Guest blog by Philip Grant
It is nearly six
months since I wrote a blog for this site: “Planning Committee upholds
community use of Barham Park Library”. http://www.wembleymatters.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/planning-committee-upholds-community.html)
Brent’s Chief Planner had recommended at
the meeting on 13 November 2013 that they should agree a change to business
use, based on a Community Facilities Assessment. This document (which I called
‘dishonest’ in an objection comment at the time) had been produced for the
Barham Park Trust by anonymous Council Officers, but as I reported:
It was plainly obvious to committee
members from evidence given to them by objectors ... that there was a need and
demand for community facilities in the area which required full-time use (not a
couple of hours a week) of at least parts of the building. To give all of the
space to the arts charity ACAVA to let out as artists studios would deprive
local people of those existing community facilities.
That should have been
the end of the planning process, with the Trust and the Council (effectively
one and the same, as Brent is the ‘corporate sole Trustee’ of the Barham Park
Trust) working with their preferred tenant, ACAVA, and the local community
groups who also wanted to rent space at the Barham Park buildings to find a compromise
solution. Instead, on 3 December, the Barham Park Trust Committee (five members
of Brent’s Executive) accepted a report from Richard Barrett (Brent’s
Operational Director, Property and Projects, and a member of the Barham Park
Management Group, a group of Senior Council Officers), and resolved:
To pursue an appeal against the decision of the
Local Planning Authority to refuse planning permission for the change of use of
the premises.
Although Mr Barrett said in his report to the Trustees that ‘... there does remain a significant risk
that the appeal will be refused’, when questioned about the risk at the meeting
he said that, having taken informal advice, ‘... the risks were perceived as
being lower than indicated in the report.’ The reason he believed the risks
were less was because the Planning Committee had not followed the Planning
Officer’s recommendation.
Five months later, there is some bad news
for Mr Barrett, and for the Barham Park Trust, and some very good news for the
objectors, including the Friends of Barham Library. Last Sunday was the final day of the
four week period during which people interested in the planning appeal could
submit comments on it to the Planning Inspector. Someone at Brent’s Planning
Department must have been working overtime, because that was the day when the
Council’s Appeal Statement (as Local Planning Authority) was submitted, and
posted on the full details webpage for the Barham Park application 13/2179: https://forms.brent.gov.uk/servlet/ep.ext?extId=101150&reference=112613&st=PL
.
Brent’s Planning
Officer, who originally accepted the Community Facilities Assessment at face
value, has now considered the evidence put forward by objectors, and agrees
that the Planning Committee decision was the correct one! This is one of many
similar extracts from the Statement to the Planning Inspector:
'... the
Local Planning Authority consider that the Community Facilities Assessment does
not demonstrate that the existing community floorspace is not required to meet
the needs of the local community and as such, it is considered that this
proposal is contrary to Policy CP23 of the Brent LDF Core Strategy 2010.'
The planning
appeal by the Barham Park Trust raises some important questions:
Why would
Brent Council want to appeal against its own Planning Committee’s decision,
especially when that decision was based on upholding one of Brent’s core
planning policies (CP23 – Protecting Existing Community and Cultural
Facilities)?
Why would the Trustees
of a Council-run charity, that claims to want to put the Barham Park buildings
back into productive use, delay resolving the issue for months, losing rental
income that would help to maintain the property and incurring an estimated
£10,000 in fees (out of “charity funds”) to a planning consultant to present
the appeal for them?
and
(does this make me a three “whys” man?):
Why did it take so long for the
Barham Park Trust’s appeal to be lodged with the Planning Inspectorate?
Here are what I believe to be the answers to these
questions. There is a chance that I am wrong on some of the points, and if so,
I would invite anyone who feels aggrieved by what I have written to add a
comment, or to ask Martin for a “right of reply”.
The Barham Park Management Group
is chaired by Jenny Isaac (Operational Director, Neighbourhoods), who as well
as being “in charge” of Brent’s parks has overall responsibility for Brent’s
library service. She may have wished to prevent any undermining of the
Council’s Libraries Transformation Project. Richard Barrett is “in charge” of
Brent’s properties, and probably considered that letting the Barham Park
buildings to a single tenant, with no local community involvement, was in
Brent’s best business interests. They would also have realised that such
a proposal would be an attractive proposition for the Labour Executive members
on the Barham Park Trust Committee, as any letting to the Friends of Barham
Library would suggest that the Executive’s decision to close six libraries in
2011 had been wrong, and might be seen as a “victory” for Cllr. Lorber, the leader
of the main opposition party on the Brent Council.
It was the Senior Officers, not
the “Trustees”, who put in the planning application in order to make their
plans for a single letting to ACAVA possible. They have no interest in Brent’s
planning policies, if those policies get in the way of what they want,
and did not like being “shown up” by having the planning application rejected. The
Officers therefore gave the “Trustees” only two options for how the Barham Park
Trust should respond to the Planning Committee decision, but made these more
attractive to the Executive members by saying that either would take six months.
Even though the Trust Committee members knew that there were other options
which should also have been considered, they went along with their Officer’s
advice, accepting the delay, loss of rental income and extra costs of a
planning appeal because this would put off a resolution of this embarrassing
problem until after the local elections in May 2014.
The appeal appears to have been
Mr Barrett’s “preferred option”. I was puzzled as to why it should take six
months, as it was a relatively straightforward matter and I thought that the
appeal could probably have been lodged by the end of January. However, if the
Barham Park Trust did not actually appeal until after mid-March, there would
not be time for it to be decided until after 22 May. As it was, the appeal was
lodged at the end of March 2014, giving a four week period from 7 April to 4
May for objectors and others to submit their comments on the appeal. Was it a
coincidence that this might be a period when Cllr. Lorber and his supporters
would perhaps be too busy preparing for the local elections to be able to
respond effectively with their written representations?
If I am only half right in the
“answers” I have given to the questions I raised, I think that this calls into
doubt the actions of both the Council Officers and the Brent Executive members
who between them run the Barham Park Trust. The Trust is meant to be a charity
whose object is ‘the provision of Barham Park and its buildings for
recreational purposes’. Titus Barham, who left the property to Wembley on his
death in 1937, clearly saw this as being for the benefit of the people of the
district in which he had made his home. The way in which the letting of the
buildings, the planning application and the planning appeal have been handled
by the Trust could be seen as an abuse of power, putting the interests of Brent
Council and of its current ruling politicians ahead of the interests of the
local community.
The appeal has still to be decided by the Planning Inspector, but there
is now a very strong case for it to be rejected, and for Brent Planning
Committee’s original decision to stand. This will ensure that the former Barham
Park library must be used as “community facilities”, but it does not guarantee
that all, or part, of it will be made available for the Friends of Barham
Library and their volunteer-run library service. That will depend on who is
elected in the Brent Council poll on 22 May, and whether whoever controls the
Council after those elections is willing to stand up to Senior Council Officers
who have become used to getting their own way.
I hope that thought will motivate you to use your vote for candidates
who are committed in practice to local councillors, Council Officers and local
people working together for the benefit of our community, rather than to a
situation that we have seen too often in recent years of Brent Council v. Our
Community
