A unique invitation to Brent local election candidates - Community Assembly Saturday 19th March 385 High Road, Willesden

 An interesting and enterprising meeting coming up with a unique perspective (Click on image to enlarge):
 

 

Metroland Festival: John Betjeman film and talks on March 12th and March 15th

 From Preston Community Library.  Please note that the meeting on the 12th is in-person at the Library's temporary premises in Ashley Gardens. (Directions below) These meetings are part of their Heritage Project's Metroland Festival.

 This event is on Zoom:

Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman in his poem Middlesex.

Gentle Brent, I used to know you
Wandering Wembley-wards at will,
Now what change your waters show you
In the meadowlands you fill!
Recollect the elm-trees misty
And the footpaths climbing twisty
Under cedar-shaded palings,
Low laburnum-leaned-on railings
Out of Northolt on and upward to the heights of Harrow hill.

Philip Grant’s Deputation for Scrutiny Committee: item 9 – Poverty Commission Update

Philip Grant's presentation to Scrutiny Committee was abandoned due to poor internet connections.  Here it is: 

The Poverty Commission Update report asks you to ‘Note progress on implementation of the Poverty Commission recommendations as agreed by Cabinet.’

You are a Scrutiny Committee, and you should be questioning this report, not just noting it. Please look at paragraph 3.7, on Housing. What progress has been made on that?

Lord Best’s Poverty Commission identified the cost of housing as a major contributor to poverty in Brent, and recommended a substantial increase in investment in social housing.

Brent’s Cabinet agreed Recommendation 4, which said: ‘We recommend that in pursuing its strategic target to secure 50% of new homes as affordable, Brent gives special consideration to achieving more social rented homes.’

Yet you look at “Housing” in the Update report, and there is not a single mention of social rented homes!

The Update report says that the Council is making great progress with its New Council Homes programme, but how many of those homes are genuinely new homes for people on the housing waiting list?

Of the 655 homes already delivered, 209 at Gloucester & Durham in South Kilburn are actually replacement homes for tenants whose flats were demolished to make way for that development.

Of the homes delivered or ‘onsite’, 92 at Knowles House are for temporary accommodation, not permanent Council homes.

At Grand Union in Alperton, the figures include 23 for shared ownership. The 92 rented Council homes there will be for London Affordable Rent, which is higher than social rent levels.

If you ask how many of the New Council Homes Brent says it can deliver by 2024 will be at social rent levels, I think you’ll find the answer is “none”.

One place where Brent could increase investment in social housing is the former Copland School site. It is vacant land, owned by the Council, which has had full planning permission to build 250 homes there for over a year.

I wrote to Cabinet members last August, when that item was on their agenda, urging them to fulfil their Poverty Commission promises, and make at least some of this development homes for social rent.

Instead, they approved a proposal which allows 152 of the new homes there to be sold privately. Of the 98 Council homes, 61 would be for shared ownership, and only 37 for London Affordable Rent.

Overall, the Wembley Housing Zone scheme claims to provide 50% “affordable housing”. But the balance of that is 54 flats at London Affordable Rent level on the Ujima House site, and only 8 of those would be family-sized homes.

There would be NO social rented homes. That’s the reality hidden in this Poverty Commission Update.

You, as a Scrutiny Committee, need to challenge that, and demand that Brent Council does better.

You can recommend that in meeting its Poverty Commission commitments, it should invest in more social rent housing as part of the New Council Homes programme, including at its Cecil Avenue development.

Thank you for listening to me. I’d be happy to answer any questions.

Tackling Food Poverty in Brent: Right to Food Meeting Saturday March 12th March - All Welcome to Share Ideas

 

A timely meeting as the Cost of Living and Health crises deepen:

We don’t think anyone in Brent should go hungry. 

 

What are the best ways to organise in Brent for food justice and security?

Brent Right to Food want to hear your ideas to develop a local food strategy.

We know there is a huge increase in demand for help from Food Banks and Brent Mutual Aid.

 

This will get worse as living costs rise and force families to choose between heating and eating.

 

WHAT IS FOOD POVERTY?

In 2005 the Department of Health defined it as “the inability to afford, or have access to, food to make up a healthy diet”.  The Food Foundation [1]  says  it is the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.”

Food poverty affects so many of us - including working parents, pensioners, people with disabilities, zero-hours contract workers and anyone unemployed.

 

You may be one of the 11 million people in food poverty in the UK. Brent Poverty Commission found that in 2020 up to 1 in 3 households (17% - 33%) in this Borough live below the poverty line and 22-43% of Brent’s children live in poverty. The pandemic has made this worse.

 

Food poverty has a major impact on our health – hunger, malnutrition and obesity can lead to diet-related illness far beyond childhood and impacts on our mental health. Studies have shown that poor diet is also linked to disability and earlier death. [2]

 

Key Factors in Food Poverty

·      Low income - people simply cannot afford to buy food

·      Variable quality of affordable food on offer

·      Lack of support for nutrition, budgeting and cooking skills

·      More support needed from suppliers and regulators.

 

Most of us acknowledge the problem – so now we need to tackle it together

 

Your ideas are welcome at the Brent Right to Food Summit

on 12^th March at Newman College,  Harlesden Road NW10 3RN 4-7pm..

 BUSES 206, 226. 260, 266, 18 / Bus 187 from Harlesden station [ Overground and Bakerloo Line].

 

ALL WELCOME Free entry  - use the link for your ticket.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/brent-right-to-food-summit-tickets-268924559597

Sat, 12 March 2022   16:00 – 19:00 GMT

Newman Catholic College
Harlesden Road  London NW10 3RN

 

An afternoon of discussion and debate on the Right to Food, and how it can be implemented in the London Borough of Brent.

 

With participation from:

·      Dee Woods, Granville Community Kitchen

·      Rajesh Makwana, Sufra NW London

·      Kemi Akinola, Be Enriched

 

·      Katie Pascoe, Let's Grow Brent

 

·      Clive Baldwin, Human Rights Watch

 

·      Anne Kittappa, Brent Senior Policy Officer

 

[1] [Food Insecurity Tracking | Food Foundation  says:

 “Food insecurity (sometimes referred to as food poverty) is the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. To assess the impact of household food insecurity across the UK, The Food Foundation has been commissioning a series of nationally representative surveys since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic. We track and report on people’s experiences of food insecurity particularly focusing on at risk groups such as families, BAME and ethnic groups, people with disabilities and children on Free School Meals.”

 

[ 2] Health effects of dietary risks in 195 countries, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 - The Lancet

Spring awakening as frogspawn arrives on Barn Hill pond

 

Frogspawn in Barn Hill Pond this afternoon

I couldn't resist getting out in the sunshine this afternoon and visited the pond at the top of Barn Hill. As I arrived I disturbed a heron that flew silently  just a couple of feet over my head. I had heard that the frogs had been spawning and sure enough the iris bed at the north end of the pond has plenty of spawn.

I put a plea out on Twitter for dog owners to keep their dogs away from that area as last year a group of dogs owners repeatedly threw their dogs stick and balls amongst the spawn, resulting in much splashing around. The owners were busy chatting and I don't think they realised what was happening.  Inevitably, as the water is shallow here, the spawn got churned up in the mud.

Later there was a late frost and more damage was done.

Frogs and toads are in decline and we must do all we can to protect them.

Democracy in Brent – are Cabinet Meetings a Charade?

 

Guest Blog (by Philip Grant in a personal capacity)

 

I watched the Live Stream recording of Brent’s Cabinet Meeting on 7 February 2022, as I have an interest in housing matters, and wanted to see how the petition from residents about the Council’s “infill” plans at Kilburn Square was dealt with. Martin published a “blog” about this, and underneath it you can see in the comments that I sent a follow-up email to the Leader of the Council.

 

My email to Cllr. Muhammed Butt linked his attitude at that meeting, and claims that building new Council homes was his top priority, to Brent’s plans to only provide 37 affordable rented homes in the 250-home development on land that it owns at Cecil Avenue in Wembley. Cllr. Butt replied, and his full response was included in my “guest blog” on 9 February.

 

At the end of his email to me, Cllr. Butt wrote: ‘I look forward to hearing that you will be watching the next Cabinet meeting; it is a fantastic thing to see more people actively involved with local democracy.’ But how much “local democracy” do we really receive through these Cabinet meetings?

 

Margaret, on behalf of the Kilburn Village Residents’ Association, was allowed to speak to the Cabinet. This was one of the democratic “improvements” which Cllr. Butt introduced after his Labour landslide win in the May 2014 local elections. He told our local newspaper soon afterwards: ‘New proposals allow the public to speak in council meetings for the first time ever is aimed at bettering how the community engages with the council and allows residents to hold us to account.’

 

But how much difference did what she said to them make? How much difference could it have made? I’m afraid that evidence I’ve recently received, under a Freedom of Information Act request, suggests that the decisions supposedly made at public meetings of Brent’s Cabinet, which people can watch and even participate in, have already been made beforehand, at meetings between Cabinet members and Senior Officers behind closed doors.

 

 

Regular readers will know that I have been trying to understand the justification for Cabinet’s decision on 16 August 2021 to allow a private developer to profit from the sale of 152 of the 250 homes on Brent’s Cecil Avenue housing scheme. This is the main site in the Council’s Wembley Housing Zone (“WHZ”). It was difficult to discover the reasoning, partly because most of the supporting documents were “exempt” (= secret), and partly because Cabinet members (and their Officers) were reluctant to provide explanations.

 

Extract from the WHZ report to Cabinet on 16 August 2021.

The statement that ‘Cabinet Members were consulted in July 2020’ was the subject of my latest FoI request, because there was nothing about that in the minutes of the Cabinet Meeting held on 20 July 2020! 

 

I asked for details and supporting evidence about that “consultation”, and the results were a surprise (to me at least). These showed that, as well as the formal public meetings of Cabinet, for which we can see the agenda and reports and watch a broadcast, there are at least two other types of regular meetings of Cabinet Members and Senior Council Officers, to which we are not invited.

 

Heading from the WHZ Report to the internal Policy Co-ordination Group meeting in July 2020.

 

The “consultation” which the 16 August 2021 Cabinet Report referred to actually happened four days before the 20 July 2020 Cabinet Meeting, at a meeting of the Policy Co-ordination Group (“PCG”), a body that I had never heard of before. In many ways, it appears to be very like a Cabinet Meeting, except that the public are not made aware of it, and are not invited! This is the “preferred delivery option” paragraph from the WHZ Report to that meeting:-

 

 

From this, it appears that the “preferred option”, to involve a private developer who would sell half the WHZ scheme homes for profit, had been on the cards since at least December 2019! It is not only the Report that looks very like one prepared for a Cabinet Meeting. The written record of this meeting, though described as ‘PCG Meeting Action Points’, looks very like the minutes of a Cabinet Meeting. I received this document in response to my FoI request, although Council Officers treated it as an Environmental Information Request, which allowed them to redact one paragraph in it.

 

 

Extract from “minutes” of the Policy Co-ordination Group meeting on 16 July 2020.

 

I understand, and accept, that there does need to be some co-ordination of policies across the different service areas of Brent Council, but does this really need a quasi-Cabinet Meeting to achieve that result?

 

My FoI request had asked for details and evidence of any other discussions of the “preferred delivery option” between July 2020 and the official decision on this at the Cabinet Meeting on 16 August 2021. The response to that produced evidence of another type of internal “Cabinet Meeting”, referred to as a Leader’s Briefing, held on 26 July 2021. This “briefing” appears to be effectively a trial run-through for the Cabinet Meeting, but held three weeks before the public meeting!

 

As well as all members of the Cabinet, the FoI response gave details of the Senior Officers attending:

 

‘16 Council Officers were invited to attend the briefing, positions below :

 

 

Chief Executive; Head of Executive & Member Services; Strategic Director Children & Young People; Personal Assistant to the Leader of the Council; Director of Finance; Head of Communications, Conference & Events; Strategic Director Community Wellbeing; Strategic Director Customer & Digital Services; Director Legal, HR, Audit & Investigation; Assistant Chief Executive; Governance Manager; Strategic Director Regeneration & Environment; Scrutiny Officer; Head of the Chief Executive Officer; Senior Administrator; Operational Director Regeneration, Growth & Employment; Head of Regeneration.’

 

 

It is interesting that the Head of Communications attends these Leader’s Briefing meetings. Could that be so that he can prepare the publicity for the Cabinet decisions, in advance of them officially being made? 

 

 

The “minutes” of the Leader’s Briefing meeting on 26 July 2021 are in the form of an email from a Governance Officer, and I will ask Martin to attach a copy of that document at the end of this article, should you wish to read them. You will note that there may, or may not, be amendments to the Reports which Cabinet members have received for the briefing, before they appear along with the agenda for the official Cabinet Meeting on 16 August. There was also mention of another PCG meeting, scheduled for September 2021.

 

 

The reports that went to the Leader’s Briefing meeting were marked “Restricted”. This may be because they might be changed, or because they should not be “leaked”, which would reveal that Cabinet members had already considered them before the official meeting. There was actually a slight change in the wording of the “preferred delivery option” paragraph 3.5.1 between the two dates. 

 

 

In the 26 July report (below), members had ‘endorsed’ Delivery Option 2 a year before. In the 16 August report (see third image above), they had ‘indicated a preference’ for it. This may only seem a small difference, but it gives the suggestion, in the first publicly available document, that no final decision had been reached before Cabinet officially considered the matter in August 2021.

 

Extract from the draft WHZ Report to the Leader’s Briefing on 26 July 2021.

 

What happened when Cabinet did consider the WHZ publicly on 16 August 2021 (having previously considered it in private several times since December 2019)? There were problems with the Live Streaming of that meeting, and the recording is only available towards the end of the WHZ item. 

 

 

We hear Cllr. McLennan speaking about the ‘really, really good news’ that WHZ includes a number of larger homes for families in housing need, and that ‘many of them will be affordable’. Cllr. Butt then starts by saying ‘this is actually great news’, and goes on for over a minute, commending how well the Council is doing with its housing programme, and delivering homes for people who need them on its waiting list.

 

 

The Council Leader speaking about WHZ at the 16 August 2021 Cabinet Meeting.

 

The Leader of the Council was actually talking about a Brent housing scheme, on Council-owned land at Cecil Avenue, where 152 of the 250 homes would be sold for profit by a private developer, 61 of the so-called “affordable” homes would be for shared ownership or Intermediate Rent, and only 37 would be available for rent to local people in housing need at London Affordable Rent level! On the other WHZ site, across the High Road, although the 54 flats would be for London Affordable Rent, only 8 of them would be family-sized.

 

 

To me, that performance was just misleading “grandstanding” – playing to the public gallery over a decision that had been made in advance of the formal Cabinet Meeting, and which he hoped no member of the public had actually read the detail of the Report (and could not read any of the details in the “exempt” Appendices to it).

 

 

I asked in the title ‘are Cabinet Meetings a charade?’ You may know “Charades” as a game involving guessing words from acted clues. I think that Brent’s Cabinet are playing a game with the borough’s residents. They are acting at their meetings as if they have considered and decided the Reports attached to their agenda, after hearing what any members of the public or backbench councillors have to say at the Cabinet Meeting.

 

 

A charade (singular) is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘an absurd pretence’. If the items on the Cabinet’s agenda have been considered and decided in advance, at a Policy Co-ordination Group meeting or Leader’s Briefing, then Cabinet Meetings are a charade.

 

 

Philip Grant.

 

Brent Elections Returning Officer steps into skips row

 

Carolyn Downs, who as well as being Brent Council CEO is also the Returning Officer for the May 5th local elections, wrote to party returning officers this afternoon:

 

Dear all

You will be fully aware that purdah starts on 24th March. All councillors including those who will be seeking re-election have been advised of this and to be very careful of any publicity used in the near run up to that date. A particular issue has been drawn to my attention.  The council has been working with the community and residents associations on a programme of community skips located in wards around the borough where people can take rubbish. This initiative is warmly welcomed by the community. We have a few more to take place between now and 24th March and we have advised all Councillors not to promote themselves through their own or party publicity in relation to these skips. I am sure that you, as agents, would agree that prospective candidates who are not currently Councillors should desist in doing so as well to avoid this valuable initiative being marred for the community by [political] controversy. I would be grateful for your cooperation.

 

Carolyn Downs

Chief Executive