Eulogy for a dead tree - killed by Brent Council

Tree surgeons at work in Carlton Avenue East

 Guest post by local resident L. Green

 

Last Monday a team of tree 'surgeons’ employed or commissioned by the Council came to Carlton Avenue East and began to demolish a beautiful and sturdy lime tree, one of the many that have lined both sides of this street for eighty odd years.

 

There was a small amount of fungus growing at the bottom; perhaps someone had complained, but the trunk was sound and the branches decked with as many leaves as all the neighbouring trees. A walk through most woodland will reveal similar fungus growing all over the place.

 

Early pictures of the street, from Brent Archives, show the newish houses with the recently planted trees in neat rows on both sides. The same view appears in the 1950's Terry Thomas film 'Too Many Crooks', shot in the area and screened at Preston Community Library in 2017.

 

When the Preston Park Estate was built in the 1920s and 1930s, tree lined avenues were clearly part of the overall vision for the development. Now in a period of great anxiety about climate change, we watch as trees are destroyed with few seeming to care. 

When I moved to this area in the 1990s I used to delight in walking along neighbouring Longfield Avenue. It was lined with a row of glorious Maples, which turned bright red and gold each Autumn. There was also cherry tree with deep pink blossom each spring. Now the Maples and the cherry have all gone, and there are only two trees left in the street, which is greatly diminished as a result. In adjoining Glendale Gardens most of the trees have gone, at least two have gone from Grasmere and in the last fortnight a tree has suddenly disappeared from the roundabout where Windermere Avenue joins Grasmere. All this devastation in just four streets - Is this typical of the whole of Brent, just how many trees have gone? Should we be mapping them?

In 2019 the Greater London Authority provided thousands of trees for Londoners to plant in their communities, and SKPPRA, the local residents' association duly organised a planting in Preston Park. However it seems likely that in this area at least, for every tree planted more than one has gone. The R number for trees is over 1!

Clearly there will be some occasions when a tree genuinely has to go. In Montpelier Rise there is a leafless tree that is as ex as the proverbial dead parrot, though unusually there is no demolition notice posted on its trunk. However, there should be a proper programme of replacement for all trees cut down, and a decent notice period when any tree is endangered, so that local people can respond when the destruction is unjustified.

Trees contribute so much to our environment - not just to the attractiveness of the street scene and as homes for birds and other wildlife, but to our safety. A neighbour had a large weeping willow in her garden which recently died. Now her garden floods more in storms, because the willow was drinking up water from the saturated ground. 

We need a programme of tree planting in our streets and parks, to both replace what has already been lost and to increase the overall number. There are plenty of local sites where trees could be planted. In Carlton Avenue East the rhythm of the planting will be spoilt by the absence of the cut down tree, and a similar tree needs to be installed as a replacement. The Borough needs to increase the number of trees, to play it's part in improving our environment and fighting climate change.

REMINDER: Bush Farm Family Funday Day in Fryent Country Park Sunday 12-5pm

 

By 83 or 302 bus alight at Slough Lane and walk along Slough Lane to the junction with Salmon Street (5 minutes). Walk straight across to Fryent Country Park entrance (be careful - there's a bend in the road).  The event takes place in the large paddock to the right as you enter.

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra marks its move to Brent with a collaborative live performance on the Kilburn High Road ahead of the September 11th 'Wemba's Dream' weekend

 

 

 Young Brent people aged 14-16 years old in performed two twenty minute concerts today with musicians from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra after taking part in a 3 day workshop.

The concert was the grand finale of a creative music project which saw young people from Brent and RPO musicians write brand new pieces on the theme of ‘Wemba’s Dream’ – a creative project exploring the hopes and dreams of Brent residents.

Wemba was the name of the tribe or its leader that  long ago cleared the local woodland to make an open space in which to live - a lea - hence Wemba Lea: Wembley. It was first mentioned in a charter of 825.

Last week Wembley Park announced the performance of'Wemba's Dream' on September 11th:

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is celebrating its 75th anniversary in September this year by announcing a permanent move of the Orchestra’s headquarters to Wembley Park. The Orchestra is delighted to build on more than 20 years of work with Brent Music Service to make our new home in Brent, and are eager to reach out to local residents to find out how we can engage in meaningful ways over the next months, years and decades.

To celebrate our new announcement, the RPO are working with Wembley Park to put on Wemba’s Dream, a fun-filled ‘festival’ of performances featuring RPO musicians and local artists during the weekend of 11 September. We would love for as many local people as possible to get involved in the celebration, both as audiences attending the weekend performances but also as artists, exploring the project theme through various mediums and sharing their responses with the RPO and the wider community. In the lead up to the performance weekend, the RPO therefore invites local residents to create their own artistic responses on the themes of ‘Brent’ and ‘Dreams’ and submit them to be included HERE, to create an online gallery of local people’s works. 

To find out more about the project theme and how to submit work, dowload the Wemba’s Dream Creative Resource Pack.

   

Wembley Housing Zone – is this an answer to Brent’s affordable housing needs?

  Guest Post by Philip Grant (in a personal capacity)

One year ago, the Brent Poverty Commission report by Lord Richard Best was published. The Commission reported that: ‘1 in 6 households (17%) live below the poverty line, doubling (to 33%) after housing costs are taken into account. More than 1 in 5 (22%) of children live in poverty, doubling to a startling 43% after housing costs.’ The report identified: ‘an acute shortage of social housing which has forced people into the private rented sector where rents are two or even three times higher.’

 

 

The following month, Brent’s Cabinet gave its full backing to the report’s recommendations, including those based on the key point that the Council needed to put ‘more investment in social housing’, and ‘build even more affordable homes.’

 

 

Next Monday (16 August), Brent’s Cabinet has the opportunity to put those recommendations into action, when they consider a report on implementing the Council’s proposals for the Wembley Housing Zone. I will set out briefly what is proposed, and why Cabinet members may wish to question how what Council Officers are proposing might be improved, to take better account of the Poverty Commission’s findings.

 

The Wembley Housing Zone (“WHZ”) was set up in partnership with the Greater London Authority, to speed-up the delivery of new homes. £8m of GLA funding was received, and part of this (£4.8m) was used by the Council to buy Ujima House in Wembley High Road. The other site (already Council-owned) which now forms part of the WHZ is across the road, where Copland School used to stand (whose buildings were demolished after Ark Elvin Academy moved into its new school further down the slope).

 

 

A detailed planning application for the site on the corner of the High Road and Cecil Avenue, and an outline application for Ujima House, were made towards the end of 2019. Although these were approved by Planning Committee in March and June 2020 respectively, the formal consents were not signed off until February 2021. 

 

It had been decided that the two WHZ schemes would be treated as one for “affordable housing” purposes, and Cabinet is now being asked to ‘approve the preferred delivery option for the regeneration of the sites’. The two sites between them will provide 304 homes, and it is proposed that 50% of these should be affordable homes. I will give a short outline of what is proposed for each site.

 

The planning approval for Ujima House (19/3092) would demolish the existing building and replace it with a ten-storey block. There would be workspace and a café on the ground floor, with 54 residential flats on the floors above. The 28 1-bed, 18 2-bed and 8 3-bed (only 15% of the total) homes would all be for rent by Brent Council at London Affordable Rent levels (not social rents - see below). 

 

 

The more detailed application for the cleared site at the corner of Cecil Avenue and the High Road (19/2891) would build blocks, between five and nine storeys high, containing 250 flats and maisonettes. 64 of these homes would be either 3-bed or 4-bed (26%). However, only 39% of the homes in this development would be “affordable”, and only 52 of the 250 are proposed to be for rental, at London Affordable Rent levels.

 

 

[These blocks would not be as grim as they look in the elevation drawings, as the plans include a courtyard in the middle!]

 

The affordable element for this larger site was set out in an “Approved Plan”, which was made a condition of the February 2021 planning consent. More than half of the London Affordable Rent homes (28) would be 3 or 4-bed. The plan also set out that the other 36 “affordable” homes (21 of which would be 2-bed) should be either Shared Ownership or Intermediate Rent (which would be cheaper than private rents, but not within the means of those on the housing waiting list).

 

 

There appears to be a discrepancy. The 52 + 36 affordable homes for the Cecil Avenue / High Road site in the planning consent make a total of 88. However, the WHZ report to Monday’s Cabinet meeting says that 152 affordable homes will be delivered (50% of 304), and to reach that figure 98 of the homes from the larger site would need to be affordable, not 88.

 

Fifty percent of affordable homes may sound good. But if only 106 of the 304 new units are to be for rent, and all of those at London Affordable Rents, how does that meet the Cabinet’s commitment to the recommendations of the Brent Poverty Commission?

 

London Affordable Rent levels are set by the GLA. They use a formula based on rent figures decided in 2017/18, which are then increased each year by the previous September’s Consumer Prices Index increase plus 1%. The 2017/18 figures used were around 50% of open market rents at the time, but were between 30% and 50% higher than the average “social rent” levels for the same sized homes charged by housing associations and London boroughs. 

 

An analysis available on the GLA website makes clear that London Affordable Rent should not be confused with social rent levels, and says: ‘social rent is the only housing type really affordable to lower income Londoners.’ That is why the Poverty Commission report said that Brent should seek to make more of its new “affordable” housing genuinely affordable, at social rent levels.

 

It appears that the Council Officers making these WHZ proposals to Cabinet are either unaware of, or have chosen to ignore, the recommendations on housing in the Brent Poverty Commission report. Their proposals would ‘bring the Cecil Avenue and Ujima House sites to the market together’, through the Council undertaking the construction on both sites, but “procuring” ‘a developer partner to share private housing sales risk.’

 

The Officer report to Cabinet says that their proposal is a “medium risk” strategy:

 

‘The Council takes and manages construction risk, which it has experience of doing through its housing and schools capital programmes, but a developer partner is sought to take and dispose the private sales housing, of which the Council has no experience. By financing construction, the Council can use lower public sector borrowing rates and reduce finance costs.’

 

One of the “risks” of following this route would be:

 

‘A developer may seek to influence the final scheme, compromising the overall place making vision and regeneration benefits for the area.’

 

If the Council is going to undertake and manage the construction on the two sites, why not make ALL of the homes it builds “affordable housing”, providing 304 Council homes for people (especially families) on its waiting list? Ideally, these should all be for social rent, for those most in need, as recommended in Lord Best’s report. If that is not financially viable, an alternative could be 50% let at social rent levels, with the other 50% (presumably the better ones on the Cecil Avenue site, which a developer would have wanted for “private sale”) at London Affordable Rent.

 

I can’t make any detailed suggestions on the finance side, as six of the seven Appendices to the Officer report are secret, because they contain “Information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (including the authority holding that information)". It appears that the press and public may also be excluded from Monday’s Cabinet meeting while these matters are discussed!

 

 

However, it is clear from the report which is available that there are ongoing discussions with the GLA over funding for the scheme, about ‘increasing the amount and affordability of affordable housing’:

 

‘Reviewing WHZ financial viability, the GLA have also agreed in principle an additional £5.5m grant to deliver the scheme, but which is subject to confirmation.’

 

If the Council would go back to the GLA, and its 2021-2026 Affordable Housing Programme, with proposals for the Wembley Housing Zone to provide 100% affordable housing, that could provide the answer.

 

I believe that this suggestion is worth serious consideration, so I am sending a copy of the text of this article to all of Brent’s Cabinet members (sent Friday 13 August at 4:23pm). I hope that at least some of them will raise questions based on it, especially about the need for social rent homes to be considered, at the meeting on Monday.

 

I will also send a copy to the Council Officers involved, and to the Chief Executive, for their consideration, and so that they can either provide answers, or at least agree to go away and look at this matter again. 

 

The Wembley Housing Zone provides a major opportunity to meet some of the housing need identified by the Brent Poverty Commission. That opportunity should not be wasted!

 

Philip Grant.

Will Brent Cabinet decide to set up its own review of Euro2020 Final disturbances and security breaches?

 

A month ago Brent Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee decided to recommend that the Brent Cabinet set up an internal inquiry, open to the public, into the disturbances and security breaches at the Euro2020 Final at Wembley Stadium. LINK  (The precise working is not available  as the Minutes of the meeting have not yet been published.)

The recommendation was not tabled at the subsequent Cabinet meeting but references from the Council's Scrutiny Committees are on the agenda for Monday's 10am Cabinet meeting. No reports are attached to the item.

The Brent CEO made a statement shortly after the Final but Brent Council leader Muhammed Butt was silent until the Football Association set up its own review. He welcomed the review in a statement on the Council website but did not mention any independent Brent Council review:

We welcome the independent review, announced by the FA, to get to the bottom of the scenes we saw at the EURO 2020 Final. It is important that a full and thorough review takes place and that any lessons that can be taken from the events of the England v Italy game are learnt.

The council will be fully participating in that review and will take on board any recommendations Baroness Casey has for activities under our remit.

Clearly there is a difference between participating in another organisation's review and carrying out your own. Cllr Roxanne Mashari, chair of the Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, recognised this in her own tweet after the FA's announcement:

Promising to see the FA announce an independently chaired review of security breaches at Wembley Stadium. Essential that this review includes Brent Council who have yet to commit to reviewing their own actions and producing a report on lessons learned.

Community Raphs' welcome decision not to redevelop the estate

 

The group St Rapahels Estate Community (Community Raphs')  have welcome Brent Council's decision not to redevelop the St Raphael's estate which is situated between the River Brent and Norfth Circular Road:

 

We at Community Raph’s are delighted with the news that Brent Council has decided to back down on the redevelopment options for St Raphael estate.

 

 We are privileged & thankful to be working with Ash (Architects For Social Housing) from 2019 to this present day, together we have helped produced a detailed report to highlight that infill with refurbishment is financially viable, socially beneficial & environmentally sustainable. This report was sent to the Chief Executive, Brent councilors, Mayor’s office and relevant parties.

 

We believe this report to have an impact on this announcement.

 

We at Community Raphs are proud to have helped support some quarters of the estate mental wellbeing, created by the lack of transparency, honesty, respect by the official bodies of brent, & more so the thought of losing their homes & community.

 

We have worked hard to highlight our plight to outside bodies like Ash and the wider community.

 

Moving on we must have proper engagement, transparency and clarity at every stage of this infill + (refurbishment) project. Despite this announcement our work is not done, we feel there are a few things that needs to be ironed out.

1 Morland Gardens – when (if ever) will Brent’s redevelopment happen?

 

The Victorian villa at 1 Morland Gardens, currently the “Brent Start” college. (Photo by Irina Porter)

 

Guest post by Philip Grant (in a personal capacity)

 

Over the past eighteen months, I’ve written a number of guest posts about Brent’s plans to demolish “Altamira”, this beautiful locally listed Victorian villa in Stonebridge, in order to redevelop the site. In June, I reported that their plans had been delayed, because Council officers had not carried out legal requirements, to build out over the highway and community garden in front of the property, which they’d been advised (in December 2018!) were necessary.

 

On 11 August 2021, notice was given of a Key Decision, made by the Strategic Director (Regeneration and Environment). Authority was given (subject to call-in) to re-tender for the Design & Build Contract for 1 Morland Gardens. 

 

I’m not sure what the “design” side of this is about, as it was a very detailed design which was approved by Brent’s Planning Committee (despite strong grounds for objection to the proposed scheme) a year ago! The design, by architects Curl la Tourelle Head, even won an award in September 2020 (after being nominated for it by Brent Council).

 

The award-winning design for the new 1 Morland Gardens building (with an added observation).

 

The Report on which the Key Decision was based makes interesting reading. The reason why Brent’s Property and Assets team need authority to re-tender for the contract is because they received no bids, after they invited tenders in February 2021 (via a one-stage mini-competition under the Notting Hill Genesis (NHG) Contractor Framework agreement). Following feedback from potential contractors, they have now recommended ‘re-use of the existing NHG framework and re-tender under a two-stage D&B contract.’

 

The first stage would be a Pre-Construction Services Agreement (“PCSA”), under which the contractor would design the project, and at the same time come up with an overall fixed price for which they would carry out the whole construction project. If that price is within the Council’s budget for the project, the second (build) stage would be awarded to them, to carry out the work.

 

This approach does come with some risks. The report doesn’t mention the risk that none of the contractors invited to bid might decline to do so. It does say: ‘The main risk of a two-stage D&B process is that the contractor may not stay within the budget so the Council has to re-procure an alternative contractor.’ But if the first contractor can’t build what the Council wants for the price they are prepared to pay, what chance is there of finding another contractor who will?

 

How much is the budget? The Report says: ‘The Morland Gardens project budget was approved by Cabinet on 14 January 2020. The total project budget is £43m of which £41.5m was assigned for the redevelopment of the Morland Gardens site…. The pre-tender estimate for the redevelopment works of £39,820,380 is within this budget.’

 

But when Cabinet approved the scheme in January 2020, the Report to that meeting said: ‘Current estimates of build cost (excluding decant) are up to £42m.’ Have building costs gone down, not up in the past 20 months?*

 

One indication is that the estimated cost (in the January 2020 Report to Cabinet) of the building work needed at the Stonebridge Annexe, to prepare it as a temporary home for Brent Start while the redevelopment is carried out, was £500k. When the contract for that work was awarded towards the end of 2020, the cost had risen to £1.2m.

 

When Brent’s Cabinet approved the 1 Morland Gardens project in January 2020, they were told that work was likely to begin on site in September 2020, and that work should be completed by July 2022. Now, IF any acceptable bid is received under the re-tender exercise, the first stage of a contract is due to begin in November 2021. 

 

If that goes successfully, and a price within budget is proposed by May 2022, work on site is expected to begin in July 2022, and take two years to complete. So, that’s when Brent’s redevelopment might happen. 

 

Although, given Brent’s history of errors over this project since 2018, it might not.

 

Philip Grant.

 

*[Forecasts published by the RICS suggest a rise in tender prices of around 6.5% between the first quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2022.]

 

Wembley High Road/Ealing Road closure after fire - AVOID AREA

 From Brent Police

 Please be aware there are road closures in WEMBLEY HIGH ROAD / EALING ROAD due to a fire, there are no serious casualties, road closures will likely be in place till 7PM tonight while we make the area safe, please avoid the area as there will be an increase of traffic.