Morland Gardens – an alternative solution (open email to Brent Council Leader)

 A guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

1 Morland Gardens and the community garden across the Hillside junction, September 2022.

 

Martin has already highlighted the £18m in cuts/savings which is the main item for next Monday’s Brent Cabinet meeting, but another report, which was added to the agenda on Tuesday afternoon, may be just as important. 

 

The “Update on the supply of New Affordable Homes” is far more than its bland title suggests. I hope to write a separate post about that, but first I would like to share with you an open email which I sent on Wednesday afternoon to the Council Leader and Lead Member for Housing. It offers an alternative solution to that proposed in the report by Council Officers for the Council’s controversial, hugely delayed and badly flawed Morland Gardens project. I have added some relevant illustrations, to break up the email’s text:-

 

Dear Councillor Butt and Councillor Knight,

 

The report to next Monday’s Cabinet meeting, Update on the supply of New Affordable Homes, shows that there are problems with a number of the Council’s schemes, including Morland Gardens at para. 4.26. The problems with that project are even worse than admitted in the report. I am writing to suggest an alternative solution, which I hope that you, and Council Officers, will seriously consider.

 

The Morland Gardens paragraph from the Update Report to Cabinet.
[ SO = Shared Ownership.  OMS = Open Market Sale.]

 

The report admits that the current scheme is not viable, and offers ‘to value engineer the scheme during the PCSA process’ as a possible solution. What it does not admit is that the scheme is likely to lose the £6.5m GLA funding, which was part of the original basis for Cabinet approving it in January 2020. It will lose that funding because it will not be possible for the project to “start on site” by 31 March 2023. 

 

At the moment, the Council does not have a “site” there. 1 Morland Gardens and its grounds are legally occupied, until at least January 2023, by Live-in Guardians. The Public Realm outside the property, including the Harlesden City Challenge Community Garden, which would form part of the site, has not been appropriated for planning purposes. It cannot be appropriated unless a section of highway crossing it can be stopped-up, and the proposed Order for that is the subject of objections which will not be resolved until after 31 March 2023.

 

Alan Lunt’s email of 2 June 2021.

 

In an email of 2 June 2021, copied to you both, and which is in the public domain, the then Strategic Director for Regeneration, Alan Lunt, wrote: ‘I confirm that the demolition of “Altamira” [the locally listed heritage Victorian villa] will not take place until all of the legal pre-requisites are in place.’ No work can commence before matters such as the stopping-up are resolved, and that will be too late for the GLA funding deadline.

 

Converting some of the proposed 65 homes to shared ownership, or trying to squeeze more homes into the building, instead of affordable workspace, would both need planning consent. This would mean further delay and expense. It would be throwing good money after bad, just as Alan Lunt’s risk of awarding a two-stage Design & Build contract, which Cabinet approved last June, for a project which did not have a legal site was a waste of at least £1.2m (the estimated cost of the PCSA process).

 

This project has been flawed from its early stages. It breached the Council’s adopted heritage assets policy, which was only justified for planning purposes by the “benefit” of 65 affordable homes at London Affordable Rent. If there is any change to that “benefit”, then that justification no longer exists.

 

Councillor Knight will remember that, at the Planning Committee meeting on 12 August 2020, her colleague Cllr. Aden, on behalf of all three Stonebridge councillors, was neutral on the Morland Gardens application. Although he welcomed the prospect of 100% LAR housing, he was against the loss of the important heritage asset, the overdevelopment of the site to the detriment of local residents and the inadequate parking and servicing provision, which would cause traffic congestion at the busy Hillside / Brentfield Road junction.

 

Councillor Aden’s submission, from the Planning Committee minutes, 12 August 2020.

 

It is time to rethink this project, as I suggested even before the planning decision in 2020, in detail to Stonebridge Ward councillors in June 2021 (with copy to the Leader and then Lead Member), and again to you as Council Leader and Alan Lunt in January 2022.

 

Extract from my email to Stonebridge Ward councillors on 19 June 2021 (which Cllr. Knight replied to).

 

The main reason for the 1 Morland Gardens scheme was to provide the Brent Start college with more modern facilities than those provided in the 1990s in the sympathetically restored heritage building. That modern college facility does not have to be on the Morland Gardens site. £15m of CIL money was been set aside for it in 2020, with a further unspecified amount agreed at last month’s Cabinet meeting. 

 

By working with the developer, using Section 106 if necessary, that new college could be provided as part of the Unisys House redevelopment, still in Stonebridge and alongside the new Bridge Park community facilities. That would leave the question of what to do with Brent Start until the new college was available.

 

The college is currently in a temporary home in the Stonebridge Primary School annexe. It could stay there, but the better solution would be to move it back to the existing facilities at 1 Morland Gardens. Once the new college was ready, the Morland Gardens site could be developed for housing and/or community facilities, retaining the beautiful heritage building as part of the scheme (details of which could be worked out and agreed ahead of the college’s permanent move).

 

Moving Brent Start out of the Stonebridge Primary School annexe would allow the much-delayed Twybridge Way housing scheme to go ahead. That project, which is being blocked by the Council’s mistakes over Morland Gardens, will provide 14 family-sized houses, 13 smaller flats for rent and 40 new supported 1-bedroom homes for independent living. Sensible allocation of those “NAIL” homes could allow forty existing family-sized homes in the Stonebridge area to become available for families on Brent’s waiting list.

 

Brent’s current plans for 1 Morland Gardens have been ill-conceived since the time of poor advice from Council Officers in late 2018 / early 2019. Rather than trying to press on with a project which is badly flawed, please take this opportunity to make a sensible choice, and accept the alternative solution I have put forward. 

 

Thank you. Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant

Newland Court – trees are at the root of Brent’s “infill” scheme problems

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Diagram showing the general proportions of tree roots to canopy. (Image from the internet)

 

When Martin posted a blog about the Newland Court planning application in September, you could see from the aerial view of the site for Brent’s proposed “infill” houses that they would be very close to a line of trees. 

 

Those trees were in the back gardens of homes in Grendon Gardens, inside the Barn Hill Conservation Area. I added a comment, pointing out that those trees were protected, because they are part of the conservation area’s ‘essential character’, and Martin posted that as a separate item of useful information for Grendon Gardens residents. 

 

Residents with trees in their gardens bordering the Newland Court site were advised to contact Brent’s Tree Protection Officer, Julie Hughes. She has submitted her comments on planning application 22/3124, and these begin by saying: ‘I have significant concerns relating to the impact that this development will have on protected trees.’ Her comments, which were only made public three weeks after she’d made them, conclude:

 

Final paragraph of Brent’s Principal Tree Officer on Brent’s Newland Court application.

 

I will ask Martin to attach a full copy of those comments below, along with a document copy of the objection comments which I’ve submitted. These also deal mainly with the harm which the planning application would do to the protected trees in the Barn Hill Conservation Area, if it were to be approved.

 

The Principal Tree Officer’s comments concentrate mainly on the tree canopies, the branches and leaves. Because the site of the existing garages at Newland Court is so narrow, the houses which the Council wants to build there would need most of the overhanging branches of these protected off-site trees to be cut off. The branches would, if such severe lopping did not kill the trees, grow back again, and so would need frequent cutting back, to stop them blocking the light to rear windows. 

 

The extent of existing protected tree canopies, marked on a plan of the proposed new homes.

 

Because there were trees on and adjacent to the site, the planning application had to be supported by an Arboricultural Impact Assessment (“AIA”). This was prepared for Brent Council by Watermans. When I read this document, one short extract about the trees along the southern edge of the conservation area stuck in my mind:

 

‘… it is considered that their roots are unlikely to have extended below the existing retaining wall which forms the northern boundary of the Site. It is therefore considered that they are unaffected by the development proposals.’

 

I don’t claim to be an expert on trees, but you don’t have to be one to know that where a tree has a canopy above ground, it is likely to have roots in the ground below that canopy! [See the diagram above.] It is very convenient for the Council’s plans to assume that there would be no roots from the protected trees where you want to dig foundations and build houses. But how likely is it that a brick wall would prevent all tree roots from growing beyond ‘the northern boundary of the Site’?

 

Luckily, I remembered a similar situation which occurred as part of the Morland Gardens planning application, where there were trees in a next-door garden, just beyond a retaining wall which marked the site boundary. In that case, the AIA included the results of a ground penetrating radar survey. This discovered that tree roots did extend below the wall:

 

‘The scan line results showed that the off-site trees are rooting within the site, but that the physical barrier of the retaining wall and its footings has provided a partial barrier to root encroachment.’

 

That evidence (rather than the “convenient” assumption by the authors of the Newland Court AIA) meant that the building plans at Morland Gardens had to include a two metre wide tree protection strip, inside the site boundary, where no construction was allowed. But the Newland Court site is so narrow that some of the proposed new houses have walls only 50cm from the boundary. These would cut through both the support and feeder roots of protected trees.

 

On the evidence in my objection comments, it would not be possible to build six of the seven houses without seriously harming, or killing off, both the canopies and the roots of protected trees in the Barn Hill Conservation Area. I’ve sent a copy of my comments document to Brent’s Principal Tree Officer, and asked her to consider it and give her response to Brent’s Planning Officers (as well as to me).

 

If I’m correct, then this planning application should be refused (and there are plenty of other reasons put forward by local residents which also justify its refusal). This is a Brent Council application, but that should not make a difference. 

 

Regular readers of “Wembley Matters” will know of my recent battle with the Council over another “infill” scheme at Rokesby Place, and my insistence that Brent’s Planning Officers must be seen to uphold the Local Government Association’s “Probity in Planning” rules:

 

‘Proposals for a Council’s own development should be treated with the same transparency and impartiality as those of private developers.’

 

Would Brent allow an application by a private developer to build houses so close to a conservation area that it damaged or killed protected trees? I doubt it!

Philip Grant.

 Philip Grant's Objection

 

 

Brent Tree Officer's Report 

 

Call-in hearing over Morland Gardens development takes place on Thursday June 9th at 6.30pm

 The first meeting of the new administration's Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee takes place on Thursday June 9th, chaired bt Cllr Rita Conneely. 

The call-in by Opposition councillors will consider the decision of the Strategic Director for Regeneration and Environment on the  award of the Design and Build Contract for the Morland Gardens (Altamira) development in Stonebridge.

Full details of the basis of the call-in have been published HERE

The Officer's report LINK gives three possible outcomes of the Committee's deliberations:

Recommendation

2.1 That the Committee considers the call-in and agrees to one of the following outcomes:

2.1.1 The Committee does not wish to refer the matter back to the decision maker or to Council, at which point the decision is deemed to be confirmed and takes effect immediately following the meeting; or

2.1.2 The Committee decides to ask the Strategic Director – Regeneration & Environment to reconsider the decision, in light of any observations of the Committee; or

2.1.3 Having had regard to the advice of the Director of Legal and HR Services or Director of Finance, the Committee considers the decision is contrary to the Council’s Budget or Policy Framework, at which point it refers the matter to the next practicable meeting of the Council, subject to the provisions of Standing Orders.

  The meeting can be watched live HERE

Morland Gardens update – Opposition parties combine to call-in decision

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

The Morland Gardens site, from Google streetview.

 

On 17 May, Martin kindly published an open email I had sent to Alan Lunt, Strategic Director, Regeneration and Environment, setting out why Brent should not go ahead with the award of a contract for its proposed development at Morland Gardens in Stonebridge. Despite my advice, the Strategic Director made his Key Decision to award the contract (to Hill Partnerships Ltd, for a total sum of £37,933,491) on 20 May 2022.

 

The main reason why this c.£38 million contract would be a big financial risk for the Council to enter into is that they don’t have the legal right to build over an area of land at the eastern end of the development site. This is currently public highway and the Harlesden City Challenge Community Garden. 

 

Although they could have dealt with the stopping-up of the highway at any time after planning consent was given for the development in October 2020, the Council only gave notice of the proposed Stopping-up Order in April this year. The period for objections to the proposed order ran out on 26 May, and I explained the reasons for my own objection (there have been others) in a guest blog on 28 April. It may take many months before this matter is resolved, and there is no certainty that an order will be approved.

 

Luckily, it appears that some Brent councillors are “Wembley Matters” readers! I’ve been sent a copy of an email received by the three Lib Dem members and two Conservative councillors, from a senior Governance Officer at Brent Council. This is the main part of that email:

 

‘Hi Councillors Lorber, Georgiou, Matin, Maurice & Hirani 

 

I [am] emailing with an update on the call-in request you’ve submitted regarding the decision taken by the Strategic Director, Regeneration & Environment to award a design and build contract for Morland Gardens.

 

Following my email yesterday I can now confirm that we’ve received the required number of requests for the call-in to be submitted.  As required under the call-in protocol, the reasons and outline of alternative action being sought under the call-in have been considered by the Chief Executive, in consultation with the Director of Legal, HR, Audit & Investigations and Head of Strategy & Partnerships, and as a result have been confirmed as meeting the requirements within the protocol and therefore accepted (on the basis of the attached form) to proceed for consideration as a call-in by the Resources & Public Realm Scrutiny Committee.

 

Having consulted with the Chair of the Resources & Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, I’m able to confirm that the scrutiny meeting to consider this call-in has been scheduled for 6:30pm on Thursday 9^th June 22 with the meeting to take place in person in the Conference Hall, Brent Civic Centre.  As usual the meeting will also be lived streamed for members of the public to follow online.’

 

I will ask Martin to include a copy of the ‘attached form’ at the end of this blog, so that readers who are interested can see what is involved in requesting a call-in.

 

Morland Gardens site plan, from the call-in form

 

I think it is encouraging that councillors in the two opposition parties, including several who were newly elected on 5 May, are willing to work together to ensure that potentially questionable decisions are given close scrutiny. I understand that Councillor Paul Lorber is taking the lead on this call-in.

 

Call-in by itself will not mean any change in this Key Decision, but it will give Scrutiny Committee members the chance to consider reasons for and against the decision, and to question the Lead Member and Council Officers responsible for it. At the end of the meeting on 9 June, they will either decide to refer the matter back to the decision maker, with recommendations, or that they do not object to the decision, so that it can go ahead.

 

It will be interesting to see how the new Chair of this Scrutiny Committee, and the majority Labour councillors, deal with the call-in. You can watch the meeting yourself, either in person or online, to see how our “new” Council operates in practice. Hopefully, this important piece of scrutiny will be dealt with on its merits, and not on party political lines!

Philip Grant

 

 

1 Morland Gardens – is proposed Stopping-Up Order another mistake?

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

1.Brent Council notice on display at Morland Gardens. (Photo by Margaret Pratt)

 

In June 2021, Martin published a guest blog I had written, Brent’s development delayed, about the Council’s failure to obtain the Stopping-Up Order needed before they could proceed with their proposed development at 1 Morland Gardens. They’d been told in December 2018 that they would need such an order, if they wanted to build over the footpath and community garden in front of the heritage Victorian villa. They could have applied for it at any time after they received full planning consent on 30 October 2020.

 

Now, finally, they have started the process, by giving notice of a proposed Stopping-Up Order. But already they’ve added to their long catalogue of mistakes over 1 Morland Gardens! The Legal Notice published in the “Brent & Kilburn Times” on 14 April failed to mention Morland Gardens when describing the highway to be stopped-up, only giving its grid references:

 

 

Under the Legal Notice, the only way to inspect or request copies of the draft order and plan was in person at Brent Customer Services, where they would be available for ‘a period of 28 days from the 14^th April 2022.’ I went to the Civic Centre on Tuesday 19 April, and the documents were not available to inspect or get copies of. I reported this, and the Senior Officer concerned has just let me know that they will be publishing a new Legal Notice in our local newspaper on 28 April.

 

These were procedural mistakes, but they are not the biggest error. Right from the start, when Council Officers greedily thought they could add the Council-owned “highway” to the 1 Morland Gardens site, in order to build more housing as part of the redevelopment of the Brent Start college, they failed to consider what the effect of a stopping-up would be.

 

3.Part of the Morland Gardens “highway” between the college and community garden.
(Photo by Margaret Pratt)

 

At the moment, pedestrians walking to and from Hillside to the homes further along Morland Gardens, and the Five Precious Wounds R.C. Church in Brentfield Road, can take the path alongside the low front wall of the college, and be shielded from the traffic fumes and noise by the trees of the community garden. If these routes (in green on the plan below) are stopped-up, they will have to walk alongside the busy roads, right up to the road junction.

 

4.Brent’s “stopping-up” plan, with before and after routes added.

 

The additional walking distances involved are not great, but pedestrians would now be exposed to the pollutants emitted by the heavy traffic, especially when it is tailed back along Hillside because of the traffic lights. This junction is in what has been designated an Air Quality Management Area (“AQMA”), because of its poor air quality, and in fact is one of the most polluted road junctions in Brent.

 

Because the site is in an AQMA, the planning application for Brent’s Morland Gardens redevelopment had to include an Air Quality Assessment (“AQA”). This was prepared for the Council by a specialist company (Gem Air Quality Ltd), but the scope of what they were asked to report on was just ‘the potential impacts of existing and future traffic levels on a proposed mixed-use development located at Morland Gardens.’ 

 

In short, the assessment only considered the effects of traffic pollution on residents and users inside the planned new building! It did not assess what the plans would mean for pedestrians and others, and did not look at the difference between pollution levels along the paths that would need to be stopped-up and those on the pavements beside the main roads here.

 

In fact, no actual air pollution readings were taken at Morland Gardens, Hillside or Brentfield Road as part of the assessment. It was a desk-based modelling exercise, but it did use an accepted technique described as a “comprehensive tool for investigating air pollution problems due to small networks of roads”. This was applied to a number of “receptor” points around the planned new building:-

 

5.Main part of Figure 3 from the Morland Gardens AQA report.

 

The AQA looked at the “before” and “after” predicted annual mean levels of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. It can be seen that the receptor locations R1 and R3 are the equivalent to points B and C on the stopping-up order plan, so the predictions for those do provide at least an indication of the likely levels of the traffic pollutants harmful to health. These are the tables of results prepared by Gem Air Quality Ltd and included in their AQA:-

 

 

6.Tables of predicted mean annual values from the AQA. (Gem Air Quality Ltd, October 2019)

 

It will be seen that the predicted level of Nitrogen Dioxide at ground level (especially at the corner of the building nearest the traffic lights – R3 = 51.0) is above the permitted “safe” limit. For particulate matter, the table appears to show levels at around half of the “objective”, but the World Health Organisation guideline value is 20, not 40 µg/m3, and the AQA only looks at PM10 concentrations, not the more harmful PM2.5 particulates (present in vehicle emissions).

 

Added to that, the AQA only contains mean annual predictions. The document admits: ‘that the short-term impacts of NO2 and PM10 emissions have not been modelled as dispersion models are inevitably poor at predicting short-term peaks in pollutant concentrations, which are highly variable from year to year, and from site to site.’  Pedestrians would have to walk closer to the traffic that the “receptor locations”, and the report also admits that: ‘street canyons have not been modelled as part of this assessment.’

 

Having Brent’s proposed nine-storey building at the corner of Hillside and Brentfield Road would contribute to a “street canyon” effect. The report says: ‘Street canyons may result in elevated pollutant concentrations from road traffic emissions due to a reduced likelihood of the pollutants becoming dispersed in the atmosphere.’

 

Taking all of these facts together, the levels of harmful pollutants which pedestrians would have to face when walking along the “red route” shown on the stopping-up plan above would cause a much higher risk to health than the existing “green routes” which the Council plans to stop-up. Did Brent’s planners consider this, when recommending the scheme for approval? NO!

 

7.The Air Quality section of the Officer Report to Planning Committee, 12 August 2020.

 

The Planning Officers report, and the advice from Brent’s Environmental Health Officer on which it was based, only looked at the AQA, which was just about the air quality inside the proposed building. But para.175 above includes this important sentence:

 

‘Officers acknowledge that there is the potential for high levels of nitrous oxide associated with pollution from adjoining streets to impact on the lower floors of the building (lower ground to second floor).’

 

To deal with this, a condition was included in the planning consent, requiring that the mitigation measures recommended in the AQA must be implemented, and proved to have been implemented, before the new building could be occupied. Those measures can be summed up in this extract from the “Building Mitigation” section of the AQA’s conclusions:

 

‘A mechanical ventilation system that draws air in from the roof may be considered acceptable as predicted NO2 concentrations on the fourth floor and above are below the relevant air quality objectives. However, the inlets should be placed as high as possible (roof level) and as far away from the local roads as possible.’

 

If the air quality at the corner of Hillside and Brentfield Road is only considered to be safe four floors above street level, then surely pedestrians need to be kept safe from the pollution as well! Deliberately forcing them to use the pavement by the busy junction, rather than the existing paths, shielded from the worst of the traffic pollution by the community garden, must surely be wrong!

 

8.The proposed Morland Gardens redevelopment site, as currently pictured on Google Streetview.

 

There is a variety of additional health risks to pedestrians from exposure to high levels of traffic pollution. I’m especially concerned about the increased risks of asthma to children which the proposed stopping-up could cause. 

 

One of my children has suffered from asthma since the 1980s (with more than a dozen childhood hospitalisations, and one almost fatal attack), caused by the traffic fumes encountered on a 50-metre stretch of Kingsbury Road, on the way to school. The reality of such risks was finally confirmed in the 2020 inquest verdict, following the tragic death of 9-year old Ella Kissi-Debrah, which found that she: ‘died of asthma contributed to by exposure to excessive air pollution.’

 

But there is a way that the stopping-up order can be prevented. Para. 4 of the Legal Notice (as it will be reissued) sets out how anyone can object to it:

 

'Persons desiring to object to the making of proposed order should send a statement in writing of their objection and the grounds thereof, to the Head of Healthy Streets and Parking, Regeneration and Environment, 5th Floor North Wing, Brent Civic Centre, Engineers Way, Wembley, Middlesex, HA9 0FJ, or via email to
trafficorders@brent.gov.uk , quoting the reference TO/23/031/NP, within the period of 28 days from the 28th April 2022.' 

 

And there is a final irony. The person who is responsible for Brent’s proposed Morland Gardens stopping-up order is the Council’s Head of Healthy Streets!

 

Result from the Address Pollution website, 29 April 2022

LINK

Philip Grant.