Why does Brent want to Stop-up “highway” near the Olympic Steps?

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Philip for his many valuable contributions over the past year, 

 

I don’t make New Year resolutions. If I did, one of them would probably be not to get into any new entanglements with Brent Council in 2026. And I would have broken it already, after seeing this Legal Notice in the 18 December edition of our local newspaper.

 

The Notice said that the Council would be applying for a Stopping-up Order for an area of highway, including pedestrian areas near the Olympic Steps. That seemed an odd thing to do, as such an order would extinguish all rights of way over that land. I’m interested in the history of Wembley Park, and actually wrote an illustrated article, The Olympic Way Story, for Brent Council in 2017! I wanted to see what area of land the application affected, but to do that I would have to go to the Civic Centre ‘during normal office hours on Mondays to Fridays.’

 

A copy of the Notice, on a lamp post at Engineers Way, 22 December 2025.

 

So on Monday 22 December I went to the Civic Centre to inspect the Plan and Draft Order, and did see one notice about the proposed stopping-up on a lamp post. But when I asked to inspect the documents, staff in the Library did not know anything about them, and after a half-hour wait to be seen at the Civic Centre’s “Welcome Desk” (reception), staff there did not know about them either, and could not find them in the cupboards behind the desk.

 

I sent an email to the address of the Council Officer listed in the Notice as soon as I got home, and that Officer in Brent’s Development Services department sent me pdf copies of the documents the following day, also saying that they ‘were given to both Civic Centre reception and Wembley Library on the 12 December 2025 for public viewing.’ As I believe it is important that local residents have easy access to the Plan and Draft Order, I will ask Martin to attach copies at the end of this article.

 

When I saw what was involved in the Order Brent would be seeking from Magistrates on 22 January, I could not understand the reason for it. Why would they want to stop people walking over that land, or vehicles from going between Engineers Way and Olympic Way East or West? I felt it had to be questioned, and if necessary challenged! My 22 December email had been copied to Brent’s Public Realm Director (who had signed the Notice), and as his “out of office” message said that he was away until 29 December, this is the main section of the email I sent him first thing that morning:

 

‘[Your colleague] kindly sent me the documents for this Stopping-up application on 23 December, but that does not detract from the fact that those documents were not freely available for me to inspect, during normal office hours at Brent Civic Centre on Monday 22 December, as they should have been under your Notice of 11 December 2025.

 

Please let me know whether you still intend to make the Council's application at the hearing on 22 January 2026, or whether you will be issuing a fresh Notice, with a new hearing date, ensuring that the necessary documents are available to inspect, at a designated location within the Civic Centre (as suggested in my email to you of 22 December).

 

 

I note that the Plan showing the hatched areas which the proposed Order plans to stop-up was prepared for Quintain Limited in June 2025. Can you confirm, please, that the London Borough of Brent is making the application on behalf of Quintain Limited, and if so, on what basis is the Council doing that (and at whose expense)?

This is the relevant extract from the Plan (with the words "Olympic Steps" added for clarity):

 

 

The draft Court Order states that the application is being made because the area(s) 'shown hatched black on the plan attached drawing number TPHS-434-DR-00 should be stopped up on the ground that it is unnecessary.'

 

Please let me know the reasons why you consider those hatched areas to be unnecessary for pedestrians and/or vehicles to use in future. I have to ask that, because I cannot understand why that should be the case, as stopping-up would extinguish 'all traffic and all public rights of way ... over the said area of highway.'

 

From my knowledge of the area, including walking over some of the "hatched" areas myself on my visits to Wembley Park, I can't understand why it should be unnecessary for:

 

·      vehicles to pass, at least on some occasions, to or from Engineers Way and Olympic Way East and Olympic Way West, including to access the undercroft area for community and other events;

·      for pedestrians using the Engineers Way crossing from Olympic Way to have unimpeded access to the Olympic Steps, in both directions, especially when large events are taking place at the Stadium;

·      for pedestrians using the Engineers Way crossing from Market Square, beside the Civic Centre, to have unimpeded access to Wembley Park Boulevard (and back, on their way from Wembley Arena, the LDO and beyond towards Wembley Park Station);

·      for pedestrians coming west along Engineers Way from Canada Gardens, the University of Football Business and other developments, to have free use of the existing wide pedestrian area at the foot of the Olympic Steps, and the existing but narrower pedestrian area as they approach Wembley Park Boulevard and Arena Square.

 

The areas which your application proposes to stop-up were designed to be the way they are, as part of Quintain's Masterplan for Wembley Park. I can't see why the need for them should have changed, particularly given the growing number of people living in the area, and the increased number of large events at the Stadium, since that Masterplan was drawn up, and approved by Brent Council.

 

Unless you can provide a very strong justification as to why those hatched areas on the Plan are now unnecessary, I think that this application should be withdrawn. Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant.’

 

In case you have difficulty in visualising the areas the Council proposes to stop-up from the plan, I have marked them in red on this Google Maps satellite view extract:

 

The Public Realm Director quickly sent a holding reply, to say that he would consult colleagues on their return before sending a full response, and this is what he wrote when he sent that:

 

‘Dear Mr Grant,

 

The land proposed to be stopped up was the former bell mouth into Green Car Park and a sliver of land along the southern footway of Engineers Way located east of Wembley Park Boulevard.

 

The stopping-up was requested by Quintain as the area shown in hatch was deemed to be in the line of their Hostile Vehicles Mitigation bollards (an important counter-terrorism installation). These bollards are installed by Quintain, and the future maintenance will also be with them. The staggered nature of the former highway land would not serve any purpose as highway maintainable at public expense and so there is value in eliminating an ongoing burden on public finances.

 

I confirm Quintain has met all expenses in this stopping-up process. The original application was made around five years ago and the legal process, the statutory undertakers utility clearance and the obtaining of a court date have taken a considerable amount of time.

 

The stopping-up does not in any way impede public access to Olympic Steps nor to the access roads Olympic Way East and West. The stopping-up process will not in any way change the layout of the public realm that is currently in place. All existing pedestrian and vehicular access will remain unchanged, and we have had written assurance from Quintain to this effect. The purpose is simply to allow Quintain to maintain their land in future years to the same standard as the rest of the Wembley Park estate.

 

We have now been given a court date for the hearing on the 22 January 2026 at 2 pm. Therefore, the notice of intent and the draft order was publicised by our lawyers on the 15 December allowing sufficient time for the statutory notice period.

 

As part of the notice process, notices and a draft order were published in the local press; the same was posted on-site and a copy of the notice of intent, draft order and the stopping-up plan were left with Brent Civic Centre welcome desk and at the Wembley Library on the 12 December.

 

Following your email, my colleague contacted the Civic Centre welcome desk and requested that the documents must be available for public viewing until the end of the statutory notice period, i.e. 19 January 2026.

 

I regret you couldn’t view these documents when you visited. However, they were left with the front of house staff on Friday, 12 December 2025.

 

The stopping up process is a lengthy process and the court date is harder to obtain. Therefore, asking for an alternate date is not a viable option and would require substantial officer time.

 

I can advise, however, that if you are not satisfied with our process, then you can, of course, make representation at the court. 

 

I hope this is helpful background. Kind regards,

 

Director of Public Realm.’

 

The Olympic Steps and Stadium, from Engineers Way
(with people walking across a strip of land that could be stopped-up!)

 

If you have managed to read this guest post all the way through to here, thank you. What do you think of this proposed Stopping-up Order, and the Council’s explanation of why they are applying for it? If you have any views, please feel free to share them in the comments below.

 

I think it is important that local residents are aware of this application, by Brent Council on behalf of Quintain Limited. Having considered it myself, I believe that the proposed Order is unnecessary, and a misuse of Section 116, Highways Act 1980. I will try to persuade the Council Officer to withdraw the application, and will include my reasoning for that (as the text of an email I will send to him) for information in the comments section.

 

For now, though, I will wish all “Wembley Matters” readers a Happy New Year! There will be lots of interesting and important things happening in Brent in 2026, and this blog website is a very good source for information about them, so please keep following it.

 

Philip Grant 

The Empire Pool / Wembley Arena Story - Part 4

 The fourth and final part of the guest blog by local historian Philip Grant on a key piece of local history. Many thanks to Philip Grant for his tireless efforts to ensure our local history is acknowledged and celebrated.

 

1.  The original (west end) entrance to Wembley Arena in 2003. (Image from the internet)

 

Welcome back for the final part of this story. As we saw at the end of Part 3, the Empire Pool had been renamed Wembley Arena, and although it was still home to some sporting events, it was now being used mainly to stage music and entertainment shows.

 

If I tried to name all of the acts who have performed at the Arena, the list would take up the rest of this article. I will just mention a few, and if I miss one of your favourites, you are welcome to add your memories of the time(s) you saw them at Wembley in the comments below. Among the top British bands that have performed here are The Rolling Stones, The Who, Status Quo, Queen, The Police and Dire Straits. The first two of those both had drummers from Wembley, in Charlie Watts and Keith Moon!

 

It would be unfair if I didn’t also name a few of the top acts from overseas that have also performed here since the name was changed in 1978. Did you see ABBA, AC/DC, Diana Ross, John Denver, Madonna, Meat Loaf, Dolly Parton, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston or Stevie Wonder at Wembley Arena? If so, please feel free to add your memories below.

 

2.  A Torvill & Dean programme from 1985, and a recent Holiday on Ice show. (Images from the internet)

 

One of the original purposes of the Empire Pool was to provide an ice-skating rink. Although Wembley stopped staging its own ice pantomimes, spectacular touring productions from the “Holiday on Ice” franchise have been a regular feature at Wembley Arena since 1978. If you saw it on TV, as I did, you will never forget Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean’s gold medal-winning “Bolero” ice dance at the 1984 Winter Olympics. The following year, as part of their World Tour, they sold out the Arena for seven weeks with their own ice show.

The building was now more than fifty years old, and in the late 1980s Wembley Stadium Ltd invested £10m to upgrade the Arena’s facilities for both performers and the paying public who came to see them. The improvements allowed even more spectacular effects to be included, as the 1990s saw more than 900 concerts performed at the venue. One of the most unusual for Wembley was an arena staging of Puccini’s opera “Turandot” by the Royal Opera in 1991 (building on the popularity of the aria “Nessun Dorma”, which the BBC had used as the theme tune for its coverage of the football World Cup in Italy the previous year!).

 

3.  Concert of Hope, George Michael singing in 1993, and watching other performers with Princess Diana.
(Images from the internet)

 

Charity events had been a feature of the Arena’s programme for decades. The annual Concert of Hope for World Aids Day was supported by Diana, Princess of Wales, and top performers, including another famous musician who grew up in Brent, George Michael.

 

 

Cliff Richard, who first performed here in 1960 as part of a NME Poll Winners’ concert, had 49 shows at Wembley Arena in the 1990s, and was still packing the venue with his 50^th anniversary tour in 2007. A different genre of pop music also came to the Arena in the nineties, with shows from boy (and girl) bands, including Take That, Boyzone, The Spice Girls and Westlife. Two of those groups were from Ireland, but another Irish import, Michael Flatley’s “Lord of the Dance”, was so successful in 1997 that it returned for 21 sell-out shows the following year.

 

4.  “Lord of the Dance” programme and video screenshot. (Images from the internet)

 

February 1999 saw the first solo stand-up comedy act at the Arena (many more would follow) when Eddie Izzard performed “Dress to Kill”, in aid of The Prince’s Trust. Britain (and Brent’s) increasing cultural diversity also saw Wembley Arena hosting more Asian / Bollywood music shows, by performers including Amitabh Bachchan and Asha Bhosle.

 

5.  Eddie Izzard programme and Asha Bhosle poster. (Images from the internet)

 

By the end of the twentieth century, the original Wembley Stadium was about to be demolished and replaced. It had been bought, together with around 100 acres of land that Arthur Elvin’s company had acquired, by the Football Association’s Wembley National Stadium Ltd, but they were not interested in redevelopment. In 2002, they sold some of the land, including the Arena, to Quintain Estates and Developments Plc, which eventually bought 85 acres of Wembley Park.

 

Wembley Arena was only eleven years younger than the 1923 stadium, and Quintain were soon making redevelopment plans, including a major refurbishment of the Grade II Listed arena. Work began in February 2005, and included moving the main entrance to the opposite end of the building, with access from a new Arena Square (it is actually a triangle!). The project cost £36m, and the “new” 12,500-seat Wembley Arena re-opened on 2 April 2006, with a concert by Depeche Mode.

 

6.  The Wembley Arena redevelopment in progress, 2005. (Image from the internet)

 

You can see the Arena being refurbished in the photograph above, but beyond it you can also see an exhibition centre, a triangular office block and a round building, Wembley Conference Centre, which were built by the Wembley Stadium company in the 1970s. The Conference Centre had been the venue for the annual Masters Snooker Championship since 1979, but after Quintain demolished that building in 2006, to make way for its Quadrant Court flats development, “The Masters” moved to Wembley Arena from 2007 to 2011.

 

7.  Scenes from the Olympic badminton and rhythmic gymnastics events at Wembley Arena in 2012.
(Images from the internet)

 

We saw in Part 2 how the then Empire Pool was used for some sports in the 1948 Olympics, and when the Games came to London again in 2012, the now Wembley Arena played host to two different Olympic competitions. First it was the badminton events, followed by the rhythmic gymnastics. Together they brought hundreds of competitors, from more than fifty nations, and thousands of spectators to Wembley.

 

8.  Wembley Arena, with Hilton Hotel and LDO beyond, in 2013.

 

Redevelopment continued around the refurbished Arena and its square. Forum House was the first of Quintain’s many blocks of apartment homes, built between the western end of the Arena and Empire Way. The Hilton Hotel was another early addition, just across Lakeside Way (remember that the Empire Pool was built at one end of the British Empire Exhibition’s central lake!) from the Arena entrance. The former Wembley exhibition halls made way for the London Designer Outlet shopping centre, which opened in 2013, as did Brent’s new Civic Centre, on part of the site of the former BEE Palace of Industry, across Engineers Way from Arena Square.

 

9.  Arena Square, with Brent Civic Centre beyond, summer 2014.

 

Arena Square, with its seasonal fountains, has become a popular open space (especially since the trees planted along its Wembley Park Boulevard side have grown large enough to provide some shade). Another of its features, designed to celebrate some of the Arena’s most popular performers, is the Square of Fame. Although this is on nothing like the scale of the Hollywood Boulevard “walk of fame”, it has become an attraction in its own right. Madonna was the first star to have bronze casts of her hands put on display, in 2006. The most recent addition is Dame Shirley Bassey, in 2019, sixty years after her appearance in the first popular music show at the Empire Pool (although she continued to perform here well into the 21^st century).

 

10.  A Square of Fame compilation, showing some of the stars who have made their mark at the Arena.

 

In 2013, Quintain handed over the management of Wembley Arena to a U.S. music promotions company (now known as ASM Global). They, in turn, entered into a 10-year naming rights deal with Scottish and Southern Energy, so that the building became known as The SSE Arena, Wembley. This made little difference to the shows put on at the venue, which included the annual live final of the X-Factor TV talent show (with previous episodes filmed at Wembley Park’s Fountain Studios, until they closed in December 2016).

 

11.  Outside and inside The SSE Arena on X-Factor finals night. (Images from the internet)

 

The Arena’s name changed again, after SSE sold its retail business to another electricity supplier, OVO Energy, in 2020. What began in 1934 as the Empire Pool is now the OVO Arena Wembley. And twenty years after buying the Arena, Quintain sold it in 2022, raising capital to pay for the construction of more buy-to-let apartments as part of its continuing redevelopment of Wembley Park. Its owner is now ICG Real Estate, part of the private equity firm Intermediate Capital Group.

 

12.  OVO Arena Wembley, from across Engineers Way, July 2024.

 

I hope you have enjoyed discovering more about the history of this famous Wembley Park landmark and venue. It is a story that I have wanted to share for several years, and the building’s 90^th anniversary felt like a good time to do that.

 

As long ago as the 1990s, Brent Council and the Stadium company worked together to celebrate the sports and entertainment heritage of Wembley’s Stadium and Arena. They did this with a series of ceramic tile murals, which welcomed visitors coming from Wembley Park Station through a new subway and onto the newly pedestrianised Olympic Way. Unfortunately, in 2013, the Council agreed to allow Quintain to cover those tile murals with advertisements!

 

13.  Some tile mural scenes celebrating events from Empire Pool / Wembley Arena history.

 

Along with Wembley History Society and a number of local residents, I have been campaigning since 2018 to get these tile murals put back on public display. In 2022, Quintain agreed to put the mural scenes on the walls in Olympic Way, which they own, back on public view. They include the ice hockey tiled picture at the top of the image above.

 

The other four mural scenes in that image are on the walls of the subway, which Brent Council own. I had taken a photograph of the mural celebrating the Horse of the Year Show in 2009, but the other three images, showing a female singer (Shirley Basey?), an ice skater and a basketball player (Harlem Globetrotters?), are all extracted from old views of the walls. All four of these murals are still hidden from view, behind LED advertising screens.

 

Brent Council had the chance to put the subway murals back on public view from the end of August 2024, and there was a strong case for doing so. Sadly, Brent’s Cabinet was unwilling to consider that case, choosing instead to receive slightly more advertising rent. That decision will mean these parts of the Arena’s history (and more scenes from Wembley Stadium’s history) will remain hidden from residents and visitors for at least another four years.

Philip Grant.

 

UEFA Women’s Euros football tournament is coming to Wembley in July - OFFSIDE and more Women’s Football events from Brent Culture Service

 Many thanks to Philip Grant for this guest post

 

 

This July, the UEFA Women’s Euros football tournament is coming to Wembley, and Brent Culture Service is celebrating this with a number of special events. The season kicks off with a performance of the acclaimed drama “OFFSIDE”, at Willesden Green Library on Friday 17 June at 7.30pm. Tickets are £5 to £7, and can be booked here.

 

It’s a story about the struggle for women’s right to play football, and the challenges still faced by female players today. Futures Theatre, who are touring the play around the country ahead of the Euros, give this information about it:

 

‘It is 1892. It is 1921. It is 2017. Four women from across the centuries live, breathe, and play football.

 

Whilst each of them face very different obstacles, the possibility that the beautiful game will change their futures – and the world – is tantalisingly close.

 

Offside is told through lyrical dialogue, poetry, and punchy prose, placing the audience on the touchline of the game of a lifetime.’

 

Scene from “Offside”, being performed in Edinburgh. (Photo by Lidia Crissafulli)

 

If you want to see this “one night only” performance in Brent, I’d suggest that you book your tickets now! But there are plenty of other events celebrating women’s football, for all the family and most of them free, taking place over the next two months.

 

The Women’s Euros tournament begins on 6 July, with England playing their opening group match at Old Trafford in Manchester. Just over 50 years ago, that would not have been possible. The Football Association (“FA”) was run for men, by men who believed that football was not a suitable game for “the fair sex”. For decades it had banned all of its member clubs from allowing women to play football on their pitches!

 

Things began to change when 44 women’s teams from across the UK met in 1969 to set up the Women’s Football Association of Great Britain (“WFA”). By the 1970/71 season they held their first Cup competition, the Mitre Challenge Trophy. This has gone on to be the Women’s FA Cup, and Brent is celebrating with a free coffee morning talk, at Kilburn Library, on Wednesday 6 July from 11am-12noon: “A History of the Women’s FA Cup Final – 50 Years, Gone in a Flash.” (Please see details and register your interest on Eventbrite).

 

The England Women’s football team, 1972.

 

Brent could not have found a better speaker, to guide her audience through the development of the women’s game since the 1960s, than Patricia Gregory. She was Secretary of the WFA from 1972 to 1982, and saw an official England Women’s team play a first international match against Scotland in 1972 (a full century after the first men’s international between the two old rivals). The WFA carried on until 1993, when control of women’s football in England passed to the FA.

 

Wednesday 6 July also sees the start of a Brent Museum and Archives programme of talks at Wembley Stadium, which carries on until Saturday 30 July. “One two, one two” will give Brent residents the chance to hear inspirational stories about women’s football history from some of our local football heroes. Look out for more details online, or at Brent Libraries!

 

You can also see portraits of Brent’s Female Football Stars, specially commissioned from local photographer Roy Mehta, in an exhibition at Brent Civic Centre, which runs from 18 June until 6 November. The “Women of the Match” exhibition, prepared by Brent Museum and Archives, will also include vintage photographs and football memorabilia.

 

Manisha Taylor, QPR football coach. (Photo by Roy Mehta)

 

One of the football stars featured in the exhibition is Manisha Tailor MBE. She is a coach for the Academy players at Queens Park Rangers F.C., and the first South Asian woman to hold a coaching role at a men’s Football League club. One of the women who inspired her was Rachel Yankey (who I wrote about in my “Football IS Coming Home” article last summer). After having to pretend to be a boy, so she could play for a football team, while at Malorees Primary School in the 1980s, she had a long and distinguished career as a player, then went on to earn her coaching badges.

 

Rachel Yankey, in a football coaching role. (Image from the internet)

 

Wembley High Road will see events to help all the family to get into the UEFA Women’s Euros spirit, during the tournament. “Bend it Like Beckham, Be A Lioness!!” will take place on the wide section of pavement near Nando’s on a number of afternoons from 1-5pm. The fun activities will include the chance to take a penalty kick in a football shoot-out with a controlled AI simulator, watch exclusive female football freestylers and take selfies with a lioness mascot!

 

Although the 1923 FA Cup final was first played at the Stadium in 1923, Wembley hasn’t always been the home of women’s football. The “Lionesses” didn’t play their first international match here until November 2014, and the first Women’s FA Cup final at Wembley was in 2015. That attracted a crowd of around 30,000, which had risen to nearly 50,000 for the May 2022 final. It will be a “full house” at Wembley Stadium for the UEFA Women’s Euros final on 31 July, and in the build up to that Brent Culture Service is staging two big events. 

 

“A Stadium Of The Future -  If I can't dance , I don't want to be part of your revolution”, on Friday 29 July, from 2-8pm at Bridge Park Leisure Centre, promises a unique event for women combining music, dancing, activism, food and celebration. The group “Idle Women” will be collaborating with women in Brent, and say: ‘It’s about women taking up space and making visible their essential role in solving the social and environmental challenges with face locally and globally.’

 

On the eve of the final itself, Saturday 30 July from noon until 5pm, everyone is invited to Olympic Way for “Emma Smith's Supercompensation Cycle installation and dance performance”, along with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and local musicians performing the 'Brent Anthem'. This will celebrate the arrival of the 2022 UEFA Women’s Euros at Wembley.

 

England Women’s manager Sarina Wiegman congratulating some of her players after an Arnold Clark Trophy match earlier this year. (Image from the internet)

 

The excitement will be even greater if England are one of the teams taking part in the final. England Manager Sarina Wiegman (who won the previous Women’s Euros tournament with The Netherlands) has got an excellent squad, which has been playing well and won the Arnold Clark Trophy international tournament earlier this year. Can the “Lionesses” go one better than the England Men’s “Three Lions” team at Wembley last year? 

 

We will see! And as well as following the UEFA Women’s Euros championship, I hope that you can enjoy some of the Brent Culture Service events being held along the way to 31 July.

 

Philip Grant.