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.

 

 

 

Clement Close residents set out the reasons they oppose Brent Council's in-fill proposal

 

 Cllr Promise Knight sets out the Council's case for in-fill

 

View of the estate currently

 

In-fill highlighted

Residents of the Clement Close estate in Brondesbury Park have set up this petition opposing the Council's development proposals put forward as as part of their estate in-fill programme. 

The consultation is due to close tomorrow, July 13th, 2022.

 

Re: New Council Homes Programme – Clement Close, Brondesbury Park (NW6 7AL)

 

Dear Cllr Promise Knight,

On Friday 24 June 2022, leaflets were distributed across Clement Close and neighbouring properties to inform residents of the proposed redevelopment of Clement Close. 

Although we understand the need for more affordable housing and agree with Brent’s Council aspiration to make the most of its under-used land and property assets, we argue that Clement Close is NOT under-used, nor is it suitable for the outlined development, and we strongly oppose this proposal. 

After careful review of your proposal, we the residents of Clement Close have put together the following summary of our concerns. The proposed development would result in:

1.    Substantial loss of privacy for many residents of Clement Close and neighbouring properties: The windows of the new buildings would be overlooking the windows and/or gardens of existing properties.

2.   Substantial overshadowing of adjoining buildings: The importance of natural light on physical and mental health has been well-established. Cramming 22 new family homes in “gaps” would have a severe impact on the wellbeing of all Clement Close residents.

3.   Loss of trees: Clement Close boasts many beautiful mature trees, which would need to be removed if the proposal goes ahead. The role of trees in a city cannot be underestimated. Not only do they absorb excess CO2 and slow down the rate of global warming, but they release oxygen, reduce wind speeds, cool the air, prevent flooding and boost wildlife. Removing these trees from the estate while increasing human occupancy by 25% would go against Brent Climate & Ecological Emergency Strategy and Brent Corporate Environmental Policy Statement, which specifically state Brent’s commitment to “enhancing the ecological value of land for which the Council is responsible”, and “integrating environmental and sustainability considerations into all decision making considered to have significant environmental implications”.

4.   Adequacy of parking/loading/turning and concerns around access for emergency vehicles: With the proposal to narrow the road to a single lane to make space for a row of new houses on the eastern side of Clement Close, parking, turning and road access would be severely impacted. Access to the far end of the site by wide vehicles, such as emergency vehicles or refuse collection trucks would be seriously compromised. The Cabinet for Housing, Homelessness and Renters Security is probably aware that #1 Clement Close is a recently redeveloped, council-owned facility for adults with special needs, and that ambulances have been called to the site regularly. In addition, refuse collection trucks are already struggling with access.

5.    Increased road traffic: The increased vehicle traffic resulting from 25% more occupancy of Clement Close would result in increased congestion, noise, air pollution, directly contradicting Brent Healthy Neighbourhood scheme. It would also pose a threat to the numerous children, elderly and disabled currently living in Clement Close.

6.   Substantial impact on visual amenity resulting from the layout and density of building: the addition of new buildings, combined with the loss of green spaces, would turn Clement Close into a concrete jungle. The overcrowding would also result in higher levels of noises and disturbances, which would be detrimental to the wellbeing of all residents – current and new. This would again go against Brent’s commitment to “improving the quality of life”, as highlighted in Brent Corporate Environmental Policy Statement.

7.    Loss of existing services: the current plans appear to threaten existing amenities relied upon by many residents including: ground-floor storage cupboards for upper-floor flats, bicycle storage (some of which has only just been installed), recycling facilities. There is no clear plan for where these existing services would be rebuilt/moved to on the current plans. Most importantly for our youngest residents the plans seem to involve building over the existing climbing frame/slide and a bench which form a central part of community life for Clement Close children.

We also condemn the way Brent Council delivered this information to Clement Close residents:

• The leaflets were unenveloped and not specifically addressed to the residents who will be severely impacted by the proposal. They were delivered by hand, through the letterbox, like advertising leaflets and flyers.
• The leaflet looks innocuous enough to be ignored. The front page gives a high-level description of Brent’s programme and makes no mention of Clement Close.
• The summary of proposed development, starting with “Landscape improvement for all residents”, is deceptive.
• The leaflet does not clearly describe where the newbuilds will be located. It only makes mention of one bungalow to be demolished (#54 Clement Close). The only way of understanding the proposal is by carefully examining a map with no caption.
• The residents of #54 Clement Close were unaware of the proposal to have their home demolished and heard about it from their neighbours. It is completely unacceptable for the family whose lives would be turned upside-down by eviction and demolition of their family home to have not been properly consulted and reassured of their security.
• The time frame of under 3 weeks until the closing of the consultation phase is inadequate for the magnitude of the changes proposed.
• The feedback form provided with the leaflet is not specific to Clement Close.
• The QR code and URL provided on the leaflet link to Brent’s Community Engagement Hub, and not to the consultation page. It is not straightforward to find the consultation page from the hub.
• The questionnaire is inappropriately structured and includes leading questions such as “do you agree with …?”, which could influence respondents’ views and comments on the proposal. Such bias goes against the standards of ethical conduct and reporting of survey research.
• There is no confirmation email or acknowledgement that the completed consultation form was received by Brent after submission.

We, the residents of Clement Close and neighbouring properties, are hereby firmly opposing the current development proposal.

 

LINK TO THE PETITION

LINK TO BRENT COUNCIL'S CONSULTATION ON THE PROPOSALS

Council Housing and Common Sense – Brent’s reply

 Guest post by Philip Grant in personal capacity

 

Earlier this month I sent a letter to Brent Council’s Leader and Chief Executive headed “Council Housing and Common Sense”, which was published as a guest blog. It set out my view that the Council has become too complicated in the way it seeks to provide the new Council homes that many local people need. 

 

My letter focused on two Cabinet decisions in the past six months. One was to spend at least around £48m of borrowed money to buy 155 leasehold flats in a 26-storey tower block, yet to be built on the former Alperton Bus Garage site. These would not be acquired directly from the developer, Telford Homes, but from an unidentified “Asset Special Purpose Vehicle”.

 

The block in Alperton where the 155 leasehold flats will be built.

 

The second decision was to allow a private developer to buy 152 of the 250 homes that Brent Council will be building on land that it owns at Cecil Avenue in Wembley, and sell them for profit, rather than using all 250 of those homes as affordable housing for local people who need them.

 

What the High Road frontage of Brent’s Cecil Avenue development will look like.

 

I have received a reply to my letter, from Brent Council’s Director of Finance, and this is what he has written:-

 

‘Dear Mr Grant,

 

The Council continues to increase the delivery of affordable housing for our residents through self-delivery, via the use of S106 agreements with developers and working in partnership with Registered Providers. To maximise the delivery, the Council utilises GLA subsidy to support scheme viability but this is becoming increasingly challenging. This means the Council has to explore more complex ways of delivery, one of which has been the Alperton Bus Garage Development.   

 

The development at the Alperton Bus Garage site provides a unique opportunity to purchase the affordable units in the wider development as part of a lease structure. The original proposal contained a tenure mix of 57 shared ownership units and 97 rented. By entering into this lease structure, it allows the Council to convert the shared ownership units into more affordable rented units. In this specific development, without the involvement of the Council a Registered Provider is unlikely to be able to offer the most affordable rented product due to viability limitations so the acquisition will further Brent’s key priority of providing homes that are most affordable. The lease option demonstrates value for money against our average development cost across our New Council Homes Programme of £280k per home, which includes both leasehold and freehold tenures.

 

The acquisition of the homes takes place through a lease structure that includes both the development and lease agreements. These areas of the report are exempt as they contain the following category of exempt information as specified in Paragraph 3, Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972, namely: “Information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (including the authority holding that information)".

 

The Council has undertaken due diligence with regards to the SDLT exemption for the acquisition and assumes the Council will receive the exemption given the Council is deemed to be the relevant housing provider that is controlled by its tenants and the application of GLA grant receipts meets the requirement of a qualifying public subsidy. Until this has been confirmed by HMRC on acquisition, the potential cost needs to be highlighted as a factor of the scheme’s viability. 

 

The Cecil Avenue site is part of a wider development in the Wembley Housing Zones Programme and includes the adjacent site Ujima House. This site is intended to deliver 100% affordable housing and a target of 50% across both sites. The development will also include workspace to support job creation and economic growth, community space, highway and public realm improvements and new publicly accessible open space. The Council needs to ensure the entire programme is financially viable within the GLA grant available hence the requirement for a mixed tenure development in order to subsidise the delivery of the affordable elements. The application of the funding structure available for the Alperton Bus Garage site cannot be applied to improve viability in the Wembley Housing Zone Programme to provide more affordable housing within the existing development.

 

As evidenced, the Council is committed to seek all opportunities to deliver more affordable housing within the financial viability constraints to ensure the optimum housing mix can be provided for our residents.

Regards

 

Minesh Patel

Director of Finance’

 

The main messages in this reply seem to be that the Council has to use more complex methods of funding, in order to make its Council housing schemes viable, but because this involves information relating to the Council’s financial affairs, they don’t have to explain the details to us. So much for openness and transparency!

 

 

The reply does not mention the shadowy “Asset Special Purchase Vehicle” for the Alperton acquisition, simply referring to ‘a lease structure that includes both the development and lease agreements’, which we are not allowed to know about, because that is ‘exempt information’.

 

 

The response over the Cecil Avenue homes may sound familiar. Some of it appears to be from the same source as Cllr. Butt’s recent reply to me. At least one sentence is identical, and must have been “copied and pasted”!

 

 

Parody Brent Council publicity photo for its Cecil Avenue development.

 

I still do not understand why the Cecil Avenue development, on land the Council already owns, can only be viable if just 37 of the 250 homes (just under 15%!) are made available to Council tenants at affordable rents. And why 152 of them (over 60%) have to be for the contractor, who Brent will pay to build them, to purchase for a fixed price and sell at a profit. I will continue to question that, as best I can.

 

 

Philip Grant.