Two details from Brent’s Rokesby Place planning application
Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity
When my guest blog about Brent trying to justify its planning malpractice over the rent level for the new houses at Rokesby Place was published last month, I said that I would share the reply I received from Brent’s Chief Executive with you. I’ll ask Martin to attach the letter of 19 October from Carolyn Downs at the end of this article, so that anyone who wishes to can read it.
In comments under that September blog, I said:
‘We do need to be able to trust the Senior Officers who conduct the Council's business, both in what they tell us as citizens and what they tell Cabinet members and councillors in order to persuade them to approve the decisions they recommend.’ and that:
‘… the response to my letter of 22 September will be a test of the Leadership at Brent Council. Leadership sets the example, and is one of the Principles of Conduct in Public Life.’
If you care to read the Chief Executive’s letter, and those which preceded it in the earlier blog(s), you can judge for yourself how well they are doing.
Another of the Principles of Conduct in Public Life is Honesty. In her first letter, of 16 September, in response to my complaint, Ms Downs (or the Senior Planning Officer who drafted it for her) justified the Planning Case Officer contacting Brent’s Project Manager for the Rokesby Place scheme, rather than the Planning Agent who had submitted the application, by saying that this was because the Project Manager was “the applicant”.
In the letter of 19 October (drafted by Brent’s Complaints Manager?), the story has changed:
I might have accepted that as true, if I had not checked the information on Brent’s planning website after receiving the first letter. For the Rokesby Place application, this shows:
I’m aware, from correspondence on another matter, that Ms Hislop is employed by Brent as a Project Manager. I’ve drawn this discrepancy to the attention of Ms Downs, but have not yet received her answer to it. [It’s also interesting, and perhaps concerning, to note that the Planning Case Officer and the Agent handling the planning application for Rokesby Place, are the same as for the current Newland Court “infill” housing application, 22/3124 ].
Whatever the truth on that point, I still believe that no ‘clarification’ was needed, as the application clearly stated that the tenure would be Social Rent.
A Planning Officer seeking, and receiving, that ‘clarification’ from a Council employee involved in the project, seems a clear breach of the ‘impartiality’ required by the Local Government Association’s “Probity in Planning” guidance. This says: ‘Proposals for a Council’s own development should be treated with the same transparency and impartiality as those of private developers.’ My original open letter to Ms Downs on 5 September explained that.
The ’transparency’ test would surely have required Planning Officers to disclose in their Report to Planning Committee that the application they were bring asked to decide had been for Social Rent, that Officers had changed this to London Affordable Rent (“LAR”) in their draft acceptance letter, and the reasons why that change had been made. They did none of those things, and even after Cllr. Sheth had revealed at the meeting itself that the application had been for Social Rent, they did not acknowledge that fact, or respond to what he had told the meeting.
Ms Downs’s letter does finally acknowledge this point, but in a very weak way!
The letter does not admit that there was a breach of the “Probity in Planning” guidance by Planning Officers, which should lead to the “wrong” done being put right. In fact, in another paragraph, it appears that the Council are now trying to put the blame for the rent of the two homes being LAR, rather than Social Rent, onto the Planning Committee councillors, not the Planning Officers.
The letter also maintains that LAR was the correct rent for the two homes, even though the application clearly stated that the tenure would be Social Rent.
Quite frankly, the highlighted sentence is stretching the truth past breaking point! Within ten minutes of receiving the agent’s email (just two hours before the Planning Committee meeting), the Planning Case Officer had pointed out that the agent’s claim ‘we have always proposed that the units are 100% London Affordable Rent’ was untrue! It was that statement which was ‘an error’, not the planning application form.
Although the question of viability was not mentioned in the planning application, or the Officer Report, or at the meeting itself, it has now been raised as a reason why the rent on the two Rokesby Place houses should be LAR. This is picking up on a subject which has cropped up a lot over recent weeks (see, for example, Brent’s Affordable Council Housing – the promises and the reality , and Many pressures on Brent housing put projects at risk ).
At the risk of repeating myself, although Rokesby Place may have been ‘classified’ as LAR on Brent’s property “master tracker”, the planning application (which is what Planning Committee were considering) stated that the tenure would be Social Rent.
Social Rent and LAR are both described as “genuinely affordable”, and the Planning Officer at the meeting described them as ‘very, very similar’. But the latest letter from Ms Downs does not address the point I made in my open letter to her of 22 September:
‘these affordable homes will be ‘for those whose needs are not met by the market.’ They will be Brent families in housing need, quite probably on limited incomes. By charging them LAR rent levels, rather than Social Rent, even on present figures, they will have to pay £772.20 a year more.’
That extra £772.20 a year is on 2022/23 figures, with the difference increasing each year. It may not seem a huge amount to Senior Officers at the Council (according to Brent’s accounts for 2021/22, the Chief Executive’s salary was £208,459). But to the parent of a large family, moving to a house built to ‘fulfil the needs of households on low incomes’, the change from Social Rent to LAR might mean that their dream of a decent home is no longer affordable.
I’ve recently discovered that Brent no longer appears to have any specific procedures to ensure that Planning Officers treat applications by the Council ‘with the same transparency and impartiality as those of private developers.’ I was assured by Brent’s then top legal officer in 2013 that very strict procedures were in place – either she was not telling the truth, or those procedures have been ditched by Senior Officers somewhere along the way. The letter from Ms Downs only offers a small concession to improve matters:
Although the letter says: ‘This is our final position’, I’m not satisfied that the points I complained about, or the suggested remedies I offered, have been properly resolved. I could refer the matter to the Local Government Ombudsman, but that would mean a long delay. I believe that Brent Council needs to take urgent action to clear up this case, and to provide reassurance that other Council planning applications, such as those on “infill” housing projects, will be dealt with fairly by Planning Officers.
I’ve taken the initiative, and sent a Statement of Facts about how the Rokesby Place housing tenure point was handled to the Local Government Association’s Planning Advisory Service (which published the 2019 “Probity in Planning” guidelines), asking them to give an independent opinion. [I did, of course, send a copy to Ms Downs, because I believe in transparency!] They’ve replied to say that they may give some advice to the Council on its procedures, but that: ‘we in PAS can’t investigate or provide opinions on applications or processes for members of the public.’
I’ve asked: ‘Could the LGA's Planning Advisory Service provide an independent opinion of this case if both a member of the public and the local authority requested them to do so?’ Let’s see if Brent will agree to that!
Philip Grant.
