Wembley Housing Zone – Estate Management Company and The Pages. Will the arrangement leave Brent Council at risk?

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Work in progress on the Cecil Avenue site (aka The Pages Wembley), 9 June 2025.

 

I was in the High Road on Monday, and discovered that the Council’s Wembley Housing Zone (“WHZ”) development at Cecil Avenue is now being marketed as “The Pages Wembley”. More on that later, but Cecil Avenue is also on the agenda for next week’s Brent Cabinet meeting, over an Estate Management Company.

 

Readers may remember that although Brent Council owns the Cecil Avenue site, and received full planning consent for the development there in February 2021, it was not until March 2023 that it entered into a WHZ partnership agreement with Wates. Work did not actually start on site until February 2024, and by that time I’d found out (through a Freedom of Information Act request) that under this “partnership”, 150 of the 237 homes would be for Wates to sell, and of the 87 Brent Council homes, only 56 (half of them family size units) would be for letting at London Affordable Rent level. Of the other Brent Council “affordable” homes, 28 would be for shared ownership and 3 would be sold at a discount from market price.

 

These are the main recommendations in the Report to Brent’s Cabinet, and the “Cabinet Member Foreword”, which gives the Council Officers’ “spin” on why they want our top elected councillors to agree the recommendations they have made:

 

 

 

All of the WHZ Council flats in Ujima House and the Council’s London Affordable Rent homes at Cecil Avenue will come under Brent’s Housing Revenue Account, but the Estate Management Company (“EMC”) will also require payment of service charges from tenants living on that site. As the services provided by the EMC are quite broad, and it appears that it will hire a managing agent to carry out some or all of those services, tenants at the Cecil Avenue site are likely to face quite high service charges on top of their “genuinely affordable” rent.

 

 

As ‘Wates have experience of setting up similar companies’, Brent will let them take the lead on setting up this EMC, but once Wates have sold all 150 of the 237 homes at Cecil Avenue (which our Council allowed them to have under the 2023 partnership agreement) they will walk away from the EMC. ‘Brent Council will then have full control, ownership and responsibility for the Company’, which in turn means that the Council will have full responsibility ‘for repair and maintenance of the structure’.

 

I may be a pessimist and a cynic, but I can’t help feeling that this will leave Brent Council, through its by then wholly-owned EMC subsidiary, at risk of a situation similar to that experienced when it had to bail out its First Wave Housing subsidiary over Granville New Homes. Those homes had been built through a partnership between Brent and the developer, Higgins. (Disclaimer: I am not suggesting that Wates workmanship is on the same level as that of Higgins on that 2009 South Kilburn project!)

 

 

Turning to “The Pages”, when I was in the High Road, trying to take photographs of the Cecil Avenue site hoardings across the street (through the traffic tailed back from road works at the Ealing Road junction!), a visitor to Wembley asked me if I knew why the development had been given that name. Was it because it used to be a printing works, or something like that? I said it was the first time I had seen “The Pages Wembley” name, that there used to be a school on the site, and my guess was that it might be a reference to the Page family, who were major landowners in the area several centuries ago.

 

Sure enough, when I searched for "The Pages Wembley” online, I found that: ‘The name is a nod to the Page family, who became major landowners in Wembley in the 16th century.’ I also found that Savills are already marketing the private homes here on their website. This is a small sample of what is on offer:

 

Composite of images from a Savills video and Savills sales website.

 

It is interesting that the top image, from the video, shows that it was issued by Savills International Realty Limited, and the black letters under the Savills name in their logo appear to be in Chinese characters! Echoes of Brent’s “partnership” development at Willesden Green Library? The video showcases Wembley as a “world class location”, and most of its filming appears to have been done at Quintain’s Wembley Park development, with just a handful of CGI pictures of what “The Pages” is meant to look like when it is completed, which should be in late Summer or Autumn 2026 (not March/April 2026, as implied in the video)!

 

The opening line of Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice”. (Image from the internet)

 

I can’t help thinking that the link between Brent Council’s development at Cecil Avenue and the Page family is ironic. The last of the wealthy Wembley Pages were four brothers, who were contemporaries of Jane Austen (the 250^th anniversary of whose birth is being celebrated by the BBC at the moment). As I showed in Part 2 of The Wembley Park Story, in 2020, they seemed to have overlooked the important truth that rich families needed to produce an heir, to pass on their wealth to. The will signed by the final Page brother left all of the family’s wealth to his solicitor (or so the solicitor claimed – he went on to live in one of their mansions in Sudbury, and became a governor of Harrow School). 

 

It is a truth (almost) universally acknowledged that a London Borough has thousands of people in want of an affordable home to rent. And if you look at some of the signs on the hoardings outside “The Pages” in the High Road, that is what you would think Brent Council was building there.

 

When Brent’s Cabinet made its formal decision on the WHZ development in August 2021, they knew what the borough’s housing needs were. These had been spelt out in the Brent Poverty Commission report, whose recommendations (including borrowing when interest rates were low to build more Council homes, especially those for social rent level, which was all that many local people could afford) the Cabinet had accepted less than a year before. 

So what was ‘the Wembley Housing Zone Vision’ which they were delivering? I think that the deal they signed with Wates has “swindled” many Brent residents in housing need out of a home that they could have had (and could have had by 2024, if the Council had not gone down the “developer partner” route). What do you think?

Philip Grant.

 

Wembley Park: Out go the skips - in come 759 students in 7 accommodation blocks

 

Proposed student buildings

 

The light industry that surrounded Wembley Stadium is fast disappearing as developers buy up land and two storey premises are replaced by tower blocks.

The latest is an unpromising elongated site,  presently used by Glynns Skip Hire as a waste management facility with storage containers, off Fifth Way. It has very limited access.

Architects have managed to wedge in proposals for seven student accommodation blocks along with a cafe and student facilities. The developer has called it Wembley Edge rather than Wembley Wedge!

The elongated site is explained that the site was part of the 'Never-Stop' railway at the British Empire Exhibition and included a railway station.

The proposed buildings would range in height from 5 to 15 storeys, with building G the furthest north representing the tallest at c.53m. Building A is 11 storeys, building B 14 storeys, building C 11 storeys, building D 13 storeys, building E 14 storeys, building F 11 storeys and building G 15 storeys. Five storey shoulder elements link A and B as well as D and E together. Togather they prvide 759 student units some studio and some in a cluster with shared facilities.

 

Brent Council has established that the waste management business could be transferred to an Alperton site. Nearer sites were discounted as they too could be targets for development.

 

Opposition has come from nearby light industrial businesses fearing a possible negative impact on their own development potential and has resulted in Savills who submitted a Town Planning Statement  on  behalf of the developer, using the Brent Planning Portal to submit a 'Neutral Statement' responding to criticism.  This is very unusual and something I have not seen before:

 We write to respond to the comments made by Dandi Living (dated 20 August 2024) in respect to the above planning application. Dandi Living's comments suggest that the Wembley Edge proposals are being progressed prematurely and without enough consideration of the potential impact on, and relationship with, the adjacent site at Latif House, a site which Dandi Living has a legal interest in. 

The current Wembley Edge proposals are the culmination of extensive pre-application consultation with the local planning authority, GLA, local community and key stakeholders and other consultees between 2020 and submission of the planning application in March 2023.

 A public consultation website, webinar and two public exhibition events were held in 2022, to which Dandi Living provided no feedback. Since submission of the planning application, further detailed discussions have been held with officers, including regarding opportunities for the wider development area with Brent's urban design officers. Again, we note that Dandi Living provided no detailed comments on the application proposals until August 2024. 

Due consideration has been given to the potential for development to come forward on surrounding sites, including the Latif House site noting it's inclusion within the Growth Area, and the First Way site allocation. The proposed layout responds to the urban grain and is set back from the western boundary. The layout ensures that the primary windows serving the proposed student accommodation are over 9m from the site boundary with the Latif House site, and that direct outlook from windows to this site boundary is over 10m. Other secondary windows are high-level obscured windows so as to preserve the amenity of any future development on the Latif House site. 

Any constraints created by the Wembley Edge proposals on Latif House would be typical of development in a built-up urban environment and would not hinder or prohibit the site from being developed in the future. The public realm created as part of the proposals adjacent to Latif House is for service and emergency access only, but this could potentially form part of a larger public realm once neighbouring developments come forward in a cohesive way. 

Turning to Dandi Living's comments relating to daylight, it is not accepted that the Wembley Edge proposals significantly constrain the Latif House site. Any areas of reduced daylight availability to Latif House would likely be limited to a small area of the lower floors directly facing Wembley Edge (as it can be typically expected in a high density urban environment). London Plan Policy D6 requires development to 'provide sufficient daylight and sunlight to new and surrounding housing that is appropriate for its context' and the NPPF requires local planning authorities to 'take a flexible approach in applying policies or guidance relating to daylight and sunlight'. BRE Guidance is also clear on this matter, seeking for daylight availability to be maximised as far as possible, but noting that it is only one of many policy considerations which must be finely balanced. In this policy / guidance context, providing that any future proposals at Latif House are designed to maximise daylight within those lower rooms which front Wembley Edge, both developments could successfully co-exist from a daylight perspective. 

We consider that the Wembley Edge proposals are suitably designed so as not to prejudice the future development potential of the Latif House site.

 

Brent Planning Officers report on the light issues and appear to agree with Savills:

 

Under the BRE guidance the proposed development will have an adverse impact on Arch View House, Kelaty House and the Waterside. That said, the BRE guidance represents best practice guidance, it is not mandatory, and it is a well established approach that the guidelines should be interpreted flexibly, taking into account the need to make efficient use of land to meeting housing needs and site context characteristics.

 

A further important point to note is that given the open and low scale nature of the existing site, it provides higher levels of light to surrounding receptors than would be expected in this urban location and higher density redevelopment of the site, which the site allocation policy supports, would naturally result in some adverse impacts to neighbouring receptors.

 

The identified impact to the properties should therefore be balanced against the benefits of the scheme overall, and Members should therefore consider whether those benefits do outweigh the harm.

As in previous planning applications Brent Planners insist (along with the GLA) that there is a demand for student accommodation and that it will contribution to Brent's housing targets:

Whilst the site allocation policy does not refer specifically to PBSA [Purpose Built Student Accommodation], this type of housing is acknowledged to relieve some of the demand for conventional housing, and this provision would contribute towards Brent's housing supply (at a ratio of 2.5 bedrooms to one conventional housing unit), at the same time contributing towards London Plan housing targets. The proposed provision of 759 student bedrooms would therefore equate to 306 new homes in Brent (on the basis of 2.5: 1 ratio), which would positively contribute towards the boroughs wider housing targets, and to achieving the indicative dwellings capacity of 1, 312 dwellings within the whole of site allocation BCSA9. To date within the wider site allocation planning permission has either been implemented, or granted (but not implemented) for 600 C3 dwellings on the Access Storage site on First Way (ref; 18/4767) and 678 student bedrooms (equivalent to 271 new homes on the basis of the 2.5 : 1 ratio) at the former Cannon Trading Estate site (ref; 17/3799). Combined, each of these schemes if consented and subsequently implemented, including the proposed development would deliver the equivalent of 1, 177 new dwellings across the site allocation, contributing positively towards the indicative site capacity for number of dwellings.

Brent Planning Officers, councillors (including Muhammed Butt, Council Leader) have been involved in meetings with the developers:

 

                          The future view of part of the development from Second Way

A submission to the Planning Committee by local historian Philip Grant provides a heritage footnote:

The site, as indicated in the Heritage, Townscape and Visual Impact Assessment, owes its origin to the transport infrastructure put in place for the BEE in 1924. 

It was the site of the Exhibition Station, on the loop line specially installed by the London & North Eastern Railway to bring special trains for exhibition visitors into the heart of the BEE site. Running alongside the loop line on the site was the Never-Stop Railway, with its own station. This was a unique form of rail transport, operated by a continuous screw system, installed at the BEE and bringing visitors to and from a station near the north entrance, close to Wembley Park Metropolitan Railway station, to the south of the BEE site near Adams Bridge.

The private "access road", the possible use of which for construction traffic has led to a number of objections, was the BEE's Chittagong Road, running between the Indian and Burma Pavilions. This lead to the King's Gate Bridge, commonly called "Old London Bridge" during the exhibition, which spanned both the L&NER and Never-Stop Railway lines, which carried visitors to the eastern end of the Exhibition Grounds.

If The Edge site is to be developed, its heritage needs to be remembered as part of that development, particularly both railway parts of the BEE heritage and "Old London Bridge", which was at the southern end of that site.

I would request that a condition along these lines be included in any consent given to this application:

'The developer shall liaise with Brent Museum and Archives and Wembley History Society, to prepare and pay for an illustrated local history panel commemorating the British Empire Exhibition history of the development site, including the Exhibition Station, Never-Stop Railway and King's Gate Bridge. This local history panel shall be suitably installed in an open space area within the site, where it can easily be viewed by members of the general public, prior to the occupation of the new buildings on the site.'

Here is a silent film from British Pathe of the Never-Stop Railway:

 

The Planning Committee considering this application is on Wednesday 13th November 6pm at the Conference Hall, Brent Civic Centre or view on-line HERE

Tokyngton Library to be sold to Islamic Cultural Association

Council officers are recommending that the Brent Executive agree to sell off the closed down Tokyngton Library in Monks Park to the Islamic Cultural Association for an undisclosed sum. A bid by Tokyngton Homes is kept in reserve in case the preferred sale does not go through.