How many affordable homes did Brent deliver in 2024/25? The Council's response. Judge for yourself who was right.

  

From Philip Grant's original post. Read it HERE

 

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

As I had written a guest post critical of the Brent Council claim to have delivered 530 affordable homes in 2024/25, when the number delivered by the Council itself was only 26, I felt it only fair to send a copy of the article to Brent's Chief Executive, Kim Wright, and offer her a right of reply. She has taken up that offer, and the full and unedited text of her reply is set out below. 

Readers can judge for themselves which version of the facts, and their interpretation, they choose to accept, those in my original article, or the Council's:-

Dear Mr Grant

 

I hope you are well and had a good Easter. Thank you for giving me the right of reply here.

The figures in the council tax leaflet were correct at the time of printing, based on projected housing completions for the last and current financial year. 

 

At the time of publishing the council tax booklet we were on track to oversee the delivery of 530 affordable homes in 2024-25. Construction projects are rarely straightforward and some of these homes will now be completed slightly later. Due to construction delays, 434 new affordable homes ended up being delivered and the remaining 96 are all due to be completed shortly. While the leaflet was due to be delivered at the end of the financial year, the lead-in times for printing and distribution meant that the artwork was finalised and sent to print on 20 February so the team had to rely on projections.

 

It is true that the council directly delivered 26 affordable homes (the figure you quote from the FOI response) in 2024-25. However, the infographic in the council tax leaflet was an attempt to give a very high-level summary of the breadth and depth of what the council has delivered in the past financial year on just two pages, and to describe these services and outcomes in ways that are accessible to everyone. In the process, ‘oversee the delivery of’ was simplified to ‘delivered’. I accept that this is an oversimplification where the language could have been clearer and we will bear this in mind, being more careful in the future. Making communications more accessible sometimes means using less precise, less technical language and this simplification was certainly not an attempt to mislead but was about better accessibility.

 

The article you have shared states that, since the council did not directly deliver many of these homes, they should not have been included in a summary of how residents’ council tax was spent – in fact, officers are actively involved in the delivery of these homes in all sorts of ways, from planning officers and others who negotiate with applicants to increase the percentage of affordable homes that form part of regeneration schemes across the borough, to housing colleagues who work with registered providers and residents on our housing waiting list, so council tax was used to get these homes delivered in the form of officer time.

 

All of these homes meet the definition of affordable housing under the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and Greater London Authority (GLA) guidelines. 

 

Regarding the 1,000 new council homes scheduled for completion this year, delays mean the projection has been adjusted to 899, with the remaining homes to follow. We're delighted our development in Church End with 99 new council homes, is on track to be completed soon. In a housing crisis, councils need to use all methods at their disposal to increase the supply of homes - buying homes from developers is standard practice and local people then benefit from genuinely affordable rents. Whether built by a registered provider, directly by the council or acquired through planning agreements, these homes form part of our commitment to increasing affordable housing.

 

Brent has one of the best records in London for housebuilding, we were one of only three London boroughs to exceed our housing delivery target last year and approved a total of 3,266 new homes, making us the second highest borough for housing approvals overall.

 

In relation to the ‘Your Brent’ magazine and the Council Tax leaflets, we ensure that the content complies with the Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity, and this is,  in fact, included within Brent’s constitution.

 

The principles contained within the Code specifically refer to the need for such publications to be lawful, cost effective, objective, even-handed, appropriate, have regard to equality and diversity and ensuring that publications are issued with care during periods of heightened sensitivity.

 

The content contained within the magazine and the Council Tax leaflet is factual. Officers obtain quotes from members acting as the official council spokesperson for the topics covered. The council does not routinely state what political party members represent (unless reporting on election results e.g. page 7 of the spring Your Brent Magazine reports on the Alperton by-election result) and care is taken to ensure that the issues covered are topics that are important to the people in the Borough.

 

Best wishes to you

Kim

Kim Wright (she/her)

Chief Executive

London Borough of Brent

Please sign the petition to retain Stonebridge’s heritage Victorian villa

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

“Altamira”, 1 Morland Gardens, at the corner of Hillside and Brentfield Road.

 

Willesden Local History Society has been campaigning to save the locally-listed Victorian villa, known as “Altamira”, since Brent Council “consulted” on its original plans to demolish it as part of its Morland Gardens redevelopment plans in 2019. I joined the fight in February 2020, with a guest post on “Housing or heritage? Or both?”

 

The battle has been long and hard, but the planning consent which Brent’s Planning Committee gave in 2020 expired at the end of October 2023, without construction beginning on the project. The following month, the Council started a review of its future plans for the former Brent Start site (the college having been moved to a “temporary” home in the former Stonebridge School annexe in 2022, at a cost of around £1.5m).

 

That review was due to last a few months, with proposals then being put to Brent’s Cabinet by Spring or early Summer 2024. Instead, it eventually got tagged onto the redevelopment proposals for Bridge Park, as part of what Brent then started calling its Hillside Corridor project. At the exhibition in November 2024, which began another consultation, this was the conclusion after one year of the Council’s Morland Gardens review:

 

 

By March 2025, a new consultation was launched, asking whether residents agreed that the Morland Gardens site should comprise new Council homes and youth facilities. It did not give any indication of whether Brent intended to retain the heritage Victorian villa as part of that scheme, even though I’m aware that many people had asked for that in their comments as part of the earlier consultation (including me, with detailed proposals on how this could be done!).

 

Now we have found out that the long-awaited new proposals will be put to Brent’s Cabinet at its meeting on 16 June 2025, not as a separate item, but tucked away as part of a report about the future of Bridge Park. In response to this, Willesden Local History Society have launched a petition on the Council’s website:

 

We the undersigned petition the council and its Cabinet, when considering the regeneration of 1 Morland Gardens, as part of the Hillside Corridor proposals, to retain the beautiful and historic locally listed Victorian villa, Altamira, as part of the redevelopment of that site for affordable housing and youth facilities. The 150-year-old landmark building is part of the original estate which gave Stonebridge Park its name, and its sense of place can be an inspiration to local young people who would use it, while there is plenty of space behind the Victorian villa to build a good number of genuinely affordable homes.

SIGN THE PETITION HERE

As I write this, more than 150 people have already signed this online petition, more than enough to ensure that the Society can present its views in support of retaining this important local heritage building at the Cabinet meeting. We can hope that this view adds weight to a recommendation already made by Council Officers, but we won’t know that until the report is published about 10 days before the meeting!

 

From Brent’s Historic Environment Place-making Strategy (Part of the Council’s adopted Local Plan!)

 

At this stage, it is important that as many people as possible from the Brent community sign the petition, to show the strength of feeling that this beautiful and historic building is too valuable to be demolished. The Council’s own planning policies tell them that, but there are some people at the Civic Centre who don’t seem to care about that! If you agree with the petition’s aims, then please sign it, if you haven’t already done so. You can do that here. Thank you.

Philip Grant.

 

 

How many affordable homes did Brent Council deliver in 2024/25? - Was it 530, or 434, or just 26?

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

Brent Council would like you to believe that the answer is 530 new affordable homes. That is the number they included in the leaflet they sent out to every household in the borough last month, with our Council Tax bills for 2025/26. The claim that 530 affordable homes were delivered is on a page headed “Where Your Council Tax Goes”, directly following the words ‘Here’s how we spent your council tax last year’, so there should not be any doubt that it relates to homes delivered by Brent Council itself. But that claim is untrue!

 

When I saw that figure, I couldn’t understand where all those homes had been completed in the borough during the past year, so I put in an FoI request. Here is the answer (in red) that I received to the first point, which as well as confirming that the claim relates to the year 2024/25 says that 530 affordable homes was actually 434.

 

Extract from email of 31 March 2025 from Brent’s Strategic Housing Partnerships Manager.

 

I realise that, as the leaflet had to be printed around two months before the year end, there had to be some estimating, but to publish a figure of 530, more than 22 per cent higher than the actual number at 31 March is stretching the facts. Brent has claimed, in response to being challenged on the figures by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, that 530 was ‘correct at the time of going to press’, but that can’t be true either.

 

But the situation gets worse for the Council, as the second point I raised in my FoI request was where these affordable homes were “delivered”, and whether they were built by Brent or by another registered provider of social housing (such as a housing association). This is the response I received:

 

 

So, there it is, in black and white. Brent Council did not deliver 530 affordable homes in the year to 31 March 2025, and not even 434, the revised total of all of the affordable homes completed in the borough in that year. The Council itself delivered just 26 affordable homes in the year, less than 5% of the number its leaflet to Council Taxpayers would have you believe!

 

When Brent set out its five-year New Council Homes plan in 2019, it promised to deliver 1,000 new homes at “genuinely affordable” rents between 2019 and 2024. It failed to do that, and quietly changed the target to 1,000 “affordable” homes by 2028, just one example of the misleading information they have given over affordable housing. In the third part of my FoI request, I asked for a breakdown of the different types of affordable housing included in the 530 (or 434) figure, This was the answer:

 

This shows that only 101 out of 434 of the new affordable homes was at the “genuinely affordable” London Affordable Rent (“LAR”) level, that is just over 23% of the total. Brent Council has a planning policy which states that at least 70% of affordable homes provided (and 50% of new homes in developments of 10+ homes are meant to be “affordable”) should be genuinely affordable, so our planning system is clearly failing to deliver on what is an identified need for the people of Brent.

 

More than half of the affordable homes delivered were not even homes for rent, but shared ownership (45% of the total) and discount market sale (14%). ‘Discounted market sales housing’, which like shared ownership technically counts as “affordable housing”, even though it is not affordable to most people in housing need in Brent, is defined as homes which are sold ‘at a discount of at least 20% below local market value.’

 

The other claim over housing in the Council Tax leaflet is that ‘1,000 new council homes [are] being built this year.’ I asked for the details behind that claim as well, and this is the answer I received:

 

You will note that, again, between sending the leaflet to the printers and 31 March, the Council had to revise its figure down from 1,000 to 899. These are ‘expected completions’, and who knows how many more of these will not actually be completed by 31 March 2026? 

 

From the names and addresses of these ‘new council homes’ being built, at least three large sites, Alperton Bus Garage, Fulton Road and Quay Walk, amounting to 564 homes (62.5% of the total) are private developments, where Brent is borrowing large amounts of money to buy flats from the developers, rather than building new homes itself.

 

And this is the odd thing. It is (or should be) much cheaper to build new homes on land that you already own, but instead of building all of the homes on the Council owned former Copland School site at Cecil Avenue for rent (at the genuinely affordable rents which local people need), Brent has agreed that Wates, the contractor building them for the Council, can sell 150 of the 237 homes there privately. Only 56 of the new homes there (just over 23%) will be for renting to Brent families at the “genuinely affordable” LAR level.

 

Brent also owns all of the blocks of housing, and the land on which they stand, which are part of its long-running and much delayed South Kilburn Regeneration programme. In the latest deal for this, with Countryside, the developer will get more than half of the homes to be built on the site of Neville and Winterleys, to sell privately. The homes retained by the Council will all be for social rent, which sounds like a good thing, but that is because they will all be for existing Council tenants, being rehoused so that their homes can be demolished. There will be no new homes available for rent to families on the Council’s waiting list.

 

These dishonest housing claims, which have gone out to every home in the borough, give the impression that Brent Council is providing much more affordable housing itself than is actually the case. Who benefits from this deception? The principal beneficiaries are Cllr. Muhammed Butt (whose “Dear Resident” letter is on page 3 of the leaflet, saying what a good job his Council is doing, despite the huge cuts to its Central Government funding since 2010) and his Labour councillors. This propaganda on their behalf is in an official Brent Council leaflet, paid for out of our Council Tax, as they sent us the bill for this year’s increased amount!

 

The back cover of the leaflet contains an advert about Brent’s campaign against fly-tipping, featuring a photograph with “the usual suspects”. As the leaflet contains the lies I’ve exposed above, I will end this piece with an amended version of that advert.

 

Parody of the back cover advert. (Image by Brent Council, amendments by the author)

Philip Grant.

 

 

 

The London Housing Crisis: Questioning the ‘Build, build, build’ narrative

 

The first stage of the huge Northwick Park development taking shape. Photo taken today from Northwick Park station platform

 

Earlier this month the CPRE held an-online meeting entitled,  'Is Government taking London's housing crisis seriously?' with Zoe Garbett (Green Party AM and former London Mayoral candidate) and Michael Ball of Just Space speaking. 

With London's housing crisis likely to be a major local election issue in 2026 and the subject of much debate on Wembley Matters I thought it was worth posting the video of the CPRE meeting. 

The video begins with a  presentation by Alice Roberts and Grace Harrison-Porter of the CPRE, followed by a talk by Zoe Garbett at 10.18 and presentation and talk by Michael Ball at 26.00.

In my view the video is well worth watching as a contribution to the debate. It covers issues including affordability, fiancial viability assessments, council house sales, rent controls, estate demolition versus refurbishment and much more. A discussion of Land Value Tax would have been a useful addition. 

Some challenging issues are raised and potential solutions suggested. PDFs of the presentations are available CPRE HERE and JUST SPACE HERE

 

At the same time the CPRE published a very challenging list of 'Housing Crisis Myths'. Thanks to CPRE for this information and video LINK.

 

Myth 1: There are not enough houses for everyone

The census has shown there is more than enough property for the population. In Croydon, the total number of dwellings has increased by 39% since 1971, despite population growth of just 13% over the same period, but house prices have still gone up.

Existing housing stock is not always well distributed – for example, some homes are underoccupied, some are overcrowded, some are second homes, many are empty. Also, some parts of the country have more demand pressure than others. But actually, the crisis is about the price of homes, not the quantity.

 

Myth 2: Building more homes will solve the housing crisis

House prices have spiralled as a consequence of high demand, fuelled by low interest rates, public subsidies, such as Help to Buy, and the purchase of property for investment.

At the same time, the selling-off of social housing has forced many people into the private rental sector. In the absence of rent controls, this has pushed rental prices up too.

Successive governments have allowed, even helped, housing to become ‘financialised’, meaning it is treated as an investment, with an expectation that it will deliver a return. This means homeowners can profit but it also means housing ultimately become unaffordable. Most countries regulate their housing markets to avoid homes being treated as assets, on the understanding that housing is essential and it’s not in the common interest that it becomes too expensive.

 

Myth 3: Building more houses will drive down house prices

The ‘supply and demand’ argument is often used to bolster this myth. But one study suggests that building 300,000 homes a year in England for 20 years would reduce prices by only 10%.

The fact is this logic doesn’t work if demand stays high. And, despite years of adding to housing stock, prices are not coming down. They continue to go up because, in the absence of market intervention, people will pay whatever they have to because they need a home.

 

Myth 4: The planning system is broken

Actually, the planning system is working well. Planning permissions are being granted. London Councils, which represents London boroughs, highlights the 283,000 potential new homes already granted planning permission in London and waiting to be built. The build rate for the past five years is roughly 38,000 so that’s seven and a half years’ supply.

Politicians like to blame the planning system, but in reality it is doing its job. In fact, giving councils more powers and capacity to work with developers could help bring appropriate development forward more quickly.

But the real solutions to the housing crisis have nothing to do with planning. This narrative is a red herring. The real solutions lie in building social housing, ending Right to Buy, bringing empty homes back into use and controlling the private rented sector. In other words, the real solutions lie in tackling the real causes.

 

Myth 5: There isn’t enough land – we need to build on green fields

Local authorities are allocating sites in their Local Plans – many more than can be built on in the next 20 years. So, allocating more land does not translate into more houses being built. It just gives developers a wider choice of sites.

Plus, urban land is constantly recycled, so brownfield sites are available. CPRE research shows there’s space for at least 1.2 million homes on previously developed land and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

Myth 6: Private housebuilders will build affordable housing

Housebuilders are often required to provide a quota of ‘affordable’ housing (not necessarily social rent) in a development. But the number they end up building is usually scaled back when developers say their costs have risen.

Some affordable housing can be delivered via private sector housebuilding. But realistically, the building of social housing will have to be publicly funded if we are going to come close to solving the housing crisis.

This is the only way to reduce the vast sums of money councils are spending on temporary accommodation – a situation that is not just costly but will have lifetime impacts on the people in it. Government can make this more financially viable by building on land already in public ownership (see myth 8 below).

 

Myth 7: Building on the Green Belt will solve the crisis

Building on Green Belt won’t lead to more houses being built and it won’t speed up house building. The speed at which the market delivers is related to what it thinks it can sell, as well as constraints like lack of labour, materials and financing.

And it won’t deliver affordable housing. Green Belt developments are rarely affordable – they are expensive ‘executive homes’ in unsustainable locations, marketed for people on high incomes who can afford cars. New roads, and new water and power infrastructure all have to be built, so there’s no money left for affordable homes.

Building on Green Belt is the worst of all worlds – we tear up the countryside, with a massive environmental impact, and fail to solve the housing crisis.

 

Myth 8: Parts of the Green Belt are grey

Even where Green Belt is unattractive, “low-value scrub land”, there is no reason it can’t be restored. Planning authorities are required to improve sites that require it and even scrubland is a much-valued wildlife habitat.

This kind of misleading statement hinders progress by driving speculative purchase of Green Belt, which pushes land prices up further. Plus, the Green Belt is increasingly valuable in tackling the climate and nature crises.

Also, there is a real grey belt – car parks and road layouts, often in town centres, that take up huge amounts of space while underpinning car-centred travel. This forces disinvestment in public transport and has social, health and environment impacts.

Ironically, the real answer to the housing crisis lies in the real grey belt – national and local government owns 7,555 hectares of surface car parks. That’s enough land to build 2.1 million low-cost homes. Crucially, there is no cost for the land, so new homes are much cheaper to build.

Housing developments on town centre car parks could be built without car parking, so won’t worsen traffic further. People who don’t drive or own a car can live close to amenities. The reduction in car parking encourages more people onto buses. This makes them more financially viable, so more frequent services and new routes can be introduced. A win-win scenario.

 

Myth 9: Those who challenge the housebuilding policy are NIMBYs

CPRE London, like others given this label, strongly agrees that we need to build new homes. But the crisis is one of affordability, so we challenge the idea that increasing housing supply (building more houses) alone will bring down the cost of rent or house prices. This does not make us ‘NIMBYs’.

 

Myth 10: There’s nothing I can do to help

Yes, the housing situation in London is dire. And it might seem like there’s little we can do. But by learning more about the real causes and the real solutions, talking to people and encouraging them to challenge the build, build, build narrative, slowly we might be able to affect change.

Comments that keep to the topic welcome.

1 Morland Gardens – hoping the Victorian villa has a Happy New Year! Here's how it could be so.

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

“Altamira”, the landmark villa at the entrance to Stonebridge Park, in 1907 and 2023.

 

For 150 years the Italianate-style Victorian villa called “Altamira” has stood at the entrance to an estate which gave the name Stonebridge Park to the surrounding area. Five years ago, Brent’s Cabinet approved plans which should have seen it demolished by now, even though it is a locally listed heritage asset in good condition. But it is still standing, and has the chance for a secure future as a community facility, as part of new redevelopment plans for the site.

 

The Council’s future options for its Morland Gardens property have been under review since November 2023, but with little progress on display when the public were asked for their input at the Bridge Park / Hillside Corridor exhibition on 28 and 30 November 2024. The consultation exercise launched then is still ongoing, but ends on Monday 6 January, so you still have time to express your views.

 

The consultation questionnaire for Morland Gardens was mainly a tick-box list of possible community facilities you would like to see provided, along with new Council homes on the site. That was not enough for my comments and suggestions, and I have submitted the detailed document which I hope that Martin can include at the end of this article.

 

 

The plan above is at the heart of my proposals, showing what I believe is a sensible outline redevelopment suggestion for the site, including the retained Victorian villa as the community facility and a housing layout which would provide around 27 Council homes, 25 of them as two, three or four bedroom properties to rent for local families with children. (It wasn’t until after I had finished preparing this plan that the lyric, ‘Little boxes on a Hillside’, flashed into my mind!) You can find further details of this suggested layout in section 3 of the document.

 

As well as sending my document to the agency handling the consultation, and the Council Officer in charge of the Morland Gardens review, I sent a copy to the Stonebridge Ward councillors. I invited their support for my suggestions, if they believed they were a sensible way forward for the site. I also reminded them of what Cllr. Aden had said, on their behalf, at the August 2020 Planning Committee meeting (which was ignored by the five councillors who voted to approve the Council’s flawed, and now failed, original Morland Gardens plans).

 

Extract from the minutes of the August 2020 Planning Committee meeting for application 20/0345.

 

My December 2024 proposals are for a redevelopment that would be very much in line with the wishes of the then Stonebridge Ward councillors (two of whom are still the same). I was pleased to receive an early reply from one of the councillors, although a little surprised that he did not appear to be aware that Brent Council have been reviewing its future plans for Morland Gardens since November 2023, or that it was part of the “Bridge Park” consultation!

 

While not expressing a view either way on my suggestions, he has indicated that the Council do need to hear from local people about what they want to see provided at Morland Gardens as part of the consultation. Copying in a fellow Ward councillor, he finished with the words: ‘As representatives of the community, we are here to represent the wishes of the wider community, so I believe all options will be considered.’

 

If you want the Council to consider your wishes for the Morland Gardens site, please send them, by next Monday 6 January, by email to: bridgepark@four.agency , with a copy to: neil.martin@brent.gov.uk . If you have read the document below (or at least section 3 of it), please feel free to mention it, and say whether you agree with my suggestions.

 

Philip Grant. 

 

Council housing – does Brent know what it is doing?

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

An aerial view of the Newland Court estate. (From Google Maps satellite view)

 

Although much of the attention at the 15 November Planning Committee meeting will be on the deferred Kilburn Square application, there is another Council infill housing application which may well be on the agenda. 

 

Brent New Council Homes Programme’s Newland Court garages proposals (22/3124) were first submitted on 7 September 2022. Many residents, both on the estate and whose homes backed onto the very narrow site, objected to the plans. My own objection was mainly because the established trees along the boundary, protected as part of the Barn Hill Conservation Area, grow both over and under the site, making it impractical for the proposed development.

 

Brent’s April 2023 revised five homes plan for the Newland Court infill scheme.

 

Although Planning Officers should have refused the application, they instead allowed the Council’s architects and planning agent to submit revised plans in April, which reduced the number of homes from seven to five (so extra cost, reduced viability). Surely this scheme could not go ahead? I’m grateful to Marc, and other Newland Court residents, for their permission to quote from correspondence they have received from Brent Council over recent months, which has inspired the title of this guest post.

 

As this threat of a detrimental development had been hanging over her head for a year, one resident wrote to Brent Council’s Head of Housing and Neighbourhoods in September 2023, to ask what was going on. This was the reply she received, from Brent’s Tenancy and Neighbourhoods Service Manager on 18 September:

 

‘Thank you for your e-mail dated 5 September, which is addressed to Kate Dian, Head of Housing and Neighbourhoods.

 

Newland Road is not a Private Road, as the site is own by the Council and based on a public land.

 

Due to current financial pressure the proposed infill will not go ahead. This has now been confirmed by our housing supply and partnership services.

 

Your site is included in the next round of consultation for ‘Off street-controlled parking’. We expect the consultation to take place before the end of this calendar year. As the proposed infill will not go ahead, the associated cost and its implications are now not relevant issues, which requires further clarity.’

 

The reply was shared with her neighbours, to great relief, although there was some puzzlement over the reference that “Newland Road” ‘is not a Private Road’, as the Council’s signs at either end of it say the opposite.

 

Signs at the gated entrance to one end of the Newland Court estate road.
(Courtesy of Michelle Hart)

 

Marc, one of the Newland Court residents who has been leading the battle against the plans, and the way in which he and his neighbours have been treated by the Council over them, was not convinced by this “good news”. He’d been told that Brent’s application would be going to Planning Committee on 18 October. He wrote to the Lead Member for Housing, seeking clarification, and this was the response he received on 4 October:

 

‘Dear Marc,

 

Firstly, I would like to apologise for the delay in responding to your enquiry. I have now had an opportunity to review this matter and liaised with the development team; my findings are as follows.

 

As you will appreciate there is a chronic housing shortage in Brent, which the Council is committed to addressing, by utilising available resources to increase the supply of affordable homes.

 

Although building costs have increased due to the current economic climate, the Council are reviewing the pipeline and will continue to pursue planning permission for schemes within the New Council Homes Programme, including the Newland Court development site: should planning approval be secured, then an extensive financial review to assess the financial viability of each development going forward will be undertaken.

 

At this stage, no formal decision about the Newland Court development proposal has been made and on behalf of the Council I would like to sincerely apologise for any confusion caused because of recent communication which has been circulated.

 

I recognise this may not be the response you hoped for and note your comments, but I trust the above clarifies the Council’s position in respect of this matter.

 

Cllr Promise Knight
Stonebridge Ward
Lead Member for Housing, Homelessness, and Renters’ Security’

 

So, Brent Council’s housing team is spending time and money, pressing on with seeking planning consent for schemes (often small ones) which it doesn’t know whether it will ever be able to afford to build.

 

I have to say, yet again, that if they had got on and built the 250 homes on the vacant Council-owned brownfield site at Cecil Avenue (the former Copland School), which they obtained full planning consent for in February 2021, and built them all as Council homes, they would have done much better in ‘utilising available resources to increase the supply of affordable homes.’ Instead, those homes won’t be available until  2026, 152 of them will be sold privately by Brent’s “developer partner”, and only 59 will be for Council tenants at London Affordable Rent.

 

The Rokesby Place car park on 3 October 2023.

 

They received planning consent for at least two small infill schemes last year. The August 2022 Planning Committee meeting approved Brent’s application to build two four-bedroom houses on the car park at Rokesby Place. These were supposed to be homes at Social Rent level, for Brent families in housing need, although Planning Officers changed that to London Affordable Rent (which would be £772 a year more, at 2022/23 levels).

 

By November 2022, Brent’s Cabinet were told that Rokesby Place would not be viable as genuinely affordable housing, so that one of the two houses might have to be sold privately. Even then, no action seems to have been taken to build the two houses, as shown by the recent photograph of the car park “site” above.

 

In December 2022, Planning Committee approved another Brent two houses infill application, for the garage site behind homes at Broadview (a late 1950s Wembley Council estate in Kingsbury, now with many houses privately-owned through “right to buy”). They did so despite misleading information from Planning Officers, which had been brought to their attention by objectors!

 

Has any progress been made on building those “much needed Council homes”? None that I can see, and I suspect that they will never be built. The houses on this tiny unsuitable site would cost more than usual to build because they would need extensive soundproofing (because they would be just 20 metres from the Jubilee Line tracks), and will need a special water tank constructed under the front forecourt (as fire engines could not get close enough to them, because of a long access drive only 2 metres wide).

 

Cllrs Butt, Tatler and Knight at the Watling Gardens “groundbreaking” event, October 2023.
(Brent Council publicity photograph)

 

Brent Council does claim that it is having some success in “Delivering New Council Homes”, as shown by this staged photograph taken at Watling Gardens. Their planning application was submitted in 2021, and received full consent in April 2022. Eighteen months later, they are just starting work on the project, and it will be ‘winter 2025’ before the homes are finally “delivered”.

 

That is not all. The Council’s June 2022 press release, headed “Another 125 new council homes for local families”, was rather misleading, as a blog by Martin at the time pointed out. 42 Council homes are being demolished to make way for the redevelopment, and 34 of the new homes will be used to house displaced tenants. 45 will be 1-bedroom “independent living” flats for elderly people (not for families). The Cabinet decided that 24 of the remainder should be “converted” from London Affordable Rent to shared ownership. That leaves only 22 of these “New Council Homes” available for local people waiting for a genuinely affordable home to rent.

 

The Cabinet Member for Housing, Homelessness, and Renters’ Security,
in a July 2022 Brent PR video promoting its Clement Close infill proposals.

 

There is no dispute that Brent needs thousands more genuinely affordable homes to rent, and the borough’s Labour leadership promised to build 1,000 of these in the five years up to March 2024, and a further 700 (part-funded by a promise of over £100m from the GLA) by 2028.

 

I agree with the Council that the steep rise in the cost of building materials, and in interest rates, has made their task more difficult. But poor decision making, and poor advice from some Council Officers, have played a big part in delaying some schemes, and seeing others put on hold.

 

Why has so much time and effort (and money) gone into small infill schemes which common sense should have told them would never work, either practically or financially?

 

Why have they wasted two years trying to push through an unacceptable proposal for Kilburn Square (missing out on the chunk of GLA 2016-2023 Affordable Homes Programme funding which would have been available), when if they had worked with the local community on a smaller scheme, construction could already be underway?

 

And to go back to my original question on Council housing: ‘does Brent know what it is doing?’

Philip Grant

'NEWLAND COURT - POSTSCRIPT:

A number of Newland Court residents have copied me into emails they have sent in the past ten days to Brent's Council Leader, Chief Executive, Planning Committee members and others at the Civic Centre.

These emails have listed what is wrong with the plans for their estate, the lack of any meaningful consultation with them over the proposals, the ignoring of their objections by Planning Officers, the Council's off-hand responses to correspondence over the proposals (one example: email responses 'seem like the respondent is reading of a script like a cold fish. We are not stupid, please get to the facts and stop insulting our intelligence.'), and they have called for the Planning Committee to visit the estate and see for themselves how ridiculous the plans are.

Councillor Muhammed Butt, or his Complaints and Casework Officer on his behalf (it's interesting that the Council Leader needs his own Complaints Officer!), has sent a letter to one of the residents, copied to others who have drawn these important issues to his attention. It says:

'Your enquiry has been forwarded to the respective department, who will look into the issue and make every effort to resolve it.'

I will ask Martin to add a copy of the "Office of the Leader" letter below my article above, as evidence of his apparent indifference to the views of local residents, who are also Council housing estate tenants and leaseholders.