Guest post by Philip Grant
Last week. Martin gave a detailed report on the Planning
Committee meeting, which approved Brent’s plans for 1 Morland
Gardens by 5 votes to 2. After six months of working with Willesden Local
History Society members to oppose the Council’s application, I am
understandably disappointed with the decision, but my comments here are not
“sour grapes”.
It may be too late to stop the 1 Morland Gardens
proposals from going ahead. But this case has highlighted much wider concerns
about the way in which planning matters are dealt with in Brent. If Brent’s
planning officers have done what I allege in this article, what culture has
been allowed to develop in Brent’s Planning Service which made them think it
was acceptable?
I will explain how I believe Brent “won” this
planning battle. I may be wrong, and anyone from the Council is welcome to
reply if they think I am. If you are interested in how your local authority
uses, or abuses, its power, please read on, and make your own judgement.
As the applicant was the London Borough of Brent,
it would be reasonable to expect the Council, to comply with its own rules and
policies. It has a Planning Code of
Practice, which requires ‘that
officers and members consider and decide planning matters in a fair impartial
and transparent manner’, and ‘that
planning decisions are taken on proper planning grounds’.
Cllr. Roxanne Mashari's Foreword
to Brent's 2016 Development Management Policies
Brent Council’s planning policies are set out in
its Development Management Policies,
adopted in November 2016. In her foreword to this the then Lead Member for
Regeneration said it ‘contains detailed
planning policies which will guide the future development of the borough,’ and
that: ‘This plan aims to help make
this happen, by giving clear guidance; such as what can be built, where, how,
for what use, where restrictions apply and why.’
One of the planning policies adopted by the Council
in 2016 is its Heritage Assets policy DMP7, with paragraphs ‘giving clear
guidance’ on how that should be applied. At the start of my three minute
submission to Planning Committee last week, I set out the key message of Brent’s
policy DMP7, that ‘proposals for…heritage assets should…retain buildings, …where their
loss would cause harm.’ I also said that the 1 Morland Gardens proposals
went wrong over that policy from the start.
The first test in policy DMP7 that proposals need
to pass is that they ‘demonstrate a
clear understanding of the architectural or historic significance’ of the
heritage building. When Brent’s Property team and their architects had their
first pre-application meeting with Brent’s planning team on 8 March 2019, they
already had their development strategy and ‘strategic brief’ for the project. A
summary of that meeting records that: ‘Discussion
surrounding building height highlighted that a tall building could be justified
in order to include education space, affordable workspace,’ as well as
the residential side of the development.
Extract
from the application's January 2020 Planning Statement.
Another key point
from the 8 March 2019 pre-application meeting was: ‘Further engagement with Heritage Officer required to discuss loss of
locally listed villa.’ The Historic Building Assessment they had
commissioned for 1 Morland Gardens was not delivered until April 2019. Brent,
as applicant, had not properly considered, let alone understood, the
architectural and historic significance of the building before discussing its
‘loss’. This was an early opportunity for planning officers to say ‘you are
going down a path that breaches Brent’s planning policies – think again’, but
they did not.
Section 5.1 of the
application’s Planning Statement also says: ‘On balance, the design team concluded that the minimal significance of
the historic core is outweighed by the need for new education facilities and
housing in the Borough.’ There is no way in which the applicant could
have demonstrated a clear understanding of the significance of this heritage
asset, as required by policy DMP7, if the team behind the project thought it
had ‘minimal significance’. Its discussions with Brent’s Heritage Officer
should have told them that.
My own detailed
objection comments of 5 March 2020, and the initial comments by Brent’s
Principal Heritage Officer in April, both showed that the locally listed
building at 1 Morland Gardens had high significance, and that its loss would
cause substantial harm to that significance. It should have been clear to planning
officers then, if not before, that the application did not comply with Brent’s
policy DMP7. Again, they decided to proceed as if that didn’t matter.
It was not just
policy DMP7 that should have been flagged-up for Planning Committee to
consider. After some revised plans and documents were submitted in June 2020, I
put in a detailed objection comment on 17 July, that the proposals failed one
of the tests in Brent’s policy DMP1. Planning officers failed to disclose, or
discuss, that in their Report to the Committee. When I pointed this out, they
did mention it in their Supplementary Information, but in a way which I
described as side-stepping the issue on accessibility, when I spoke at the
meeting.
Extract from the Planning Officers' Supplementary Report, 12
August 2020.
Despite inviting
questions, I was not asked any by committee members on this. The Report did not mention that my objection involved
a failure to comply with policy DMP1. It did say, as a response to the
accessibility point: ‘the council’s
highways officer has confirmed that the revised servicing and accessibility
arrangements from [for?] Morland
Gardens would be acceptable in highways terms.’ “Highways terms” was not
the point at issue in the objection! The failure by planning officers to deal
with that objection properly meant that this fault in the application’s
proposals was concealed from Planning Committee members.
The key
“battleground” at the Planning Committee meeting was whether it mattered that the
proposals were ‘contrary to Policy
DMP7 of the Local Plan, and London Plan policy 7.8’, and that ‘the application does not accord with the
development plan’. Those quotes are from the Report to Committee, so
that it was not in dispute that the application could be refused on ‘proper planning
grounds’ (which is what decisions are meant to be made on).
At the end of my
presentation to the Committee, I had said:
‘If you approve this application, contrary to
Brent’s planning policies, you’ll not only condemn this valuable building, but
set a precedent that undermines Brent’s entire historic environment strategy,
and puts every heritage asset in the borough “at risk”.’
At least two
officers were asked to comment on that by committee members. Their response was
that each application was looked at on a ‘case by case basis’, so just because
they were being recommended to approve this application which went against
Brent’s Heritage Assets policy, it did not mean that any others would be
allowed. Frankly, that was disingenuous!
Key paragraph from Brent's Historic Environment Place-making
Strategy of May 2019.
Both Roger Macklen
and Stella Rodrigues, addressing the committee as objectors, had quoted from
the above paragraph. Every word of it cries out that valuable heritage assets,
like 1 Morland Gardens, should not be demolished. How could plans, by Brent
Council itself, that involved the demolition of the building, not undermine
that strategy?
The same is true
of the precedent that granting this planning permission sets. It was an
application by Brent Council to demolish a significant locally listed heritage
asset, despite 366 people petitioning the Council against this, over fifty
objectors and the local Ward councillors saying what the building contributed
to the character of Stonebridge. What is to stop any private developer from
applying to demolish, say, a group of locally listed cottages elsewhere in the
borough, with proposals to build a large block of “quality homes”, 50% of them
“affordable”, and using the same “public benefit” arguments? After all, Brent,
you gave yourself planning permission on those grounds, so if you don’t give it
to us as well, we appeal and you lose!
The planning officers’
reason for recommending approval was “public benefits”:
‘there would very
significant public benefits, most notably the social, economic and
environmental public benefits delivered by the proposed scheme, which include
the provision of a much improved adult education facility and the creation of
65 affordable dwellings, including larger family homes, for which there is an
acute need in the borough. Those social and economic benefits are in the view
of Officers sufficient significantly to outweigh the harm caused by the loss of
the heritage asset.’
In my original objection comments of 5 March 2020,
I had made the point that the Council’s own guidance on policy DMP7, after
setting out the many good reasons why ‘Policy
DMP7 … specifically seeks to protect Brent’s heritage’, says at para.
4.29:
‘The Council will resist
significant harm to or loss of heritage assets. It will assess proposals which
would directly or indirectly impact on heritage assets in the light of their
significance and the degree of harm or loss which would be caused. Where the harm would be less than
substantial, it will be weighed against any public benefits of the proposal ….’
I have added the bold text and underlining to
emphasise what I believe is the statement in the policy which should have
decided this application, against accepting the planning officers’
recommendation.
Although this point had been made clearly in my
objection comments, it was not referred to or discussed in the Officer Report
to Planning Committee. I made it in my presentation at the meeting, and again
in answer to a question from the Chair. So why was it ignored, by the majority
of the committee members? I believe that they were misled by planning officers.
Their recommendation was based on the argument that
the committee should make a ‘balanced judgement’, and that in doing so, the
public benefits (in the officers’ opinion) outweighed the harm. The Case Officer
presenting the application, said that it was ‘not fully compliant’ with Brent’s
planning policy. He said that it was not uncommon for ‘things’ (applications)
to come before the committee that were not policy compliant.
From my own experience of following various
applications, it is fairly common for various partial breaches of policy (e.g.
insufficient percentage of affordable housing, several storeys taller than
local guidance) to be ‘considered acceptable’ by planning officers. I can’t
remember one where the total breach of an entire policy has been recommended as
being acceptable!
Brent’s Heritage Officer had clearly said that ‘The demolition of the building … must be
seen as substantial harm to the significance of the heritage asset,’ and
that fact was acknowledged by the planning officers. Brent’s policy guidance
says that it is ‘where the harm would
be less than substantial’, that the harm is weighed against the public
benefits. What blinded some of the committee to those facts?
The Development Management Manager (“DMM”) told
them that they had to make a balanced judgement because the national policy
does not prevent the loss of non-designated heritage assets, such as locally
listed buildings. He made it appear that the National Planning Policy Framework
(”NPPF”) somehow took precedence over Brent’s own policy DMP7, and that NPPF
was a ‘material consideration’ that they must take into account in making their
decision.
Para.197, National Planning Policy Framework, February 2019.
Although the DMM emphasised that para.197 of NPPF
said that ‘a balanced judgement will
be required’, he did not complete the reference, ‘having regard to the scale of any harm or loss and the significance of
the heritage asset.’ NPPF does not over-ride local planning
policies, but those policies are supposed to be drawn up so that they do not
conflict with the national planning guidance. And Brent’s policy DMP7 is in
accordance with all of the heritage assets guidance in NPPF. It does have
regard to the scale of any harm or loss, by saying that the public benefits of
a proposal come into the balance ‘where
the harm would be less than substantial.’
The guidance that planning officers should have
given to planning committee on policy DMP7 was that because of the substantial
harm that would be caused, to a heritage asset of at least medium, but probably
high significance, the undoubted ‘public benefits’ of the proposals should not
enter into their consideration of the application. Committee members were told
the opposite of that.
And the irony is that the ‘public benefits’ were
only allowed to appear in a planning application in the first place because
Brent’s planning team did not point out to their Council colleagues, at the
pre-application stage in the Spring of 2019, that their proposals did not
demonstrate a clear understanding of the architectural and historic
significance of this heritage asset, the Victorian villa at 1 Morland Gardens!
R.I.P. “Altamira”, elegant survivor of the original
1876 Stonebridge Park? Or will Brent Council come to its senses, and not go
ahead with its flawed proposals for 1 Morland Gardens? If they do proceed to demolish
this beautiful building, it will be a tainted “victory”.
Philip Grant
