Brent Council seeks injunction in order to tackle 10 day leak flooding pensioner's flat & leaving him without heating

Brent Council this evening made the following statement about the case of John Healy, the pensioner who has been in his flat without heating for more than 10 days following a leak and subsequent flood:

As soon as we were informed that there was a leak in a property at Dunbar House, South Kilburn, we responded immediately. We attended the property immediately and identified the source of the leak. 

The leak is affecting a few properties in the block including Mr Healey’s home. We made contact with all the affected residents, and offered them temporary accommodation where necessary and other support. Our Neighbourhood Housing Officer for the area has been in close contact with Mr Healey and also offered him temporary accommodation and other relief which he declined; he has stated he is happy to remain in the property.

The resident of the source property is now denying further access, despite repeated attempts to gain entry. As this is a tenancy breach, we are in the process of obtaining an injunction. This will allow us to access the property and stop the leak, as well as carry out the required repairs.

We apologise for the inconvenience caused to the affected residents, and this anti-social behaviour from the resident at the source property is completely unacceptable. In order to gain entry, we need to follow the legal process which is why it has taken longer to resolve. Our immediate concern is to stop the leak and to offer ongoing support to the affected residents. We are also taking appropriate action on the tenant who is obstructing the repairs.”

Asked for his reaction John said:

Just for accuracy my surname is Healy and it is 'William Dunbar House'.  Over the period they have blamed three different tenants for refusing access to the source- all three preventing the repair seems a bit fishy to me. 

I told my housing officer that I was ok on Wednesday evening as I thought that the repair would be done the nest day, based on the information that the council now knew the source. They did not know it immediately as the council statement claims.

Had I known that they had not even started I would at least see what decant was on offer. I am not happy to remain in the property but I will not move anywhere until they tell me the details. I have several hidden  illnesses and impairments, so I need a suitable property that meets all my needs before I can move on to it. I am on PIP for both the Daily Living component and the mobility component. This is a DWP benefit and proves my level of disability as they have strict eligibility criteria.
 

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.

Brent Planning Committee: Wembley Stadium steps approved. Windmill hotel flats approved.

As expected Brent Planning Committee last night approved plans for the replacement of the Wembley Stadium pedway by steps LINK and the application for flats to be built at the Windmill Hotel on Cricklewood Broadway LINK. One councillor was not happy about the latter being referred to as a 'Trojan Horse' by an objector. The promised replacement pub lacks viability because it has no kitchen to prepare food.

The application for flats on the site of the MOT garage, St Pauls Avenue, NW2 was deferred because of concern over  light, amount of affordable housing and  access.

Full Kilburn Times report here:  LINK  There is no convincing evidence of how this wil benefit the daily lives of local residents although Community Infrastructure Levy is supposed to do just that.

Quintain's 'Masterplan' czar could only quote ending 'visual severance' from the Brent Civic Centre! 

"If Wembley Park was only about going to and from the stadium then the pedway has done the job for the last 44 years.  But Wembley Park, the whole ethos of the master plan and the council’s ambition is about wider every day life and at the moment it does create a visual severance from the Civic Centre to the park.”

Pensioner's kitchen remains flooded 10 days after first reported to Brent Council

Despite contact by a housing officer from Brent Council asnd visit by Wates a power has still not been restored in John Healy's flat on the South Kilburn estate following a flood which has left him wading through the kitchen in Wellington boots. LINK

The problem was first reported to Brent Housing on Wedensday September 5th

John told Wembley Matters last night:

I think the Northern Ireland border issue will be solved before my leak.

John is maintaining his sense of humour but confessed last night that he is feeling 'very stressed out'.

I e-mailed the Brent Council Press Office  on Tuesday outlining the article I had written and requesting a comment. No answer has been received. I rang the Press Office several times this morning. The phone gave a few rings and then cut off.

There is a Housing Scrutiny meeting tonight. I hope this issue at least receives some attention there.

Quintain no longer for sale

The Financial Times is reporting that Lone Star has removed Quintain, the developer of Wembley Park,  from the market:

US private equity group Lone Star has withdrawn its UK residential property company Quintain from sale, aborting what would have been a record transaction for the country’s rented housing sector. Lone Star had been seeking more than £2.2bn for Quintain — which owns one of London’s largest urban regeneration sites at Wembley Park — but had failed to reach an agreement on price with any bidder.

Brent pledges solidarity with the Palestinian people - public meeting and demonstration

Early notice of a local meeting organised by Brent Trades Council and Brent and Harrow Palestine Solidarity Campaign at a time when support for the Palestinians is more important than ever.

Brent and Harrow PSC will be joining other London PSC groups on Saturday 11am-1pm outside HSBC Bank in Kensington High Street (opposite the station and to the right) to protest at HSBC financing companies manufacturing arms used against Palestinians.  Support welcome - placards provided.

UPDATE-STEPS PASSED Revealed - the consequences of removing the Wembley Stadium Pedway

UPDATE WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 12TH

Brent & Kilburn Times‏Verified account @bktimes 31m31 minutes ago

Brent’s planning committee unanimously approve that the Wembley Stadium pedway ramp is demolished and replaced with steps

The footage above shows fans exiting Wembley Stadium via the soon to be replaced pedway. It is a foregone conclusion that tomorrow (Wednesday) Brent Planning Committee will approve plans to demolish the pedway and replace it with steps - after all the plan was approved by the Brent Cabinet using £8.4m of Quintain's infrastructure payment to the council for a project which will benefit Quintain who claim steps will be more in keeping with their multi-million high rise empire.

The new steps will be of little benefit to Wembley residents who may well prefer the monies to be spent on repairing the borough's crumbling infrastrucure away from Wembley.

Apart from the steps themselves the project will also involve cutting in two the unadopted road, Perimeter Way, that runs beneath the pedway as the space beneath the steps, the under-croft, will be used for other purposes.

Two new roads, legs of Perimeter Way, will join up with Engineers Way:

Quintain will be pleased with the officers' report which states about the pedway  (note passive voice):

It is considered to exhibit poor design and does not contribute positively to the character of the area and is therefore contrary to DMP1 of Brent’s Development Management Policies 2016. As such, its removal is considered acceptable in design terms.

They quote DDA requirements but of course it was not built when these were current:

The existing Pedway structure does not meet the principles of inclusive design, nor would it comply with current building regulations or the previous guidance as contained within the Disability Discrimination Act due to an unacceptably steep gradient.

Responding to claims that the pedway is safer than steps for those with restricted mobility they state:

An application for an additional 4 lifts has previously been approved (reference 18/1634). These additional lifts are expected to alleviate queuing pressure before and after an event. In the event the application to demolish the Pedway is approved a condition will be attached to any subsequent approval to ensure the additional 4 lifts are installed prior to the demolition work commencing.

The Crowd Movement Report is quoted as improving crowd control:

The report demonstrates that all current access is maintained and ease of movement at ground level (Level B2) is improved. The Olympic Steps work safely and efficiently for access, egress and evacuation from the Stadium. The assessments undertaken have shown that there is the capability to maintain the overall capacity of the system during ingress, egress and evacuation even with the reduction in the number of available channels at the stairs and head of stair barriers from 16 to 12, or an operational scenario where the Spanish Steps and Ginnels are unavailable. This is considered to be acceptable, and appropriate in the context of the application currently under consideration. 

The proposed Olympic Steps would provide more resilience than the existing arrangement where it may be necessary to close all or part of the ramps to manage a situation where this is necessary, for example crowd separation or crowd control. There are also potential operational benefits in terms of ease of access and ability to segregate the incident from the remaining and/or other crowds. In summary, the replacement steps have been designed to maximise the safety of users of the staircase and is best suited to accommodate the arrival and departure of high pedestrian flows on event days.

The replacement of the pedway with steps will mean the closure of Engineers Way for two hours before and after stadium events:

The removal of the Pedway and its replacement with steps on the southern side of Engineers Way would mean that in future all pedestrians travelling to and from the Stadium on an event day would need to cross Engineers Way at carriageway level. This would in turn require Engineers Way to be closed for about two hours before all events as well as after events, as is currently the arrangement with Fulton Road. 

This would result in all east-west routes across Wembley Park being closed for significantly longer periods of time than the current arrangement on Stadium event days. At present, the closure of all three east-west routes is only required at the end of events (except for NFL American Football events). In general, this is for a 60-90 minute period towards the end of the afternoon at weekends (for afternoon sporting fixtures) or at night for evening sporting fixtures or concerts.

More inconvenience for residents but the report promises respite when North End Road is eventually reconnected with Bridge Road:

The transport infrastructure improvements proposed are a new road connection between the western end of North End Road and Bridge Road (opposite Wembley Park station) for use by traffic and pedestrians. This would be achieved by removing pedestrian steps and ramps between North End Road and Bridge Road and by raising the level of the road over a distance of about 60m. 

The future proposed scheme means that on Wembley Stadium event days there would be a replacement east-west route across the Wembley Stadium area that does not cross Olympic Way and therefore would not need to be closed to maintain pedestrian and crowd safety.  

Brent Council has financially committed to delivering an east-west route through the North End Road connection which would therefore further support the road network on event days. 

Local residents and businesses would therefore have an alternative route that could remain open throughout an event day to allow them access to and from their properties. In addition to this, bus routes 92 and 206 would not need to divert completely away from Wembley when events are taking place. The applicant has confirmed that there will be ongoing communications with Transport for London to facilitate where the diverted buses will alight.  

It is worth noting that if there are possible delays with the delivery of the North End Road connection, the modelling that has been provided demonstrates a worst case scenario of a weekday evening peak hour. The road network would be less affected at the weekend as the volume of traffic associated with businesses in the Wembley Industrial Area would be far lower and the residential traffic would naturally be more evenly spread across the day.

North End Road may be a bit of a nightmare on event days for residents of Empire Court and Danes Court so what will all this do for/to other local people as they try and move around the borough on event days?

The Forty Lane corridor modelling shows that the corridor would experience a greater increase in flows, however, the modelling shows that it has sufficient spare capacity to accommodate this without significant detriment to travel times or delays. 

The modelling demonstrates that the delay between the Forty Lane corridor, North Circular Road and

Bridge Road would amount to less than 30 seconds, whilst along Harrow Road between North Circular Road and Wembley Hill Road a delay of between 45 seconds to 1-1⁄2 minutes would be added to journey times. This is not expected to cause detrimental inconvenience to residents or drastically increase the potential traffic.

Following the submission of the addendum to the modelling, the impacts on Harrow Road and Forty Lane corridors are likely to be less pronounced than had previously been assumed, partly due to traffic being delayed along the Great Central Way corridor and partly due to traffic redistributing itself over a wider area to avoid congestion close to the Stadium. 

Flows along Harrow Road are therefore forecast to barely change, largely due to the road being congested already. Traffic diverted away from Engineers Way looking to travel to the southwest would therefore look for a less congested route.  

The modelling also shows that roads to the west of the Stadium would experience a reduction in traffic flows and an improvement in traffic conditions as a result of the closure. Most notably, Empire Way and Wembley High Road would see significant falls in traffic flow as traffic cannot travel west from Engineers Way and this would cut journey times along the Empire Way corridor by up to 30 seconds. 

The North Circular Road corridor including Great Central Way and St Raphael’s Way would experience temporary congestion and delays on event days, however, the proposed North End Road connection would alleviate any concerns over traffic in these areas.  

The Head of Highways & Infrastructure has accepted that the predicted additional disruption to the highway network on Wembley Stadium Event Days can be accepted for the temporary period before the delivery of the North End Road connection. The road network will be managed as well as possible during the interim to minimise inconvenience and delay to local residents and businesses, until such time as the North End Road scheme is delivered.

Let's wait and see...

More questions than answers in Brent planners' report on Cricklewood's Windmill Hotel

Brent Planning Committee will be deciding whether to approve planning permission for the Windmill Hotel, Cricklewood Broadway tomorrow. This involves the retention of the facade with redevelopment into 5 flats behind the facade as well as the retention of a pub. The pub garden would be converted into garden space for the flats.

However, members of the Committee may well be perplexed by the Officers' report...

Rather extraordinarily the officers seem to have been unable to establish whether the hotel has been used as a pub recently. Surely gathering evidence on that is a relatively simple matter?

1.6 It is claimed by the applicant that the bar at ground floor level has not been in use a public house since a fire in 2007, and has instead been mostly used as a lounge/breakfast area by hotel guests, with the bar occasionally rented out for private functions. The applicant has submitted a number of documents to demonstrate this including statutory declarations and company accounts. However this information does not correspond with other details that have been provided during the course of the application.

1.7 Officers acknowledge that there has been a strong interest from the local community in regards to the use of the premises at ground floor level, with numerous objections over the proposed loss of the ‘public house’ and questions raised over the validity of the evidence supplied by the applicant. A number of objectors have also claimed to have personally frequented the pub on occasions in the recent past

1.8 Regardless of whether the premises has been used as a public house or a breakfast bar within the last few years is not a determining factor to this proposal. It has not been demonstrated that the site does not accommodate a public house so policy DMP21 is relevant. However, this application does not propose to reduce the internal floor area of the public house premises. Planning applications from almost a decade ago (ref: 09/1456) show the size of the ‘pub’ being exactly the same size as the current proposal. The only loss to the pub with this scheme is to the beer garden at the rear, which is proposed to be transformed into private gardens.

I would think the loss of the beer garden, which I would see as an integral part of a pub, does not merit being described as the 'only loss' it is something that would contribute to the financial success of the enterprise.

There is more in a Supplementary report after the receipt of a further objection claiming that the bar had been open to the public recently and that the owners had not accepted offers to lease the pub. Officers comment:

It is quite possible (if not likely) that the bar has been open to the public - at least sporadically - until very recently. Moreover, there are sporadic responses on websites such as Trip Advisor from users of the hotel complaining about the bar being noisy, closed to the public and only open for private functions. However, as discussed in the committee report, the internal space for the pub is being retained within the site and a change of use is not proposed for the public house.

The public have raised questions about the viability of the pub if it does not serve hot meals, a deciding factor for the survival of may pubs that generate income from food sales. The report is confusing. See highlighted remarks:

3.5 As an aside, it is important to note that the pub would does not (sic) include a kitchen and would not serve hot food. It would therefore not require additional flues or vents to the rear elevations. Planning permission would be required for the installation of external flues should these be proposed in the future. 

Informative note on the report: 

6  The premises shall only be open and used for the preparation or sale of hot food or for the sale of alcoholic liquor: 
Sunday to Thursday: 10:00-00:00 Friday and Saturday: 10:00-01:00 
And shall be cleared, with all ancillary activity completed, within 30 minutes of closing time, and the premises shall not be open outside of these hours. 


 No beer garden, no hot food - is the pub being set up to fail  and converted into a tenth flat?