Brent faces up to the challenge to plan for the next 20 years - details of report going to Full Council on November 25th

Brent Council, with partners, has faced up to the formidable challenge of devising an 'Inclusive Growth Strategy' for the next 20 years.

The report on the Strategy which is to be discussed at Full Council on November 25th  states:

The Inclusive Growth Strategy (IGS) is a long term strategy that identifies choices available to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities of growth over the next 20 years. Broader in scope than a Regeneration Strategy, the IGS is supported by a detailed evidence base drawn up in-house by officers across all the council service areas, with early support provided by the LSE Cities programme. The IGS builds on the medium term Borough Plan and takes a longer term scan of the horizon of different futures. Headline growth trends and impacts considered in the IGS include: 

Brent’s population projected to grow 17% and reach 400,000 people by 2040

Brent’s population over 80 years old projected to double by 2040

Automation placing a third of jobs in Brent at higher risk

Employment growth in creative and circular economies 

Rise of older workers driving demand for retraining and flexible employment 

Increasing housing unaffordability, as house prices outstrip wage growth 

Private renters increasing to be 40% of London’s households by 2025 

Growing water demand and widening deficit versus available water supply

Sewer capacity at critical levels by 2050 in north and west parts of Brent 

Transformation of Brent’s energy mix to reach zero carbon by 2050 – requiring fossil fuel use reduction of 80% and increased renewable energy use of 500% 

Ageing population, obesity levels and increased risks for black and minority ethnic groups, driving even higher levels of diabetes in Brent’s population 

Continued decline in traditional retail and greater high street diversification

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The full report with an attached Action Plan is a hefty 73 pages and embedded below for convenience. Click bottom right square for full page view.

A list of current and planned housing developments in Brent

People often tell me that they have great difficulty in keeping up with all the regeneration and housing developments in Brent which include Wembley Park, Wembley Central, South Kilburn, Alperton, Northfields and smaller sites.

This document submitted to the Queensbury appeal includes an Appendix listing current and future developments. Click bottom right square for a full-sized copy.

Housing, waste & road repairs lag in Brent Council performance

Brent Council's Cabinet will receive data on the Council's performance at its meeting on Monday March 11th. Performance is recorded as a RAG (Red, Amber & Green) rating, often known as the traffic light system, according to performance against targets.

The report includes comments on the reasons for good or poor performance. The majority of ratings are Green or Amber but discussion centres on the Red areas and the action officers are taking to improve performance.

Some of the stand-out Red items are (target in brackets):

Proportion of waste recycled (Year to date) which is up to Quarter 3): 38% (45%) In 2016-17 the London average was 33% with Brent at 36.4%. Bexley was top at 52.1% and Newham bottom at 14.1%.

Residual waste collected (YTD): 51,283 tonnes (49.489). The more residual waste collected and the lower amount recycled increases the Council's landfill costs.

Timeliness of repair of highways defects(YTD): 56% (98%) See notes on document below.

Times taken to re-let empty council homes with minor defects to be addressed (YTD): 39.1 days (24)

Time taken to re-let council homes with major defects to be addressed (YTD): 90.4 days (76)

Tenants' satisfaction with council housing repairs (YTD): 75.6% (82%)

Waste and highway repairs are both out-sourced, Council housing has been brought back in-house but repairs are contracted out.

Click on bottom right square to enlarge

Brent Council housing performance plummets

A reader writes:

Hi Martin, I received the Winter edition of ‘Your Voice’ the magazine for Brent Council’s tenants and leaseholders this morning and noticed that 5 out of 6 key performance targets had gone down, as they are highlighted in red.

The council told me and other residents that we would see a remarkable transformation in the delivery of services following the transfer from BHP 14 months ago.  I assumed they were going to get better but as their own statistics show, they are nosediving. e.g. The target for Estate Inspections in 2018/19 is 100% but their performance is rated at 48%.

Maybe you might like to ask the council, why are they performing so badly?  The next Housing Scrutiny committee meets this week and you could ask the chair Cllr. Long what has gone so badly wrong? Could it be that the council misled us at the consultation meetings to get us to vote to take the services in-house.  I attended the session at the Willesden Library and ‘my table’ was hosted by Cllr. Butt and I remember him saying, “BHP were useless at managing repairs” but it seems the council are even worse

Don't let the government off the hook for meaningless platitudes on housing

Tim Clark of Construction News writes some straight-talking updates for the sector and today's is no exception:

Is there any part of the industry that has seen more false dawns over the past decade than the housing sector?

I ask this following this morning’s unprecedented visit to the National Housing Federation’s annual conference by the prime minister, where she gave a speech making all the right noises. Theresa May got a standing ovation for a speech full of platitudes, faint praise, promises to understand social housing needs, and an announcement of £2bn in extra cash. Unfortunately, promises made on the stump are often too good to be true. While this announcement was billed as genuinely new cash rather than recycled spending, it still comes with a catch: the £2bn will only be available from 2022. Call me a cynic, but if a company chief executive stood up in front of their staff and said, “Great news: you’re all getting a raise… in four years’ time”, how many of those employees are going to whoop in delight? Following May’s announcement, how many development managers will call a meeting to plan how to use this new cash? None. Because there’s absolutely no guarantee this money will ever actually be available. You might as well place a bet on the 2022 Grand National. No parliament can bind its successor, and the PM’s promises today are empty because she cannot guarantee she’ll be heading up the government for the next decade. Right now you’d be brave to bet on May surviving beyond Christmas, let alone 2022. Even then, this £2bn has been pledged for a period of time for which departmental budgets have not even been set out yet. May knows that we can have no idea how this money will fit in with the overall social housing settlement for 2022-28, or how it will compare with the £9bn in total funding committed for 2015-21 – not to mention the pre-2010 level of £3bn-a-year. This all falls far short of the PM’s claims to be providing clarity for the social and affordable housing sector. Of course, the government has also broken promises before. At the NHF conference in 2015, the then communities minister Greg Clark struck a historic deal with the sector that opened up housing associations to right to buy. This meant HA stock was set to be sold off for the first time. The sector agreed to the plan because it feared what the then Cameron government would devise if it did not. The government promised that homes sold would be replaced on a one-for-one basis. New figures show this has not happened – in fact, fewer than a third of the 60,000 homes sold by councils since 2012 have been replaced, mainly due to lack of funds. It often feels that the housing sector suffers from a form of collective amnesia, happy simply to be given attention and lap up the warm words.  An announcement of real cash to build real homes right now would be welcome, but this is not it. We shouldn’t let the government off the hook for giving out meaningless platitudes.

Leak in pensioner's flat spreads into sitting room

As councillors gather for tonight's Full Council, meeting I have just heard from John Healy that the saga of his flooded flat on South Kilburn Estate continues.  Despite the best efforts by Cllrs Long and Abdi, discussion at last week's Housing Scrutiny Meeting and visits from housing officers and Wates, the leak has not yet been repaired.

John tells me hat the leak is still in the kitchen but in a worsening of his situation has now spread into his living room as well.

He says that nobody from the council has been in touch today even though on Friday they said they would contact him today to offer him temporary accommodation.

I really did hope for better from Brent Housing now that it has been brought back in-house. The Council took over from BHP on the 27th September, 2017 promising big improvements in their performance targets, especially regarding repairs.

Latest on pensioner without power in Brent Council flat for 10 days

The case of pensioner John Healy who has spent 10 days without power in his flat at Dunbar House on South Kilburn Estate has been taken up by Cllr Janice Long and will be raised at Housing Scrutiny Committee tonight and Cllr Abdirazak Abdi is also pursuing the issue with the Council.

Nadia Khan, Communications and Marketing Manager at Brent Housing Management has emailed me for details and promised to look into the matter first thing tomorrow.

Meanwhile John has written to me late this afternoon:

Hi Martin, it has still not been repaired and it may be a long time before it is.

I spoke with Marc, the council's surveyor face to face in the South Kilburn office and he says they think the leak is on the 'dry riser', which is located between flats.

Oakray have restored my heating and microwave but they say not to use them until the Wate's electrician has checked them over and he has not arrived yet.

Have your say on Brent's new Local Plan

Readers may well be cynical about another consultation from Brent Council when 'consultation' has often meant commenting on what has already been decided, the Council ignoring widespread local opposition to planning applications, and London and Brent planning guidelines ignored for spurious reasons.

However, for those who hold out some hope for local demoracy and planning for people and not for profit, here are the details:

The council has started work on a new Local Plan which will shape how the borough is developed in the future. There are key challenges for the Plan to address including:

• How do we ensure there is enough housing to meet everyone’s needs?
• How do we create employment opportunities and promote economic growth?
• What infrastructure and community facilities do we need to support new?
• What is the future role of our town centres?
• How do we create places that promote health and well-being?
• How do we ensure development is sustainable, high quality and protects the environment?

Why get involved?

Have your say on the issues that affect how you live, work and socialise in Brent.

Issues and Options Consultation

From August to December 2017 we undertook engagement events.  These sought to capture the views of a variety of people and organisations that have an interest in Brent’s future development. The events and a summary of responses are set out in the Brent Local Plan Consultation Summary document

We are now consulting on an ‘Issues and Options’ document.  This sets out more detail on the key challenges set out above and how we might address them.  It asks a number of questions.  The consultation period is from 8 February to 22 March 2018. 

• Brent Local Plan Issues and Options Document (.pdf, 10.75MB)
• Brent Local Plan Integrated Impact Assessment (.pdf, 4.59MB)
• Brent Local Plan Consultation Summary Document  (.pdf, 7.78MB)

Take the Commonplace Survey on specific places in the borough

Take the Smart Survey on issues and options

To respond to the consultation we would prefer if you answered an on-line version of the questions.  This will make it easier for us to collect and analyse responses, saving time and allowing us to take forward the Plan quicker. Alternatively, you can respond by e-mail, or by post.
Email: planningstrategy@brent.gov.uk

Post: Paul Lewin, Team Leader Planning Policy, Brent Council, Engineers’ Way, Wembley, HA9 0FJ
If not completing the consultation questionnaire, please make it very clear which part(s) of the document you are commenting on, ideally referencing by paragraph and question number.

If you require any assistance or want to get in contact about the consultation then please send an e-mail to planningstrategy@brent.gov.uk or via Twitter @Brent_Council using #shapebrent.

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Brent Council to proceed with fire safety measures for all its blocks over 12 storeys high

The Brent Cabinet will be asked to approve a fire safety strategy LINK  for its housing stock at its next meeting which will centre on a five year programme of fire safety measures, with a particular emphasis on sprinkers, for all its blocks that are 12 storeys or higher. Standard 4 Fire Risk Assessments would be carried out as part of the programme.

These are the blocks (click on image to enlarge or see LINK):

The programme will be at a rate of 3 per year to be completed in 5 years and will be done alongside other improvement works.

The Council is faced with some uncertainty over financing of such improvements as well as what will eventually be recommended by the post-Grenfell Public Inquiry.

The report states:
 

The Chief Executive wrote to Department for Communities and Local government (DCLG) to request Government provide direct financial support to meet the costs that will be incurred. The current position in response to that request is that government will neither fund the additional works, nor change the policy on 1% decrease in rents up to 2020, nor increase the HRA borrowing cap as alternative ways to fund these additional works. However, there have been suggestions that there may be further announcements in the November 2017 Budget. 


This means that the £10m costs will need to be financed from the Housing Revenue Account which will  entail cuts in the  Capital Programme of at least £4.5m in 2018-19 and £3.9m in 2019-20 - unless the Chancellor comes up with some proposals in his budget.

As can be seen from the table above leaseholders in the blocks will be expected to contribute towards the costs of the improvement measures. This would raise £0.8m for the 14 blocks of over 12 storeys and £2.8m for all 37 Brent blocks. Average cost per leaseholder would be approximately £6,000.

Controversial Bridge Park regeneration consultation - November sessions

Readers will remember the controversy over the Bridge Park (Stonebridge) development when Brent Council entered agreements with what some felt were rather dodgy overseas registered property companies. LINK

In particular concern centred around General Mediterranean Holdings (GMH)  and its Chairman Sir Nadhmi Avichi who had faced fraud allegations in 2003. Cllr John Warren in January tried to get a debate on the issue, and in particular Avichi's links with the Labour Party LINK but his motion was defeated by the overwhelming majority of the Labour Group.

The proposals include a new hotel and housing that  is unlikely to be truly affordable for local people.  There will be no space for the small businesses that are currently housed on site and apart from the added swimming pool at the Leisure Centre  I understand overall space is smaller as function rooms will not be provided.  The question arises about whether the replacement will be a public facility or run by a private company.

Now the proposals are coming up for public consultation  (two for Lead Members, ward councillors and local residents took place earlier this week)  This is the consultation notice as it appears on Brent Council's website:

2 November 2017, 6.30pm to 9pm, Bridge Park Community Leisure Centre

See events in: Public consultations

Top of Form

Public Consultation on the redevelopment of Bridge Park

• Update residents on progress with the sale of the land
• Share information on the wider Bridge Park redevelopment proposals
• Seek input on the emerging design for the new leisure centre

Date: Thursday 2 November

Location: Bridge Park Community Leisure Centre

Time: 6.30pm -7pm (Presentation) 7pm - 9pm (Drop-in session)

Have your say on the Bridge Park redevelopment, complete our online consultation survey before 3 December 2017.

Bridge Park redevelopment

Brent Council is working with the owners of the Unisys site situated adjacent to the Bridge Park Community Leisure Centre in Stonebridge on exciting proposals to regenerate the site for new homes, businesses and a brand new leisure centre with improved facilities.

Background

In June 2013, Brent Council looked at options for developing the Unisys and Bridge Park sites for residential and commercial development to fund a new sports centre. In February 2014, council consulted with the public on four options for the layout of the new facility. Option three was chosen and includes:

• four court sports hall     
• 65 station gym
• Smaller separate gym
• Children’s soft play area and party room      
• Sauna and steam rooms
• Studios
• Spin studio
• Small meeting room
• 50 car parking spaces      
• Four lane swimming pool with moveable floor

In June 2017, the Council entered into a Conditional Land Sale Agreement (CLSA) with the purchaser.

What’s next?

• Progress plans for the new leisure centre and re-development proposals
• Further consultation events with the public 
• Purchase additional land

Information about public consultation dates will be publicised widely.

Contact

For further information about the project contact

• Project Manager- Tanveer Ghani 
• Email- Tanveer.ghani@brent.gov.uk

FAQs

What is the Conditional Land Sale Agreement (CLSA)?    

The CLSA is a time-limited contract between the Council and the developer. The CLSA includes a range of terms and conditions that need to be met in order to complete the sale of Council land to the developer. Please refer to the reports highlighted in the ‘Things to Read’ section for further information about the CLSA.

When will the current Bridge Park Community Leisure Centre (BPCLC) close?  

The Council’s plan is to keep the current Bridge Park Leisure Centre open until the CLSA is completed. We expect BPCLC to be kept open until the Summer of 2019 and further communications will be provided in due course.

Will BPCLC close once the CLSA is completed? 

Yes, the current facility will have to close for redevelopment to start.

When is the redevelopment expected to begin and how long will it last?  

 It is too early to say at this stage although we don’t expect anything to happen on the site until 2019 at the earliest. The immediate target is satisfy the terms and conditions for completing the CLSA. At key milestones of the project, the Council will continue to publish updates online and through local press.

What will the new leisure centre, hotel and housing look like?

Architects Roberts Limbrick will consult with members of the public on design proposals for the new leisure centre.

Detailed consultation plans are below (Click bottom right to enlarge):

What are Brent's housing providers doing post-Grenfell?

Never again

Brent Council has published details of registered housing providers in Brent for residents who wish to check up on fire safety following the Grenfell Tower tragedy. The amount of information varies between the providers:

Catalyst	www.chg.org.uk/residents/all-residents/resident-news/37128/keeping-our-residents-safe-grenfell-tower/
Family Mosaic	www.familymosaic.co.uk/statement-grenfell-tower/
Genesis	www.genesisha.org.uk/customers/advice_and_support/fire_safety.aspx
Homegroup	www.homegroup.org.uk/Media/News/Home-Group-news/Home-group-statement-on-fire-safety-following-Grenfell-Tower-fire
Hyde Housing	www.hyde-housing.co.uk/news/local-news/grenfell-tower-west-london/
Innisfree	www.innisfree.org.uk
Inquilab	www.inquilabha.org/news_feeds/detail/information-for-residents-following-the-fire-at-grenfell-tower
L&Q Group	www.lqgroup.org.uk/about/media-centre/news/details/31
Metropolitan	www.metropolitan.org.uk/statement-on-fire-safety/
Network Homes	www.networkhomes.org.uk/firesafetyupdate/
Notting Hill Housing	www.nhhg.org.uk/news/news/resident-news/grenfell-tower-fire-information-for-residents/
Octavia Housing*	www.octaviahousing.org.uk/news-events/news/233
Origin Housing	www.originhousing.org.uk/media-hub/news/fire-safety

*As far as we have been made aware, so far, only Octavia Housing has been told that there are concerns with one of their properties following the Government’s testing of their cladding samples. There are questions surrounding the cladding used on Octavia's Elizabeth House development in Wembley. However, following an extensive check of the building the London Fire Brigade has advised Octavia that Elizabeth House does not require evacuation nor immediate removal of cladding.

The Government has said that it will notify the relevant registered housing provider and the council of any other blocks in Brent which have concerns over cladding, once samples have been tested, and the council will publish any new information we receive widely – including on this web page LINK

Wembley Green Car Park pre-application proposals to be presented at Planning Committee

The Brent Planning Committee on October 19th (7pm at the Civic Centre) will be given a Presentation by Quintain on one of the biggest sites  in the Wembley Masterplan.  This is a pre-planning application so most of the information will only be divulged that evening. No plans are published in advance.

Given the controversy over recent developments at the stadium and elsewhere in Wembley this is an opportunity for residents to get a glimpse of what is in store. This is a large housing development with blocks of flats up to 26 storeys.

This is what is published on the Committee Agenda:

Green Car Park, First Way, Wembley

SCHEME:

The Reserved Matters for the development of Plot E03 pursuant to outline planning application reference 15/5550 (the Quintain Masterplan).

Proposed construction of 1 to 26 storey building to provide 743 flats (397

 private rent and 346 discount market rent), 490 square metres of communtiy

or employment floorspace Use Class D1 / B1), 91 coach parking spaces for Wembley Stadium events, energy centre for outline consent area and associated external amenity space, cycle storage, hard and soft landscaping and accesses to the highway

PART 1 DEVELOPMENT PRESENTATIONS

Introduction

1.     This part of the agenda is for the committee to receive presentations on proposed developments, particularly when they are at the pre-application stage. 


2.     Although the reports are set out in a particular order on the agenda, the Chair may reorder the agenda on the night. Therefore, if you wish to be present for a particular application, you need to be at the meeting from the beginning. 


3.     The following information and advice only applies to reports in this part of the agenda. 


Advice to Members

4.     These proposed developments are being reported to committee to enable Members of the committee to view them at an early stage and to comment upon them. They do not constitute applications for planning permission at this stage (unless otherwise stated in the individual report) and any comments made are provisional and subject to full consideration of any subsequent application and the comments received as a result of consultation, publicity and notification. 


5.     Members of the committee will need to pay careful attention to the probity rules around predisposition, predetermination and bias (set out in the Council’s Constitution). Failure to do so may mean that the Councillor will not be able to participate in the meeting when any subsequent application is considered. 


Further information

6.  Members are informed that any relevant material received since the publication of this part of the agenda, concerning items on it, will be reported to the Committee in the Supplementary Report.

Public speaking

7.  The Council’s Constitution only provides for public speaking rights for those applications being reported to Committee in the “Applications for Decision” part of the agenda. Therefore reports on this part of the agenda do not attract public speaking rights.

Resident questions Brent Council's arithmetic on Preston Library housing plans

A local resident has sent the following message to Brent Cabinet ahead of their discussion on an officer's report on the future of the Preston Library building.

Dear Cabinet member,

I wrote to councillors last week about why it is important to support Preston Community Library.

Since then I have looked more carefully at the report for Tuesday's cabinet, and have realised that the figures in it for housing just don't make sense.  I think you will need to adjourn the report so that officers can give you corrected information.

The report states that if you just built five flats on the library site, there would be an expected income to the Council of £158,000, including £51,000 from the community space.  The difference [£107,000] comes to an average rental income per flat of £411.54 per week, which is clearly not accessible for people in housing need.

For the larger site, the figures are £420,000 -£51,000 = £369,000.  At 19 flats this is £19,421 rent per flat, or £373.48 per flat.

The current rent you charge [2015-16] for a council home is £101.99 for one beds, £115.56 for 2 beds and £127.63 for 3 beds.  LINK 

This means that if the properties are let to social tenants you will not get anything like the rents the reports says.  If you are to rent to private tenants then the rents in the report are still much lower than other flats in the area. An example of a flat a couple of minutes walk away is HERE.

Income to the Council also needs to take account of Housing Benefit, which will reduce the income considerably.

The chair of South Kenton & Preston Park Residents Association has, I believe, written to you about the values quoted in the report, including the non-viability of achieving £51,000 from community groups, and also about the unusual and extremely high development costs of building these flats.  To meet housing need it would be much cheaper for Brent to purchase some of the flats and houses for sale in the district.

I feel that if this report is approved, then the planned for gains will not materialise; those in housing need will get no benefit, citizens will lose their valued library and it will be an embarrassment to the Council.  I hope that you will reject this report.

yours sincerely,
Linda Green

Should the public be involved in Brent's review of the Local Plan?

The report going to the Resources and Public Realm Committee on the Council's Planning Committee proposes a review of the Local Plan.

It proposes a 'Local plan Working Party' to carry this out made up of 'a representative group of councillors' . The first, rather clumsy, sentence of this section of the report mentions the local community but there is no mention of residents' associations or other community groups making a contribution to such a working party.

Surely they should be involved at an early stage to avoid further disaffection and feelings of powerlessness in the force of development and regeneration?

Extract:

To plan proactively for its future and guide development in the form and location where the Council and the local community feels it is most appropriate, the Council will need to start a review of the Local Plan. Whilst it provides the opportunity to refresh the Council’s approach to support current corporate priorities, it is likely to involve some potentially difficult decisions in prioritising housing delivery against other considerations, e.g. balancing affordable/family housing requirements against facilitating what will be high levels of housing delivery; the extent to which low density housing in areas with high public transport accessibility are considered sustainable in the long term; and safeguarding and providing existing infrastructure and non-residential uses against the need to meet housing targets. To meet housing needs and support timely regeneration/development, the Council is also likely to have to take a greater pro-active approach to site assembly/direct delivery than might have been the case in the past. 


To ensure a wider elected democratic mandate a representative group of councillors will be involved in and facilitate the content and direction of the Local Plan as it makes its way through the adoption process. It is proposed that this will be through a Local Plan Working Party, for example dealing with vision and objectives and how themes, such as housing and employment can best contribute to these. The extent and timing of the review will become cleared once a restructure of Planning has been undertaken and the Development Management Policies Plan has been adopted.