WEMBLEY MATTERS News and views on local politics, the environment, climate change, culture and local history
Medical Consultant with expertise in vaccines, Dr John Licorish has recorded this message for Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in Brent. If you have any questions about the COVID Vaccination Programme, please speak to a trusted person, such as your GP, or visit www.nhs.uk
A borough-wide network of community champions to tackle health inequalities in Brent has been announced by the council.
The Brent Health Matters programme aims to address health inequalities – which are avoidable, unfair and systematic differences in health between different people. The pandemic has not only exposed health inequalities, but in many cases made them worse.
The first wave of coronavirus arrived early in Brent and the borough was hit hard. The virus particularly affected deprived areas with a high proportion of BAME residents, with Church End and Alperton seeing the highest numbers of cases and deaths in the whole of London.
Work has already begun in Church End and Alperton with volunteers taken on as Community Champions to help connect local people with services that can improve their health and also to understand better what help and support people need. (See the case studies below for examples)
Cllr Neil Nerva, Brent’s Cabinet Member for Public Health, Culture and Leisure, said:
The Brent Health Matters programme is a joined up approach from Brent Council, NHS partners and the community to tackle health inequalities.
Community Champions sit at the heart of the programme – helping us understand the local needs and perspectives of these communities. We’ve already seen some great examples of acting on feedback from the community, including the launch of a health and wellbeing telephone advice line, myth busting communications, PPE supplies and events such as our webinars about the COVID vaccine.
Recently, Brent Council successfully bid for a share of Community Champions funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Brent received the highest share of all the 60 councils that were allocated funding across the country, with an award of £733,333.
Cllr Nerva explained:
With the additional funding we will be able to rollout the programme from two wards to the whole of the borough.
This will see us recruit and train up to 40 paid Health Educators and launch a grants programme for community groups and individuals to develop new and innovative ways of addressing health inequalities.
We will also be able to develop a rolling programme of mental health and wellbeing awareness training and conduct a series of outreach days in our communities.
Harlesden Town Garden have linked up with Mutual Aid to grow food for people who need it in the community. The food growing project is Brent-wide and organisers are currently looking for growing spaces and schools and community groups who would like to be involved.
Mutual Aid currently has a small plot in the Harlesden Town Garden and are also maintaining an allotment at the Longstone Avenue site where the plot holder is unable to maintain the plot during the pandemic. They are currently looking for secure sites on which to grow food.
Contact details: info@harlesdentowngarden.co.uk
Kensal Green Mutual Aid: LINK
Friends of Harlesden Town Garden are holding their Annual General Meeting on February 13th via zoom. They are looking for new committee members. If you wish to attend the AGM please email using the address above and you will be sent the link.
Barnet Council today premiered a video about the history of the Welsh Harp made be their Local Studies Department:
The Golden Age of the Welsh Harp – continues the series of descriptions of the 1st edition 25 inch to mile ordnance surveys from the London Borough of Barnet’s library service local history collection by examining sheet 11/10. At first it looks as if there is very little on the map, but film explores the rich history of the Brent Reservoir (universally known as the Welsh Harp), during it’s golden age in the mid 19th century from the building of the lake, to the building of the railways and the coming of the suburbs. Stories include, monks, floods, drownings, pumps and propellers. Most interesting of all is the story of William Perkins Warner, and his endeavour to create London’s foremost holiday and visitor attraction.
Prospect House
The front entrance
Guest post by Selina, a resident of Prospect House about the issue that has galvanised social media in the past few days. See Kilburn Times coverage HERE. The families are faced with eviction with no apparent help from Brent Council or Shepherds Bush Housing Group. See former councillor Alison Hopkins' post on the scandolous background to this issue HERE.
Selina writes:
The squalor office conversion flat BrenCouncil dumped 17 families into meant, from the day myself and my son moved, in it has been one nightmare after another living here.
The area is infested with rats, half the time and even up until now we have no hot water or heating. We are constantly having to chase up Shepherd’s Bush Housing Group who are working for the private landlord of the property.
Sometimes we have no running water from any of the taps for more than one day at a time. We shouldn’t have to face this in the U.K.
The property is located on the busy North Circular Road we are constantly faced with noise pollution and air pollution.
The entrance gate is constantly broken so anyone from the streets walks into our car park and sometimes are flats' communal area. The other day a tenant was faced with a group of youths loitering around our flat communal stairway. We should be able to feel safe.
We are all being faced with eviction and quite frankly I am happy to say good riddance to this building but my main concern and stress is where are all 17 families being rehoused? Brent Council seems to be offering tenants little help and no options. Private letting landlords do not want DSS tenants or ask for high income guarantors which tenants cannot provide. so what are we left with little option and no response from Brent .
Our eviction notice is up on May 23rd 2021 where are all 17 families going by that date, which will be fast approaching?
Some of the story on Twitter:
The site (outlined in red) in context
The plans
The latest planning application for the redevelopment of the Woodfield Nursery site in Cool Oak Lane, near the Welsh Harp, fronted by Taylor Wimpey has been turned down by Barnet Council. LINK There have been other applications for this site which at present is occupied by greenhouses and polytunnels in poor condition and some brickbuilt offices, alongside a landscaping business. It is close to the Brent border and not far from the huge controversial private development, formerly West Hendon social housing, on the other bank across Cool Oak Bridge.
Some years ago there were applications by the owner of this site and the then Greenhouse Garden Centre in Birchen Grove for housing estates at both locations. Brent Council turned down the application. LINK It is now Birchen Grove Garden Centre under new management - I do not have details of the freehold ownership.
Barnet Council found that the proposed development would have a detrimental impact on Metropolitan Open Land and rejected the developer's claim that the greenhouses and polytunnels were permanent structures allowing development. The planners ruled that it did not meet the exemptions test for such developments.
In addition officers said that the proposal did not secure the affordable housing, delivery of employment skills and enterprise, or carbon off-setting required. It was a long way from public transport which would increase car ownership.
There were 139 comments on the Barnet planning portal of which 137 were against, one in support and one a general comment. Preservation of the Metropolitan Open Land and the Site of Special Scientific Interest, the importance of a 'green lung' in an over-crowded city, and defence of nature were all prominent. Among the objectors were Hendon Rifle Club, Silver Jubilee Residents Association, the RSPB and Brent Parks Forum. Brent Council also made a submission but it was not available on the portal.
It is unlikely that this is the end of the story!
A guest Post by Philip Grant
I was delighted to see, earlier this month, that the York House car park site could be used for a new youth centre, rather than a primary school. When I read the report to Brent’s Cabinet meeting, alarm bells started ringing. The Department for Education may have cancelled the ill-conceived Ark Somerville Primary Free School project, but the Wembley Park redevelopment area will still need a new primary school, by 2028 on the latest projections. Where would that be built?
NOT the Wembley Park Primary School, but hopefully something like it! (Image from the internet)
It has been known since the early 2000s that the large number of homes Quintain planned to build at Wembley Park meant that a new primary school would be required to serve the area. Brent agreed that the early stages of the development, around the Arena, should be mainly smaller homes, with the majority of the family-sized accommodation provided to the east of Olympic Way in the later phases.
Brent’s land use policy for the North East Lands. (Wembley Masterplan, 2009)
When the Council adopted its Wembley Masterplan in 2009, the “North East Lands” area (ringed in red on the map above) was identified as a primary school location (or one of them, if two smaller primary schools were to be built to meet growing demand for places during the course of the next 20 years, to 2030). This would put the school close to the main residential area, and next to a new park which was to be provided as part of the development.
That choice of location was carried forward into the Wembley Area Action Plan (“WAAP” – yes, that again!), adopted by the Council in 2015, which is still the current planning policy document for this area. The WAAP’s policy on school places emphasised the importance of securing sites for new schools, where large developments meant an increase in population. It also said that primary schools ‘need to be located directly within the area of population growth’, and that ‘nursery facilities … could be combined with other new … primary school facilities.’
The WAAP policy WEM 29, on Community Facilities, stated that ‘the council will … secure at least four forms of entry at primary level, to be secured on development sites within the Wembley area’. It also noted the ‘provision of one site in site proposal W 18.’ This site proposal covered the 4.9 hectare Wembley Retail Park, also known as the North East Lands, and said that ‘a new primary school will be provided’ on that site.
All very good - so what changed? At the end of 2015, Quintain submitted a huge “hybrid” planning application. It included detailed plans for a multi-storey car and coach park to the east of Wembley Stadium, and outline proposals for most of the rest of the land at Wembley Park which it had still to develop. Application 15/5550 has been called the Wembley Park Masterplan, but it was Quintain’s masterplan, not Brent’s.
The application (over 300 documents and plans) was one of a number considered at a Planning Committee meeting on 11 May 2016, just two days after the previous meeting. Most of the objections and discussions were about the car and coach park. The meeting went on for over four hours, and two of the committee members had gone home before it was approved by 4 votes to 1, with one abstention!
Among the outline proposals approved (with little or no discussion) was that the primary school site should be moved to the York House car park. Two sentences from the report by Planning Officers to the committee sum up how this was allowed to happen, despite it going against Brent’s adopted policy for the school’s location:
‘This plot has been identified by the applicant as an appropriate location for a 3 form of entry primary school and nursery.’
‘The proposal delivers the same strategic objective (the provision of nursery and primary school places) and is considered to be acceptable in principle.’
A cynic might suggest that the applicant, Quintain, had identified the York House car park site for commercial reasons, not valid planning reasons, so that it could build tall blocks of flats on the North East plot(s) which would otherwise be used for a primary school site.
But it was only an outline planning consent for the York House site, wasn’t it? When the detailed planning application for the school went before the Committee on 6 June 2018, members were given strict instructions by a Planning Officer. They were not allowed to consider whether the new school to serve the Wembley Park redevelopment should be sited elsewhere, the Officer Report saying:
‘the parameters material submitted with the application [15/5550] specifically identified the subject site (known as Development Zone YH1) for a 3FE Primary School and associated Nursery.’ and:
‘This reserved matters application is considered to be in material compliance with the parameters and principles established under the outline consent.’
Only one committee member voted against the application (here’s a reminder, if you don’t remember what happened to him!). Air pollution had been raised as a major problem with this site for a primary school, with dangerously high NO2 levels along Wembley Hill Road admitted in the application’s Air Quality Assessment. No account was taken of the effect on young children who would be walking to the school. In respect of the school building itself, Officers said that mitigation measures would be included in the conditions for the planning consent. These were having no opening windows on that side of the school below a height of 4.5 metres, and that the air intakes for artificial air circulation must be situated above that height.
Following that decision, the York House car park site was bought from Quintain by the DfE’s Education Funding Agency, for provision of the Ark primary school. Because of the number of increased primary places provided by Brent at other existing schools, and a slight (temporary?) fall in demand for places, the DfE have now dropped the York House school project. Which brings me back to my opening question – where will the Wembley Park primary school that Brent will need, within the next 5 to 10 years, be built?
After the 2016 “Wembley Park Masterplan” decision, Brent’s planning policy, in its emerging Local Plan, has depended on the York House school site. The North East Lands are currently the subject of Quintain’s detailed planning application, 20/2844, which would see tall blocks of flats built around three sides of the northern section of the new park.
Something had to be done, so I have started the ball rolling! I researched the labyrinth of planning application details and planning policy documents involved, and have submitted detailed objection comments on application 20/2844. These set out why the application, which is listed as a variation of conditions under the 15/5550 application, can and should be amended to provide a reserved site for a 3-form entry primary school, and nursery (and should be refused if it does not make that change). I am hoping that Martin can add a copy of my comments document at the end of this article, so that anyone who is interested can read them.
As well as sending my document to Brent’s Planning Officers, I have also sent it with covering emails to the Lead Members and Strategic Directors for Regeneration and for Schools, and to the councillors for Tokyngton Ward, to ensure that Brent is fully aware of its risk of having no site for the new primary school it has a duty to provide by 2028. And as this is a matter which would best be settled by agreement between Brent Council and Quintain, I have also sent a copy to the developer’s Head of Masterplanning and Design, and Head of Planning.
I have done what I can, but this is a matter of concern which present and potential future residents of Brent, and Wembley Park in particular, and those with an interest in education in the borough, need to be aware of. Action needs to be taken on this issue now, but I am just one “voice” (or laptop keyboard, during lockdown). If you agree with me, please make your views known by objecting to planning application 20/2844, or contacting an appropriate councillor or Council Officer. Thank you.
Philip Grant.
Philip's comments - click bottow right corner for full page version
Brent Council are running another webinar about the COVID vaccine this coming Monday (1st February) at the same time (between 6pm and 7.30pm).
Go to:https://vaccinewebinar2.eventbrite.co.uk to register for the webinar, which is titled ‘Are you hesitant to take the COVID vaccine?’
The webinar will aim to build trust amongst those in the community who are showing signs of hesitancy when it comes to having the vaccine. This will be achieved by outlining the facts, addressing all the pertinent issues and explaining the science.
The webinar will include presentations to help explain how the virus affects people’s immune system, the science behind the vaccine, and the issues of trust and doubt that local people might have in relation to the vaccine.
