Morland Gardens – Brent Council ‘unable to make any commitments'

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

Earlier this month I wrote “Morland Gardens – Report recommends Council does not proceed, but …”. The ‘but’ was because, although Brent cannot go ahead with its proposed redevelopment (as its planning consent has expired), it still has an outstanding “first stage” contract with Hill Group which includes the demolition of the Victorian villa “Altamira” (above).

 

At the end of my previous guest post I included the text of an open email I had sent to Brent’s Chief Executive, and other senior figures at the Civic Centre, seeking an assurance that this locally listed heritage asset would not be demolished, unless or until there was a legal requirement allowing for its demolition (which does not currently exist).

 

There was no mention of this at the Cabinet meeting on 11 December, when the Affordable Housing Supply update report (which recommended a review to come up with ‘an alternative site strategy’ for Morland Gardens) was dealt with. Last Friday afternoon I received this written response to my open email:

 

‘Dear Mr Grant 

 

RE: Morland Gardens and the Affordable Housing Supply (2023) Update Report  

 

Thank you for your open email dated 4th December 2023 addressed to Cllr Knight, the Council’s Chief Executive and the Council’s Corporate Director for Resident Services. Your enquiry has been forwarded to me to respond on their behalf.

 

The Council is unable to make any commitments or assurances either verbally or in writing on whether there will be demolition of the Altamira building or not, until such time the Council has considered its options for the site. As provided in previous correspondence, the Council will be reviewing the site options including the Altamira building, and will present these to Cabinet for consideration in due course.

 

Further information about the Councils procedures can be found on the Council's website: https://www.brent.gov.uk/your-council

 

Kind regards

 

Head of Capital Programmes’

 

My concern, and that of other “Friends of Altamira”, is that someone at the Civic Centre will instruct Hill Group to carry out the demolition of the buildings on the site, under their existing contract, while the Council is still considering ‘its options for the site’. That is a risk, which could occur either by mistake, or deliberately out of vindictiveness (against the campaign which took advantage of the Council’s mistakes, in its fight to save this important heritage building).

 

 

There should not be any reason why Brent can’t give the assurance I’d requested. A similar one was given in June 2021, when the then Strategic Director for Regeneration and Environment wrote to me (in response to me pointing out that Brent did not have the Stopping-up Order required before its proposed Morland Gardens development could take place): 

 

‘I confirm that the demolition of “Altamira” will not take place until all necessary legal pre-requisites are in place.’

 

The Strategic Director had been made aware that there would be objections to any proposed Order, and the reasons for it. Yet it was not until 28 April 2022 that valid notice of the proposed Stopping-up Order was given. That was just before Brent was finally ready to award a contract for the development. 

 

Given the uncertainty over whether the Council would obtain the legal right to build over the land outside 1 Morland Gardens, a group of Liberal Democrat and Conservative councillors called-in his Key Decision to award the two-stage “Design and Build” contract. The minutes of the 9 June 2022 call-in meeting set out how he answered the reasons given by Cllr. Lorber and two members of the public about why the contract should not be awarded:

 

 

Mr Lunt’s argument was that “only” £1.1m was at risk (the estimated cost of stage one) if the contract was awarded, whereas the Council stood to lose £6.5m in GLA funding if the project did not go ahead. He gave the impression that the Stopping-up Order process would be over by the end of 2022. The minutes record his answer to a question from a Committee member:

 

‘It was confirmed that any objections to the stopping up order which were not withdrawn would be considered by the Mayor of London. Mr Lunt noted that in his experience, all stopping up orders had been confirmed.’

 

In fact, it was February 2023 before Brent supplied the GLA with all the information needed for the Mayor of London’s decision. When that decision came on 20 March, it did not confirm the Stopping-up Order. Instead, it said that the objections would need to be considered by a Public Inquiry, and Brent Council had still not arranged for that Inquiry to be held when its planning consent for the Morland Gardens development expired at the end of October!

 

The June 2022 call-in meeting of Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee did agree that the contract should be awarded (although Mr Lunt had failed to tell them that he could not award it, as the “Contractor Framework” under which it was offered had expired at the end of May 2022!). A contract was actually awarded a couple of months later, under a different Framework, after a rushed decision by Brent’s Cabinet.

It is that contract which still poses a risk to the survival of the 150-year old beautiful and historic landmark building at 1 Morland Gardens. The Council has only to look at its own published words to know that it should not allow the unnecessary demolition of this heritage asset: 

 

From Brent’s May 2019 “Historic Environment Place-making Strategy”

 

I believe that Brent can and should make a commitment over “Altamira”, so I sent the following open email in reply to the response I’d received on 15 December:

 

‘Dear Mr Martin and Ms Wright,

 

Thank you for your email this afternoon, in response to my open email of 4 December. I have to say that I am disappointed by it.

 

I realise that the Council is carrying out a review to consider its options for the site at 1 Morland Gardens, and that recommendations will then be made to Brent's Cabinet. 

 

The assurance I requested does not need to wait for the outcome of those considerations, as it does not seek any commitment that there are no circumstances in which Brent Council would demolish the heritage building.

 

The assurance I am seeking is not an unreasonable one (given the Council's heritage assets policies and the fact that the flawed original consent, allowing the demolition of Altamira, has now expired). I will set out its terms again:

 

that there will be no demolition of the locally listed Victorian villa at 1 Morland Gardens, unless or until there are new plans in place for the site which would require the demolition of this heritage asset, and those plans have been properly consulted on, considered and given planning consent, and there are no outstanding legal requirements which need to be met before those new proposed development plans can go ahead.

 

I hope that, having reconsidered my request on a fair reading of the assurance I am seeking, Ms Wright can now give that assurance on behalf of Brent Council. Thank you. Best wishes, 

 

Philip Grant.’

Morland Gardens – Report recommends Council does not proceed, but …

 

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

When I wrote last month about the review which Brent Council was undertaking into its plans for 1 Morland Gardens, and shared a copy of the document I’d submitted on “getting it right this time”, one anonymous comment asked ‘will Brent Council ever admit to getting it wrong?’

 

The “Affordable Housing Supply (2023) – Update” report to next week’s Cabinet meeting shows the answer to that question is “No”. It says their original project has faced “challenges”, and Officers recommend it should be abandoned, but there is no reference to any of the many mistakes the Council made, and some attempts to shift the blame. 

 

The first of these comes in the Cabinet Member Foreword to the report: 

 

‘Several schemes in this report have faced significant challenges, examples include delays, objections, and new requirements like a second staircase. These factors are in some cases the reason why a scheme is unable to progress.’ 

 

It should come as no surprise to the Council, and other prospective developers, when residents object to schemes that breach Brent’s planning policies, and would adversely affect their lives! And there is no acknowledgement that many of the delays over the Morland Gardens project were the Council’s own fault:

 

The notice of the proposed Stopping-up Order was issued in April 2022, when the Council could have done that eighteen months earlier. They delayed submitting some of the information to the GLA which was needed before the Mayor of London’s decision could be given on 20 March 2023, after which it was Brent’s responsibility to arrange for a public inquiry, which they failed to do. My Brent’s Halloween Nightmare article includes details of their dithering.

 

 

Para. 5.10 from the Morland Gardens section of the report (shown above) refers to the position over Brent Start. But it makes no mention of the loss of housing provision at Twybridge Way, caused by moving the college to a ‘temporary location’ there (at a cost of £1.6m). I had warned Brent Council in 2021 what would happen if they went ahead with decanting Brent Start there, and you can read the details in “1 Morland Gardens and Twybridge Way – Brent’s response challenged”, which Martin published in October 2021. 

 

And as for the “excuse” about needing approval from the Secretary of State for Education, Brent was aware of that before they applied for planning permission for a 67 home housing scheme at Twybridge Way, that they got consent for in May 2020, and which has now expired!

 

 

The report talks of an ‘alternative site strategy’ for Morland Gardens, but there is no mention of the locally listed Victorian villa (above). The Pre-Construction Services Agreement (“PCSA”), which Brent entered into with Hill Group in July 2022, appears to have included ‘demolition’ as one of the “Services”. There is some concern among the “Friends of Altamira” (a diverse group that has been active since 2020 in trying to save this heritage building) that certain people at the Council, out of vindictiveness, might still try to have it demolished, even while the review into the future of 1 Morland Gardens is being carried out. 

 

In order to try and rule out that possibility, I sent an open email to Brent’s Chief Executive and others at the Civic Centre on 4 December, and I will end this update post with the text of that email:

 

‘Dear Ms Wright, Mr Gadsdon and Councillor Knight,

 

I have read the Affordable Housing Supply (2023) - Update Report for the 11 December 2023 Cabinet Meeting, which was published with the agenda on the Council's website last Friday, and I have shared the relevant sections of it in respect of Morland Gardens with the "Friends of Altamira".

 

We welcome the Report's recommendation, at 2.2, 'for officers to develop an alternative site strategy' for Morland Gardens, but there is one doubt which we would like you to clear up, please.

 

The Report talks about 'the future of the site', but makes no reference to the future of the locally listed Victorian villa. Para. 5.3 refers to the contract of July 2022 and the PCSA (Pre-Construction Services Agreement), which it describes as 'specifically an agreed technical design, enabling works and demolition.'

 

Please let me have Brent Council's assurance that there will be no demolition of the locally listed Victorian villa at 1 Morland Gardens, unless or until there are new plans in place for the site which would require the demolition of this heritage asset, and those plans have been properly consulted on, considered and given planning consent, and there are no outstanding legal requirements which need to be met before those new proposed development plans can go ahead.

 

As I, and others, have made clear to you, we sincerely hope that the new proposals for 1 Morland Gardens, emerging from the current review, will not involve the demolition of the Victorian villa on that site. 

 

Any such demolition, of the restored Victorian facade and belvedere tower, would be an act of vandalism which goes against Brent Council's clearly stated promises on valuing heritage assets:

 

'Once a heritage asset is demolished it cannot be replaced. Its historic value is lost forever to the community and future generations and it cannot be used for regeneration and place-making purposes. The effective preservation of historic buildings, places and landscapes and their stewardship is therefore fundamental to the Council's role.'

 

I look forward to receiving that assurance in writing from you, as Brent's Chief Executive, and to hearing either Mr Gadsdon (or whichever Officer is presenting the Report to Cabinet) or Councillor Knight make clear at the meeting on 11 December that Brent Council will not allow the demolition of the heritage Victorian villa to take place while the future of the Morland Gardens site is not legally settled. Thank you. 

 

Best wishes,

 

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.

1 Morland Gardens – an Open Letter to Brent’s Chief Executive – it is time to pause and reflect

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

1 Morland Gardens behind a corner of the community garden, 26 June 2023.

 

It is nearly three months since my last guest post about 1 Morland Gardens [“Brent’s latest NON-development (and a planning complaint)”], but that doesn’t mean that nothing has been happening.

 

My blog on 4 April said that Brent Council had lost its £6.5m GLA grant funding because no “start on site” had taken place at Morland Gardens. I’ve since found out, from the GLA, that Brent Council claimed it had achieved a “start on site” in January 2023, as part of applying (successfully) for an increased grant for the affordable homes it was building there!

 

Following several Freedom of Information Act requests to the GLA and Brent Council, I can now say categorically that Brent’s Morland Gardens redevelopment DID NOT “start on site” (as defined in its funding agreement with the GLA) in January. Nor was the Victorian villa demolished in March 2023 (you can see it in the photo from last week above!) as Brent claimed in January that it would be.

 

There is still no Stopping-up Order for the highway land in front of 1 Morland Gardens, so with a continuing delay before Brent could actually start their development, and the serious risk that Brent could lose its GLA funding for the housing element of the scheme, I sent an open letter to Brent’s new Chief Executive, Kim Wright, on 26 June. I will ask Martin to attach a copy of my letter at the end of this article, so that is “in the public domain” for anyone to read should they want to.

 

As Ms Wright will not know the full story of this flawed project, I have set out the main points from its history. I have asked her ‘to cast fresh eyes over the project, with a view to initiating a “whole case review” of whether the Council should still press ahead with it.’ 

 

It is a long letter, so I will set out some “highlights” in this article. I will deal with the detail over why Brent have not achieved a “start on site” when I share a second open letter, to the Mayor of London, with you.

 

In the Affordable Housing Update Report to Brent’s Cabinet last November, Officers admitted that the Morland Gardens project was not viable. I wrote a guest post then, with an open email I’d sent to the Council Leader. My suggestion for an alternative way forward was ignored.

 

In January, Brent asked the GLA for increased funds (there was still spare money “in the kitty”, as some other schemes, e.g. Kilburn Square, would not be able to “start on site” before the deadline of 31 March 2023). The GLA asked (in black) for some information, and Brent added their answer (in red) in an email of 23 January – this is an extract from it:

 

The amount of Brent’s £43m budget for Morland Gardens already spent is redacted, but I would guess at between £3m and £4m (including at least £1.5m on moving the Brent Start college to a temporary home, which has blocked any work on the Council’s 67-home Twybridge Way housing scheme).

 

The GLA’s Affordable Housing Programme Review Board considered Brent’s application at the end of January, and agreed to replace the original funding of £6.5m (£100k for each of 65 proposed homes) with a larger new grant (amount unknown, because it was redacted) under a Project-by-Project agreement. But as this grant was also from the AHP 2016-2023 scheme, the Morland Gardens 2 project still needed to Start on Site (“SOS”) by 31 March 2023.

 

Brent had already claimed to have achieved that “milestone”, based on details set out (again in red) in an email response to GLA questions on 20 January:

 

 

The claims that work had already begun on the site, that demolition would take place in March and that the “main build” construction works would begin by the end of April were vital for showing that the project had not only started but would continue ‘without a fallow period’, which was another requirement for the funding. Those claims were confirmed when Brent Council Officers held their quarterly meeting with the GLA’s area housing team on 7 February. Here is the Morland Gardens entry from Brent’s minutes of that meeting:

 

And it was not just minor Brent Council officials supporting these (what turned out to be false) claims to the GLA. This is the list of attendees from that minutes document (with names redacted to protect their identities, though most could be named from their job titles!):

 

Although an answer in the 20 January email said the stopping-up order (still with GLA planners) ‘won’t delay the progression of SOS’, the 7 February minutes acknowledged that there were still ‘challenges with the stopping-up order objections’. Those challenges were about to increase, as although Brent had told the GLA planners that all of the objection points raised by the objectors had already been dealt with during the planning application process in 2020, the GLA planners, that same day, had asked for copies of the original objections, not just Brent’s summary of what they were!

 

Anyone who read my guest post, “1 Morland Gardens – is proposed Stopping-Up Order another mistake?”, on 28 April 2022 will know that the harmful effects of the proposed development on air quality for pedestrians was not considered as part of the planning process, and there was a whole section on that in the objection comments I submitted in May 2022. That failure to consider the increased exposure to air pollution which the stopping-up would cause was the main reason why the (Deputy) Mayor of London’s decision letter to Brent Council on 20 March said that an Inquiry was not unnecessary:

 

 

More than three months after that decision, I have still heard nothing about when an Inquiry will be held, or who will be conducting it. Council Officers have not replied to requests for information on this, so I’ve had to submit an FoI request just to find out those details. Ridiculous!

 

Brent’s long delays over the Stopping-up Order they would need for their proposed Morland Gardens development to go ahead, and attempts to mislead the GLA over “progress” on the project, have put their plans at serious risk of failure. My open letter to Kim Wright spells that out, but also suggests some alternatives. One of these could be to leave the Brent Start college, permanently, at the Twybridge Way site.

 

That site was supposed to be Phase 2 of Brent’s Stonebridge new homes scheme, and could have been nearing completion by now if Brent’s Cabinet, on the advice of Officers, had not agreed in January 2020 to use it as a temporary home (from August 2020 to August 2022!) for Brent Start while the Morland Gardens redevelopment took place.

 

The opening paragraph from “Your Brent News”, 5 May 2023.

 

There was no mention of Stonebridge Phase 2 when the Council Leader publicised his visit to some of the Phase 1 homes (recently completed by Higgins) with the Mayor of London two months ago. But perhaps there was a hint that Cllr. Butt might be ready to accept that his plans for Morland Gardens need to be reconsidered in this paragraph, further down in the same report:

 

‘While I was in Stonebridge, I also stopped by the new Brent Start Adult Education Centre on Hillside to see its new home, say hello to the Team and meet some of the students. New homes may be the foundation for families to build their lives upon, but skills and learning are the bricks that will make that foundation stronger and open up a wave of new opportunities for local people so I’m thrilled that Stonebridge residents have this new and improved centre right on their doorstep.’

 

Brent Council certainly needs to pause and reflect on its proposals for 1 Morland Gardens, and I hope they will take the opportunity to do that, and choose a more sensible path.

Philip Grant.