Widespread objections to Alperton high rise giant

Guest post by Andrew Linnie.  This issue was covered earlier on Wembley Matters LINK

R55’s Minavil House project in Alperton has been the subject of much debate and controversy for some time now. The tower, standing at 26 storeys, will bring a huge shift in the landscape of the area, and was described by various industry publications as the tallest building in the entire borough. This came as quite a surprise to residents both old and new, as the 2011 Alperton Masterplan adopted by Brent Council set out a vision for the area of buildings up to a maximum of 17 storeys. It would stand to reason that a building a full 9 storeys above the maximum height for the area would be a cause for debate, but Brent Council seemed uninterested in engaging with the discussion.

The proposal shown towering over twelve storeys above its nearest neighbour (Submitted application drawings).

At the planning committee meeting in May, I put forward the concerns of residents in the two minute speaking time allotted to a single objector. It is of note that the council allows three minutes to the developer to put forward their case. Those concerns included the loss of light and sky to surrounding dwellings, the spurious transport impact figures used, and the fact that the building directly contravened the supporting planning document (SPD) for the area. These issues were largely disregarded in the ensuing discussion among councillors and the scheme was approved. None of the three councillors for Alperton (Cllrs Allie, Chohan and Patel) attended the meeting.

At this point I wrote a petition which over 200 residents signed, and further problems with the development were noted. In its disregard for context the project’s density runs off the charts, featuring twice the number of housing units per hectare of neighbouring schemes. A conversation with an independent transport assessor involved with another development in the ward reinforced the assertion that the transport impact figures presented at the meeting – of just two additional passengers per train at peak times – were wildly underestimating the impact of a development this size. The issues of light and sky persisted, and concerns about access and the level of parking provided remain unanswered (there are 251 homes but only 35 parking spaces, most of which are for a Lidl on the ground floor). It also emerged that the architectural justifications for the project’s height from R55’s own online publication misrepresented the scale of neighbouring buildings and created an impression of the constructed landscape rising towards the Minavil site which, in reality, does not exist.

The architectural justification for the project, with the actual numbers of storeys added. It shows large leaps in height between buildings only three storeys apart, and a small step up from 14 to 26 storeys. The image also implies a rising contour between two 11 storey buildings of equal height (R55).

The petition was addressed to MP for Brent North Barry Gardiner, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, the members of the GLA including our local assembly member Navin Shah, and the councillors for the ward of Alperton and Brent in general.

Mr Gardiner held a meeting in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy in which he addressed the issues of residents in high rise buildings. Present at the meeting were many locals, representatives of housing trusts, Brent Borough Fire Commander Mark Davis, and the Head of Planning for Brent. When pursued by Mr Gardiner on the point of whether such proposals are assessed for their fire risk, the Head of Planning admitted they are not. For a disproportionately tall building with a small footprint, on a site hemmed in by a canal, a bridge and an industrial estate, this added further grave concerns for neighbouring homes.

Though Mr Shah’s office and Mr Gardiner were responsive to the petition, the scheme was passed back from the Mayor of London to Brent for approval with no intervention. Unless the Secretary of State for Planning (Alok Sharma) decides to intervene, the building work will commence, reportedly in November. At that point the debate will inevitably turn from one about this particular site to one about the wider area, and what kind of regeneration the local population want. When commitments are made to residents to lead a regeneration area in a certain direction and then entirely forgotten at the planning committee level, questions must be asked as to whether Brent Council are representing the interests of local people or the interests of developers.

Matt Hutchinson at Tone's Friday 28th July

Our rights to safe housing-South Kilburn Meeting tonight

Brent Housing Scrutiny Committee also meets tonight (7pm Brent Civic Centre) and has an item on Fire Safety in Brent buildings as well as an update on the BHP being taken back in-house.

Breathing London - Brent's Parks and Open Spaces (as you've never seen them before)

Guest post by Philip Grant

I have just heard about the "Breathing London" project organised by the Royal Photographic Society earlier this year, which aimed to capture the diversity of London's public green and open spaces. It produced a website with a large gallery of photographs, which you can visit and search by borough to see pictures of parks and open spaces, large and small, in your area.Link

One of the local photographers taking part was Gareth Davies from Kingsbury, who specialises in 360 degree panorama images. He photographed all 92 of the parks and open spaces listed by Brent Council as public spaces which they (or the City of London) maintain in the borough. His fascinating pictures are on the "Breathing London" website, but you can also view them as a slideshow on his own website. Link  

 

 There you will find local parks that you did not know existed, and some that you have never visited, but will know that you want to visit now. Why not go and explore some of them (perhaps with your children or grandchildren, in the school holidays) this summer?

Family workshops: African soldiers of World War 1

Summer nature activities at the Welsh Harp Centre

Strawberries and scones celebrate 80th anniversary of Titus Barham's gift to Wembley

From Friends of Barham Library

Saturday 8 July was the 80th Anniversary since Titus Barham "Wembley's Greatest Benefactor" donated his home and gardens in Sudbury which became Barham Park.

Friends of Barham Library held a Celebration 'Vintage' Tea Party in honour of Titus Barham as a Thank You for his generous gift. As the gift took place in 1937 thirty seven lucky people, whose names were drawn out of a hat, including 6 members of the Barham family, were served a traditional afternoon tea. The Tea Party was held inside the Community Library itself specially decorated for the occasion.

Gaynor Lloyd and Paul Lorber, two Trustees of Friends of Barham Library, and the waitresses dressed up in a traditional 1937 way, to serve and entertain the invited guests.

To make sure that no one missed out the following day Friends of Barham Library opened their doors to their Community Library in Barham Park and served strawberies and traditional scones with cream and jam to around 150 people who came to a picnic in Barham Park and watched a Kino Van showing films of how people lived in the 1930s.

Milk & More, a Muller Company which took over part of the former Express Dairy business, donated the cream, jam and many other items for the Party. All the work putting on the event was carried out by local Volunteers.

The Wembley Elm – why is it special?

Guest post by Philip Grant

I agree with Martin’s comment, in his blog about the Marriage Garden willow LINK, that ‘trees are too often an undervalued part of our local heritage’. His article jogged my memory about an unresolved local history enquiry that I received last year about “the Wembley Elm”. I wonder whether “Wembley Matters” readers can help to solve the mystery around why this particular tree is special?

“The Wembley Elm”,

outside the former Greyhound pub,
at the junction of Oakington Manor Drive and Harrow Road.

Elm trees have been part of Wembley’s history for centuries, and have left their legacy in place names around our area. Hundred Elms Farm in Sudbury existed in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, and may even have belonged to the Archbishops of Canterbury before her father, King Henry VIII seized their local lands in the 1540’s. An avenue of elm trees is shown leading to the farm, across Sudbury Common, in a mid-18^th century map, and Elms Lane still survives as a local street today, between the Harrow Road and Sudbury Court Road.

An extract from John Rocque’s  1746 map
 of London and environs,  showing

Hundred Elms Farm and the avenue of elm trees.

The Read family were tenant farmers in Wembley from Tudor times, and Brent Archives holds some of the family’s farm and personal records from the mid-18^th century onwards. At various times they farmed land at Wembley Hill and around East Lane, but one of the main family homes was at Elm Tree Farm, in Blind Lane near its junction with Wembley Hill Road. Just before the First World War, part of the land they rented was sold off to Wembley Urban District Council, to create King Edward VII Park, with Blind Lane renamed Park Lane. When the rest of their farmland was earmarked for housing development, the Reads sold off their livestock and machinery in 1922, and emigrated to Australia.

  

Elm Tree Farm, Park Lane, in the 1920’s.
 [A painting by Norah Parker, in the Wembley
History Society Collection at Brent Museum]

A hundred years ago the elm was a common sight around Wembley, often growing as tall individual trees in hedgerows. During the First World War a local architect, Ernest Trobridge, studied the properties of its timber, which was soft and easy to work when first cut, but really solid within two months when it had seasoned. He developed the compressed green wood construction system, using the abundant supplies of elm wood (many hedgerows were being removed to widen roads for motor traffic) to build cheap and comfortable “homes for heroes” from 1920 onwards. His Elmwood Estate in Kingsbury was one such development, and although Elmwood Crescent still exists, only four of the original elm-built houses from it survive in Stag Lane. If you would like to discover more about Ernest Trobridge and his work, Brent Archives has an online local history article about him LINK.

Rose Cottage in Stag Lane, Kingsbury, one of the surviving Ernest Trobridge houses from the Elmwood Estate, built 1922-1924.

The English Elm (Ulmus procera) was still a widespread feature of the landscape until the 1970’s, when millions of its trees were wiped out by Dutch Elm disease (caused by a fungus spread by elm bark beetles). You can still find young elm saplings in Fryent Country Park, growing through suckering from the roots of old trees, but the disease kills off the trees before they can reach maturity. That may be one reason why the mature “Wembley Elm” is special, and the man who wrote with the enquiry about it has said it is an unusual species of elm (Ulmus laevis) - the European white elm - which is rare in this country. However, the main reason for the query is the plaque set into the paving beside it:-

“The Wembley Elm” plaque.

The plaque, put here by the London Tree Forum (if it still exists, I can’t find it on the internet), states: ‘The Wembley Elm, one of the great trees of London, has been a focal meeting point since 1900.’ What I am trying to find out is when this particular tree was first known as “the Wembley Elm”, why it was considered so important and why it became ‘a focal meeting point.’

In 1900, the tree, if it existed, would have been near the edge of a farmer’s field. After the Great Central Railway opened a branch line through Wembley Hill in 1906 (with a station now known as Wembley Stadium), these fields were to become the Wembley Hill Garden Suburb. Planned in 1913, its first roads and houses appeared in 1914/15, but the rest of the homes on this estate were built between the early 1920's and mid-1930's.

A 1914 advertisement for homes in

the Wembley Hill Garden Suburb
(surrounded by beautiful country /
 12 minutes from Marylebone)

From the size of “the Wembley Elm”, it is thought to be at least 80 years old, but it seems unlikely that it was a significant tree as early as 1900. As it is a rare elm species in England, it may have been planted to mark a special occasion, perhaps the opening of Oakington Manor Drive (the first main street laid out in the garden suburb, although the varieties planted along it were mainly lime and white beam trees), which it stands at the entrance to.

As the tree is outside “The Greyhound”, it might have been part of the landscaping for this landmark pub, which opened in 1929. The licence for the pub was transferred from “The Greyhound” in High Street on Wembley Hill, which began life as a beer shop in 1810, but was too small for the crowds who came to events at Wembley Stadium, and was demolished when the new pub opened. Perhaps it was for F.A. Cup final crowds that “the Wembley Elm” became ‘a focal meeting point’!

Crowds outside the old “Greyhound”
in High Street, for the first Wembley
F.A. Cup Final in April 1923.

If you have any information which might throw some light on the history of “the Wembley Elm” and why it is special, please include this in a comment below. Thank you.

Philip Grant