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.

 

Regeneration at Scrutiny meeting – The truth about Brent’s Wembley Housing Zone land – two follow-up emails

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Cllr. Tatler (front right) on the Cecil Avenue site in March 2023.
(from a Brent Council press release announcing the WHZ development contract with Wates)

 

Following my guest post on 28 April, setting out the truth about the Council’s ownership of the Wembley Housing Zone site at Cecil Avenue, I added a comment below which shared the text of an open email I had sent to Councillor Shama Tatler.

 

Martin asked whether he could publish that email as a separate post, but I said it might be better to wait until I had also sent an email to the members of the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, and publish both together. That is what this guest post does.

Open email to Councillor Shama Tatler, Brent’s Cabinet Member for Regeneration, on 29 May at 8.30am:

 

Subject: Incorrect statement on Wembley Housing Zone land at Scrutiny Committee on 23 April

 

This is an Open Email

 

Dear Councillor Tatler,

 

You may recall that I have been taking a close interest in the lack of genuinely affordable housing at Brent Council's Cecil Avenue development, which comes under your Wembley Housing Zone regeneration portfolio, since August 2021.

 

I was therefore interested when the subject came up when you were speaking to the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee meeting last Tuesday (23 April) when they were considering Regeneration.

 

You stated (and I have transcribed this from the webcast of the meeting): 'With the Wembley Housing Zone, we didn't own the land. We had to purchase the land.'

 

That statement was untrue. 

 

Brent Council did own the freehold of the Cecil Avenue site (which will provide 237 of the 291 WHZ homes). That land, which for a time had passed to Copland Community School when it was a foundation school, had come back to Brent Council ownership, for nil consideration, under a land rationalisation agreed in 2014.

 

The only WHZ land which Brent Council had to purchase was Ujima House (the smaller site, providing only 54 of the 291 WHZ homes), acquired in 2016 for £4.8m, and funded out of the £8m initially provided to Brent by the GLA for the Wembley Housing Zone.

 

I'm sure that you are at least as aware of those facts as I am, and yet you appear to have chosen to mislead the Scrutiny Committee, as part of seeking to justify the impact on viability which has led to the poor number of genuinely affordable homes homes for rent to Council tenants at your Wembley Housing Zone scheme.

 

I am bringing this to your attention, and the fact that the true position is now in the public domain*, so that you can write to the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee to correct the error in what you said above (and any other false information included in your statements to them on 23 April) and apologise for misleading them at their meeting.

 

I am copying this email to Councillor Conneely, the Committee Chair, for her information, and as it is an open email I will also include its text as a comment under the online blog post, which you can read via the "link" below. Yours sincerely,

 

Philip Grant.

 

* https://wembleymatters.blogspot.com/2024/04/regeneration-at-scrutiny-meeting-truth.html

 

[Thirty-six hours later, I have yet to receive any acknowledgement or response from Cllr. Tatler, and on past experience, I’m not sure that I will.]

 

Wembley Housing Zone location plan, with added description in key.
(Original version taken from a Report to Cabinet in August 2021)

 

As I have little confidence that Cllr. Tatler will take my advice, and bring the error I have pointed out to the attention of the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, my second email was addressed to them.

 

Email to Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, on 30 May at 8.27pm:

 

Subject: Correction to information given to you on Wembley Housing Zone land at meeting on 23 April.

 

Dear Chair and members (including substitutes) of Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, I was interested in item 6 on your 23 April agenda, Regeneration in Brent, and watched some of the meeting on the webcast.

 

You may remember that, in 2022, I was seeking to get your committee to scrutinise various aspects of the Council's delivery of affordable housing, and in particular the lamentably low proportion of genuinely affordable homes to rent which were proposed for the Cecil Avenue site of the Council's Wembley Housing Zone project. 

 

I was pleased to hear Councillor Conneely express your Committee's support for more genuinely affordable homes on Council schemes. However, I was astounded to hear what Councillor Tatler said about the Wembley Housing Zone scheme, which comes under her Regeneration portfolio. This is what I transcribed her saying, when I went back to check it on the webcast recording (with my bold type for emphasis):

 

'With the Wembley Housing Zone, we didn't own the land. We had to purchase the land. That impacts viability as well.'

 

She was claiming that the Council could not provide more genuinely affordable homes than the 88 at London Affordable Rent (out of a total of 291 homes to be built, with 150 of those for private sale by Wates) because purchasing the land reduced the viability of the project.

 

But Brent Council did not have to purchase the land for the main part of the project, the former Copland School site at Cecil Avenue, where 237 of the 291 homes will be built.

 

I double-checked that I was correct over Brent's ownership of that vacant brownfield site, before sharing the truth about this online. I also wrote to Councillor Tatler yesterday morning (29 April), and am appending the full text of that email below for your information (although I did copy the original to your Chair).

 

I am not confident that Councillor Tatler will write to correct the false statement she made to you on 23 April, so I decided to write to you as well. Please base any follow-up work you do on Regeneration, and any recommendations your Committee may make on the Wembley Housing Zone, on the true position over land ownership at Cecil Avenue. Thank you.

 

As set out in the online article which I provided a "link" to at the end of my email to Councillor Tatler below, effective scrutiny in holding the Cabinet to account relies on Cabinet members, and Council Officers, being honest in the information they provide to you. I hope that you will make that point clearly when dealing with this matter, because the work that you do is very important. 

 

Thank you. Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant.

 

Regeneration at Scrutiny meeting – The truth about Brent’s Wembley Housing Zone land

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity-

 

The Scrutiny page on Brent Council’s website includes the following question and answer:

 

From: https://www.brent.gov.uk/the-council-and-democracy/council-meetings-and-decision-making/scrutiny#Whatisscrutiny

 

For the Scrutiny system to operate effectively, the information given to Scrutiny Committees by Cabinet members and Council Officers needs to be truthful. Within the Brent Members’ Code of Conduct, this is spelt out: ‘you must comply with the seven principles of conduct in public life set out in Appendix 1.’ The seven principles include “Honesty”, and “Accountability” which is defined as: 

 

‘You should be accountable to the public for your actions and the manner in which you carry out your responsibilities, and should co-operate fully and honestly with any scrutiny appropriate to your particular office.’

 

Martin posted a blog article, “Cllr Tatler taken to task on regeneration issues”, following the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee meeting last Tuesday (23 April 2024). It included a video, taken from the Council’s webcast of the meeting, which I watched with interest.

 

I have tried several times, since January 2022, to get proper scrutiny of the August 2021 Cabinet decision to allow a developer to sell at least half of the homes at Brent’s Wembley Housing Zone (“WHZ”) development (including most at the more favourable Cecil Avenue site) for private profit. WHZ was in the first of the regeneration growth areas dealt with in the Officer Report to the Scrutiny Committee meeting:

 

 

 

When I heard what Cllr. Shama Tatler said about WHZ when addressing the meeting, I could hardly believe what I had heard. I submitted a short comment, saying: ‘I'm sure I heard Cllr. Tatler claim that Brent did.not own the Wembley Housing Zone land, which is why it was not viable to build more affordable housing there.’ I finished my comment with: ‘Was Cllr. Tatler being "economical with the truth"?’

 

After further research, I submitted a follow-up comment, which Martin has agreed to post as a separate item on Wembley Matters. This is what I wrote:

 

‘I asked above: 'Was Cllr. Tatler being "economical with the truth"?'

 

This was in relation to the Wembley Housing Zone, where I have been campaigning for more genuinely affordable housing, and writing guest posts about it, since August 2021.

 

I have gone back to the webcast, and transcribed what Cllr. Tatler said. Martin kindly sent me a document from a Brent Executive meeting in April 2014 on proposed land rationalisation at Copland Community School and adjacent lands.

 

This is the relevant extract from the webcast of Tuesday's Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee meeting, with Cllr. Tatler addressing the committee on Brent's regeneration schemes:

 

'With the Wembley Housing Zone, we didn't own the land. We had to purchase the land. That impacts viability as well. And we are looking at how we deal with affordable housing on the scheme. Ideally we would want to deliver 100% social housing on any of our land ....'

 

This is the key paragraph from the April 2014 Report to Brent's Executive (now Cabinet), whose recommendations were approved and put in place. CCS is Copland Community School, which had been served with an Academy Order by the Secretary of State, and the IEB is the Interim Executive Board, which Brent Council as Local Education Authority had put in place instead of CCS's previous governing body, to run the school until it was taken over by the Ark Academy group.

 

'CCS is a foundation school and therefore the land and buildings are mainly in the ownership of the school itself, the responsibility for which is vested in the IEB. The IEB has expressed agreement to transfer the freehold of the site which it currently owns to the Council instead, in order for the Council to rationalise the ownership and use of the site overall, ensuring an optimum footprint for the school. The ARK would under these proposals be granted a 125 year lease on the final school site.'

 

In the "Financial Implications" section of the Report, these were the key points from the proposals (which were approved and put in place):

 

'2. The IEB transfer to the Council the freehold interest in the CCS site at nil consideration.

3. The Council accepts a surrender of CCS’s leasehold interests at nil consideration.

5. The Council grants the ARK a short term lease of the existing CCS buildings at peppercorn rent.

7. The Council will grant the ARK a 125 year lease of the new school siteat a peppercorn rent.

8. The ARK will surrender the lease to the existing school at nil consideration.'

 

So, Brent became the freehold owners of all of the original Copland School site and playing fields in 2014, granting ARK a temporary lease of the original school buildings from 1 September 2014. 

 

When the new school was built on the playing fields behind the original school buildings, Brent then granted ARK a 125 year lease for the new school site, BUT retained the freehold of the original Copland School land, now the Wembley Housing Zone Cecil Avenue site, at no cost to the Council.

 

The other, smaller, part of Brent's Wembley Housing Zone scheme, for which it received an £8m grant from the GLA in 2015, is Ujima House. Brent bought that office building in 2016, using £4.8m of the initial £8m GLA funding. It has since received further GLA funding to be used on affordable housing as part of the WHZ.

Cllr. Tatler DID mislead the Scrutiny Committee when she said that Brent did not own the Wembley Housing Zone land and had to purchase it!’

 

Map showing the land around Copland School and its ownership, prior to the rationalisation.
(From an Appendix to the Report to the April 2014 meeting of Brent’s Executive)

 

If there was any doubt about Brent Council’s ownership of the former Copland School site, the freehold of all the land hatched in green on the map above was transferred to Brent in 2014. The only land that Brent had to purchase for its WHZ scheme was the much smaller Ujima House site (which will provide 54 of the 291 WHZ homes, scheduled for completion in 2026).

 

Back in November 2021, Cllr. Tatler, in answer to a public question I had asked ahead of a Full Council meeting, said: ‘it is not financially viable to deliver all 250 homes at Cecil Avenue as socially rented housing.’ [Her scheme only delivered 37 affordable rented homes there then!]

 

Yet neither she, nor anyone else at Brent Council, has been willing or able to answer my question of why it would not be viable to build far more of the Cecil Avenue homes for genuinely affordable rent to Council tenants (see my January 2024 guest post for the latest figures), when the vacant site to build them on was already owned by Brent, they could have gone ahead with the development themselves as soon as they received full planning consent in February 2021, and interest rates were very low (and did not shoot up until autumn 2022).   

 

 Philip Grant.

Cllr Tatler taken to task on regeneration issues

 Tuesday's Resources and Public Realm Committee was the swan song of the Committee as it was the last one of the municipal year and it may well have new members and chair after the Council AGM.

I may put the kibosh on the present committee if I say that in my opinion this would be a pity as it has developed its skills over the last year and Cllr Rita Conneely has proved a formidable chair. It takes time for councillors to undergo training and increase their confidence at holding lead members to account.

Cllr Shama Tatler, with the regeneration and planning brief, was in the hot seat on Tuesday and faced some tough questions.

The issue of the viability of both private and public developments was a major theme in the light of the post-Truss financial situation with its high interest rates and reduction in confidence, inflation, shortage of labour post-Brexit and supply-chain problems. In addition the post-Grenfell need (rightly) for second staircases in tall buildings has meant that developments have had to be reviewed.

Cllr Tatler explained how as a result the amount of units for sale might have to be increased and affordable housing reduced, tenure cmay be hanged to include more 'intermediate# housing (often shared ownership) or alternative sources of funding sought.

A note of realism was introduced early in the meeting when Pete Firmin, a South Kilburn resident, spoke about the problems with the regeneration of the South Kilburn estate including poor quality new housing, scaffolding up around relatively new blocks and problems of incursions into blocks where tenants had been decanted. His contribution and Cllr Tatler's response can be seen in the video at the top of the page along with some of the other exchanges reported here.

Cllr Anton Georgiou brought up tenure on the new South Kilburn blocks. saying that he had been told that they were not at social rent as Cllr Tatler claimed but at the higher London Affordable Rent. He promised to produce evidence to this effect.

Improvements in infrastructure was an issue in Alperton regeneration as it lagged behind the building of new blocks. He gave the example of improvements to Alperton Station needed by the new residents in car-free developments.

Cllr Tatler said it was often difficult to get the improvements in place because of the need to work with partners such as TfL, regarding the station and the NHS regarding the promised medical centre on South Kilburn, and things moved slowly.

She pointed out that it was pivate housing that yielded Strategic Community Infrastructure levy in regeneration areas - Council housing did not qualify.

The need for more affordable social housing was another major themes. Committee chair Cllr Rita Conneely said, 'That is what we want as a committee, what backbenchers want and what residents want.'

She urged Cllr Tatler and the Regeneration Department to challenge developers more ('Let's say no, let's start saying no!' ) and for London councils to get together a common front to stop developers' divide and rule. 'Whatever you bring back to use, we will want more.'

 Cllr Tatler had said, 'We can't say no to developers', but Gerry Ansell who earlier had said, 'we can't walk away from  developers' pointed out that the Planning Committee could say no and reject applications. That as we know happens seldom and Planning Committee members are reminded of the need for housing at the start of each meeting and are also warned that an Appeal by a developer would cost the council money.

Shama Tatler pointed out that there was already a London-wide body in the form of the GLA and that as Local Plans began to more closely mirror the London Plan there would be more consistency across London.

She went on:

It is wrong to say we don't challenge developers. Mo (Cllr Muhammed Butt, leader of Brent Council) and I have conversations day in, day out, with developers about what our red lines are. This is why we get criticised for having too many high blocks. I will have high blocks if it means we are getting as much affordable housing in a scheme as possible.

The committee, following a point raised by Pete Firmin, said that community spaces in regeneration areas needed to be publicly owned rather than belong to the developer.

The meeting finished with Cllr Tatler agreeing to meet with concerned residents in regeneration areas.

 Note: It was a very long meeting. The full webcast is HERE

Following comments on this article here is a link to the latest ONS (Office of National Statistics) data on rent levels and house prices in Brent. Main findings in the image. For links to each go to: 

 https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/housingpriceslocal/E09000005/

 

Abuse of Power? Complaint over party political content of a Council report – Brent’s reply and Philip Grant's response to it.

 

 

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

Last Friday, Martin published an Open Email which I’d sent to Brent Council’s Corporate Director of Governance, complaining about a Cabinet Member Foreword included in the report illustrated above. I received a reply from that Senior Council Officer on Monday morning, and sent my response to it just before lunchtime on Wednesday. 

 

It may seem as though I am making a fuss over a relatively minor matter, but when those in power at our local Council seem to be abusing the power that they hold, I think it is important to point it out, and to do so publicly. If they allowed to get away with one abuse, the next one may be bigger, and so on.

 

If the way that “Democracy in Brent” is conducted is of interest to you, the full text of the Council’s reply to my email of 5 April, and of my response to it, are set out below.

 

Email from Brent Council’s Corporate Director of Governance at 9.03am on 8 April:

 

Dear Mr Grant

 

Thank you for your email.

 

I have looked at the section of the report to which you refer and also had a discussion with the Chief Executive.

 

Although, as you rightly say, it forms part of a report addressed to Cabinet signed off by an officer, the Cabinet Member Foreword in the report is separated from the main body of the report and clearly provided by the councillor and not by the officer who has signed off the report.

 

Leaving aside the question of whether there would otherwise be an issue in relation to the publicity related provisions to which you refer, I would point out that they arise under Part II of the Local Government Act 1986.  Section 6 (7) of that Part of that Act states:

 

(7) Nothing in this Part shall be construed as applying to anything done by a person in the discharge of any duties under regulations made under section 22 of the Local Government Act 2000 (access to information etc.)

 

These are regulations relating to publication of papers for, and admission to, meetings of the council’s Executive (Cabinet) and its committees and related matters.

 

The purpose of the introduction of the Cabinet Member Foreword was to provide an opportunity for the council policy context of decisions to be made explicit in reports to Cabinet by the Cabinet Member who is accountable for initiating and implementing council policies within the relevant portfolio. 

 

I am happy to remind officers signing off reports of this intention.

 

Best wishes

 

Debra

My response to that email at 11.50am on 10 April:

 

This is an Open Email

 

Dear Ms Norman,

 

Thank you for your email on Monday morning, 8 April.

 

I have considered it carefully, and have studied the legislation and Statutory Instruments arising from the main point you made on Section 6(7) LGA1986.

 

1. Your claim that ‘the Cabinet Member Foreword in the report is separated from the main body of the report’ does not stand up to scrutiny. Yes, it is headed Cabinet Officer Foreword, but it is subsection 3.1 of section 3 “Detail” in the middle of a document which, as I pointed out, is the ‘Report from the Interim Corporate Director of Communities & Regeneration’.

 

2.0 I admit that I had not considered the possible effect of Section 6(7) LGA1986 on the points I raised in my complaint email to you on 5 April. For that, I apologise. You appear to have used this to justify avoiding any answer over the content of the Cabinet Member Foreword being political material. But is Section 6(7) the “loophole” which allows that otherwise prohibited material to be published?

 

2.1 For ease of reference, I will copy that paragraph again here, but I have emphasised some of the key wording:

 

‘(7) Nothing in this Part shall be construed as applying to anything done by a person in the discharge of any duties under regulations made under section 22 of the Local Government Act 2000 (access to information etc.)’

 

Those regulations are set out in The Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Access to Information) (England) Regulations 2000 (S.I. 2000/3272) [“the Regulations”]. Under the Regulations, the executive (in this case, Brent’s Cabinet) is the “decision making body”, an individual member of the executive can be a “decision maker”, and the duties of decision makers, either collective or individual, are to make “executive decisions”.

 

Paragraph 11 of the Regulations, “Access to agenda and connected reports” begins by stating:

 

‘(1) Subject to paragraph (2), a copy of the agenda and every report for a public meeting shall be available for inspection by the public at the offices of the local authority when they are made available to the members of the executive or decision making body responsible for making the decision to which they relate.’

 

Subsequent sub-paragraphs make it clear that providing those reports, and managing public access to them, is part of the duties of officers of the Local Authority.

 

2.2 This is also reflected in Brent’s own Constitution. Paragraph 3 in Part 1 illustrates the clear distinction between the roles and duties of Cabinet members and Council officers, and states:

 

‘The Cabinet is responsible for putting policies, which Full Council has approved, into effect. The Cabinet is the part of the Council which is responsible for most of the Council’s day-to-day decision making not delegated to officers.’

 

Standing Order 13 in Part 2, “Meetings and Decisions of the Cabinet and Cabinet Committees”, includes these provisions:

 

‘(e) Any decision taken by the Cabinet or by Cabinet Committees shall be taken following the consideration of a written report and after having taken into account all legal, financial and other relevant implications, the responses to any consultation and the comments received from the relevant Scrutiny Committee and any previous meeting of Full Council where the matter the subject of the decision was considered.

 

(f) Any decision of the Cabinet or Cabinet Committees shall be taken in accordance with all current legislation, these Standing Orders and the other applicable rules contained in the Constitution.’

 

The report which the Cabinet must consider is written by Council Officers, and signed off by the Corporate Director responsible for the Department which deals with the report’s subject matter. That is done ‘in the discharge of’ that officer’s duties. 

 

2.3 It is not part of a Cabinet member’s duties, even a Lead Member’s duties, to write part of such a report. Their duty is to consider the written report, which provides all of the information they need in order to make their decision. For that reason, I do not believe that Section 6(7) LGA1986, applies in this case, so that the Cabinet Member Foreword in the report is still subject to, and breaches, Section 2 LGA1986.

 

3.0 I wrote that I could see no valid reason for Cabinet Member Forewords in Officer Reports to Cabinet. You have provided the following explanation:

 

‘The purpose of the introduction of the Cabinet Member Foreword was to provide an opportunity for the council policy context of decisions to be made explicit in reports to Cabinet by the Cabinet Member who is accountable for initiating and implementing council policies within the relevant portfolio.’

 

3.1 However, section 3.2, “Contribution to Borough Plan Priorities & Strategic Context”, of the very report we are considering here, sets out the council policy context explicitly. It also does so far better, and without the party political bias of Cllr. Tatler’s foreword.

 

3.2 The Report is about Strategic Community Infrastructure Levy funding to deliver a new publicly accessible courtyard garden and a community centre at the Council’s Cecil Avenue development, part of the Wembley Housing Zone. It is not about the housing project as such, but para. 3.1.3. of the foreword, in particular, concentrates on housing, beginning: ‘The housing crisis did not begin yesterday ….’

 

3.3 In this part of her foreword, the Lead Member for Regeneration, is putting forward views which appear to be different from the adopted Council policy she is meant to promote and deliver. Brent Council’s housing policy, is set out in Strategic Priority 1, “Prosperity and Stability in Brent”, of the Borough Plan 2023-2027. The key references are:

 

‘We will create more accessible and genuinely affordable housing. We want to be the leaders in London for inclusive housing development that works better for everyone. This means buying houses; building new social, accessible and affordable homes and improving our existing estates. We will also continue working with partners to increase the supply of private rented accommodation.’

 

‘DESIRED OUTCOME 2: Safe, Secure and Decent Housing - We will continue with our pledge to deliver 1,000 new council homes and be leaders in London in building inclusive and genuinely more affordable homes. This includes our pledge to deliver 5,000 new affordable homes within the borough, of which 1,700 will be directly delivered by the Council, by 2028.’

 

‘What Success Will Look Like - More council homes and more temporary accommodation provided by the council. More genuinely affordable and accessible homes available to families and residents.’

 

3.4 Cllr. Tatler’s version of the Council’s housing policy is:

 

‘We have a moral imperative to do all in our power to build more housing and communities that last long into the future. The regeneration that underpins the Wembley Housing Zone, is exactly that – an effort to build a better Brent, a place where home ownership is a reality, not just a dream.’

 

I’ve used bold type again to emphasise what she is championing in her Cabinet Member Foreword. Whereas the Council’s policy is to deliver new genuinely affordable Council homes, Cllr. Tatler’s agenda appears to promote homes for sale. 

 

Sadly, that is what the Brent Council development, under her “Regeneration” guidance, on Council-owned land at Cecil Avenue is actually going to deliver, with 150 (out of 237) of the new homes there being built for private sale, and only 56 as Council homes for genuinely affordable rent.

 

4.0 My email to you of 5 April suggested that the inclusion of Cabinet Member Forewords in Officer Reports to Cabinet should be reviewed, because I could see no valid reason for them. I think that our correspondence has confirmed that view (see 3.0 and 3.1 above), and I hope that you and the Chief Executive, to whom I am copying this, will initiate that review and publish its results.

 

4.1 Another reason why such Forewords are unnecessary, given in my email of 5 April, was because: ‘the Lead Member has the opportunity to make any additional comments she/he may wish to when introducing the agenda item at the Cabinet meeting.’

 

Cllr. Tatler proved this point at the Cabinet meeting on 8 April, when in introducing item 9 she read out large extracts from her Cabinet Member Foreword, including the claim about ‘a Labour pledge met.’ The evidence is on the webcast, published on Brent Council’s website.

 

4.2 If ‘the Cabinet Member who is accountable for initiating and implementing council policies within the relevant portfolio’ wishes to put their view on what those policies are to her or his colleagues, in writing and in advance of the formal Cabinet meeting, they can circulate their own document to their Cabinet colleagues. Those views should not be included in a Report by a Council Officer, on which the Cabinet is being asked to make a decision.

 

4.3 That is especially true if the Cabinet member has included political material, which the Council is prohibited from publishing, as part of their “Foreword”.

 

In view of the above, hope you will be happy to advise officers signing off reports to Cabinet that they should not, in future, include Cabinet Member Forewords in those reports.

 

I look forward to receiving your confirmation of this. 

 

Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant.