make my thoughts about it objective.
One feature of how the case was handled by Planning Officers is that they did not show any images, apart from the site plan, when introducing the application at the meeting, and there were none apart from the site plan in the agenda pack which members had. Committee members had apparently had a site visit, so would have seen the existing street and building, but they had not seen any drawings of the proposed building.
The Development Management Area Manager (South Team), who introduced the application, spoke mainly about what a good modern design the proposed building was. He clearly had no feeling for heritage buildings, or the Victorian character of the Hazel Road area!
Phil O’Shea of Kensal Green Residents’ Association spoke about the application and its effect on the Hazel Road neighbourhood, pointing out where it went against several Brent planning policies. I presented the heritage case explaining why the application failed the Local Plan heritage policy tests, so should be refused, then answered several questions from committee members fully and honestly.
Two Queen’s Park Ward councillors, Lesley Smith and Neil Nerva, then spoke against the application, reinforcing the views of local residents that the proposed building was not suitable for the scale and character of the area.
The Chief Executive of Making the Leap then spoke in favour of the application, emphasising the valuable work his charity does in training young people, mainly from BAME backgrounds. He wanted them to be able to learn in a modern building, like the ones they aspired to work at in Central London, rather than in one that is now not up to standard. His planning agent and architect help answer questions from committee members.
Committee members then put questions to Council Officers. Among these, Brent’s new Heritage Officer maintained his view that the former Victorian mission hall had only low to medium significance, and in his opinion would not have qualified for Local Listing.
The Development Management Manager for the whole of Brent, who led the Planning Officers' response to members questions, did her best to justify the application. She claim that the four-storey building would not look out of place, as there were other buildings of a similar height nearby on Harrow Road (the two Queens Park councillors sitting beside me were shaking their heads in disbelief, as Harrow Road is separated from Hazel Road by an open space and bank, and is at least five metres lower down the slope).
She also gave a long (and unnecessary) explanation of the different types of heritage building for planning purposes, suggesting that even though 28 Hazel Road was treated as a non-designated heritage asset, it did not mean it deserved as much protection for planning purposes as Statutory Listed buildings (I had never claimed that it did, only that it needed to be properly considered in line with Brent’s policy BHC1).
Towards the end of Officer questioning, Cllr. Iman Ahmadi Moghaddam asked Officers to show some images of the existing street and the proposed building. Because of delays in finding those pictures, the Chair said that they would carry on with questions, and the images were only shown, for a few seconds each, while members were dealing with other matters. The image below was the only one, shown briefly, of the proposed building. This was on the bigscreen, opposite Cllr. Robert Johnson, and he was the only member who I saw looking at it.
The front elevation of the proposed building and nearby homes in Hazel Road.
When it came to a vote on whether members agreed with the Officers recommendation to approve the application, Cllr. Johnson abstained, on the grounds that he was concerned about the scale of the proposed building. You can see why! That may be why Officers didn't want members to see it.
In summing up the Officer’s comments, the Development Management Manager said that what members needed to decide was whether the application did more good than harm (and I’m sure she was not just referring to the heritage policy question). She did not mention the different policies which objectors had pointed to as reasons why the application should be refused, despite planning decisions supposedly being based on planning policy!
The ”more good than harm” argument has been used before by Brent Planning Officers to sway committee members’ decisions, when objectors have shown that the application which Officers wish to see approved goes against Brent’s adopted planning policies. One which immediately comes to mind is the 776/778 Harrow Road (the Barham Park former park-keepers homes) case in 2023. After that I challenged Brent’s then Head of Planning to show what planning policy contained the ”more good than harm” principle, and did not get a straight answer.
As the time was around 7.30pm, with two more applications still to be dealt with on the agenda, the Chair, Cllr. Matt Kelcher, called for a decision on the application, indicating that he thought the application had definite benefits. He, and Vice Chair Cllr. Saqib Butt, voted to accept the Officers’ recommendation to approve the application, along with three other Labour councillors (Akram, Begum and Chappell) and one Conservative (Cllr. Jayanti Patel). Green Party member, Cllr. Iman Ahmadi Moghaddam, who had been the most active questioner, voted against, and Labour’s Cllr. Robert Johnson abstained.
