Swan rescued in Welsh Harp but two found dead. Cause not yet confirmed.

 

 

Pictures Lulubells Rescue

A sick swan was rescued yesterday at the Welsh Harp by Lulubells Rescue and taken to a Swan Sanctuary approved specialist vet. The alarm was raised by Welsh Harp volunteers.

A dead swan was discovered on an island nearby and unfortunately  (see below) another was found dead this morning close to Cool Oak Bridge.   This has given rise to speculation that the cause may be botulism caused by algae and other factors but has not been confirmed.  Dead fish have also been found.  See Defra notes on Avian Botulism HERE.

A spokesperson for the Lulubells Team told Wembley Matters:

Our team have attended and managed to catch a swan yesterday  Our team searched the area and noticed several fish and small birds deceased 

On inspecting this swan our belief is it is botulism.

This swan is doing much better but it was touch and go as our team raced across London to get the treatment it needed urgently on route he had several mini fits due to dehydration and starvation. 

I would like to mention a special 'Thankyou' to Leila who contacted Lulubells rescue. Leila asked us to attend to rescue this swan who was clearly in distress.  Our team who are all volunteers James, Denise, Violet, and Lorraine,  attended and collected the swan 

We will do everything we can to help wildlife at the Welsh Harp and help the local community,

The Canal and River Trust  and Brent Council have been informed and there is a suggestion that the bodies be cremated to stop the spread of any disease.

 

1 Morland Gardens – Brent should rethink whether contract is lawful

Guesr Post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity 

 

1 Morland Gardens, June 2022.

 

Two weeks ago, in a guest post giving Brent Council’s response to me stating that the award of the latest contract for their Morland Gardens project was lawful, I mentioned that I had submitted a Freedom of Information Act request. This was to obtain what should have been the supporting evidence for the views set out by Brent’s Legal Director.

 

For those of you interested in the way that Brent Council carries out its business on our behalf, and in the continuing saga of the Brent’s plans to demolish the locally listed Italianate Victorian villa, “Altamira” (above), this is the latest position.

 

I have received a full response to my FoI request from Brent Council, and will ask Martin to attach a copy of this at the end of this article. The rest of this post is the full text of an open email which I sent to Brent’s Legal Director on 18 August.

 

This is an open email

Dear Ms Norman,

 

Whether the 14 July 2022 decision to award the Morland Gardens contract breached the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (“PCR 2015”).

 

In your reply of 1 August, to my email on this subject of 18 July, you wrote:

 

‘I would confirm that reference in my previous email to Regulation 33(8) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (PCR 2015) was indeed to Regulation 33(8)(a) and that when inviting a single contractor to bid from the Network Homes Contractor Framework (Framework), the Council complied with its obligations under Part 2 of the PCR 2015 in accordance with Regulation 37(6)(c).’

 

Later in that email, you replied to my suggestion that the award had not complied with Regulation 18 of PCR 2015 (see below), writing: 

 

‘As it is considered that the direct award procedure set out in Schedule 1 of the Framework was used appropriately, it is not accepted that the award has been made with the intention of unduly favouring one economic operator.’

 

I have highlighted parts of the quoted replies above, and would ask you to reconsider them, in the light of the following information.

 

My response to your reply, also on 1 August, included a Freedom of Information Act request. I have now received the information requested, and attach a pdf copy of the Brent Council response, and the Direct Award Evaluation Process (“DAEP”) document which was supplied with it.

 

The DAEP document makes clear that there were ten contractors within Lot 3 of the Network Homes Contractor Framework (“NHCF”), all of whom would have met the Council’s requirements for being invited to tender for the contract, if it had been a competitive tender process. 

 

Of those ten contractors, seven were also contractors under the Notting Hill Genesis Framework (“NHGF”), which had been used for the previous two attempts to award a contract for the Morland Gardens Development. Those seven had been invited to tender for the previous contracts. But there were three contractors within Lot 3 of the NHCF who had never been invited to tender for this project.

 

In your email of 1 August you wrote that:

 

‘the other contractors on the framework did not have the resources available to meet the timescales the council required in order to meet the GLA grant funding requirement to be in contract and the project beginning in August 2022 and did not have the same level of knowledge and experience of, or relationship to the project site.’

 

I would refer you to question 4 of my FoI request, about contacts with the other contractors within Lot 3 of the NHCF, to find out whether they had the resources to meet the Council’s timescale. This was the answer:

 

‘As described in the Direct Award Evaluation Process attachment as part of the response to query no.3, no other contractors on the framework were contacted.’

 

The relevant sentence in the DAEP document is:

 

‘It should be noted that the other 9 suppliers on the framework were not checked for capacity (3.1.2), previous performance (3.1.3) and resource availability (3.1.4).’

 

Even if it were assumed that the other contractors on the NHGF, who had been given the opportunity to bid in the previous Morland Gardens tender processes, in 2020 and 2021, could be discounted, by failing to contact the other three NHCF Lot 3 contractors about whether they would be interested in bidding for the latest tender process, I believe that Brent Council has failed to treat those ‘economic operators equally and without discrimination’, as required by Regulation 18 (1).

 

I also believe that the answer to question 6 of my FoI request, about Brent Council’s contacts with Hill Partnerships Ltd over a possible contract award under the NHCF, shows there was a clear breach of Regulation 18(3). This was the answer:

 

‘The Council contacted Hill Partnerships Ltd via phone call during the week of 30 May 2022. They confirmed that they had available resources to start in August and that they continued to be interested in this scheme and would submit a bid should the Council issue a further invitation to tender. They confirmed the frameworks they were on so the Council could undertake its due diligence on the frameworks as a potential route to market.’

 

This confirms that Brent Council, having discovered that it had run out of time to award a Morland Gardens contract to Hill Partnerships Ltd under the second NHGF tender process, set out to find a way to award a contract to them under a different framework. Having found out from this contractor which frameworks they were approved for, the Council’s ‘due diligence’ was to find a framework which allowed them to make a direct award of the new Morland Gardens contract to Hill Partnerships Ltd, and to make it quickly.

 

The procurement process, which Cabinet approved on 20 June, was designed ‘with the intention of unduly favouring’ one particular economic operator, Hill Partnerships Ltd.

I look forward to receiving your response to this open email, and to learning how Brent Council intends to deal with what appears to be an unlawful contract awarded for its Morland Gardens project. Best wishes,

 

Philip Grant.

 

Regulation 18 of PCR 2015:

‘Principles of procurement

18. (1) Contracting authorities shall treat economic operators equally and without discrimination and shall act in a transparent and proportionate manner.

(2) The design of the procurement shall not be made with the intention of excluding it from the scope of this Part or of artificially narrowing competition.

(3) For that purpose, competition shall be considered to be artificially narrowed where the design of the procurement is made with the intention of unduly favouring or disadvantaging certain economic operators.’

 

 

 

The new face of Wembley revealed in the view from Barn Hill

 

The tower blocks around Wembley Stadium, from Barn Hill

The 'Twin Towers' on former Chesterfield House site (Park Lane/Wembley High Road) and new blocks being squeezed in next to the Chiltern Line, from Barn Hill

 

There's quite an audience for old sepia photographs of Brent and its various 'villages'. I wonder of these might be looked back on with nostalgia one day with attention drawn to the Metroland houses in the foreground, that have long-since been demolished and replaced by more tower blocks?

New Rokesby Place homes rent set at London Affordable Rent could be over £50 a week higher than the original Social Rent!

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

I have watched and listened to the webcast of the Planning Committee meeting for the Rokesby Place application, so can now comment on the information given by the Planning Officer about the difference between the levels of Social Rent and London Affordable Rent.

The figure she gave for London Affordable Rent, for 2022/23 for a 4-bedroom house, was £198.03 a week. This comes from the table published by the GLA on the Mayor of London's website.

  London Affordable Rent from GLA website

The figure she gave for Social Rent, for 2022/23 for a 4-bedroom home, was £183.18 a week. This figure comes from the Government's website on social housing controls, and is the MAXIMUM that can be charged as Social Rent for a home of this size.

 

 

Social Rent caps for 2022-23 from the Government rent standards website

This gives the around 8% difference between Social Rent and LAR which Planning Committee were told.

If the Planning Officer had used the latest London local council average Social Rent figure from the GLA affordable rents table (2020/21), uprated by the statutory maximum annual increases (2021/22 = 1.5%, 2022/23 = 4.1%), the comparative Social Rent for a 4-bedroom home would be £147.75 a week. That's over a £50 a week difference!

What conclusion can we draw from this? 

Do Brent Council intend that any new homes they build for Social Rent will be for the maximum Social Rent level allowed by the Government? 

Or do they take the view "why not make them all London Affordable Rent?", and charge tenants an extra 8% for their homes, but still claim they are providing genuinely affordable housing to Brent residents in housing need?

Philip Grant makes FOI request to Brent Council to try to get to the bottom of Rokesby Place tenure change

 Philip Grant, a frequent independent contributor to this blog, has submitted a Freedom of Information request on the tenure of the two new houses in Rokesby Place, following last night's Brent Planning Committee.

 Dear Mr Ansell and Brent FoI team,

I am addressing this email directly to you, as well as to Brent FoI, as you have been delegated the authority to make changes to yesterday evening's Planning Committee decision on application 22/1400 (Rokesby Place), including authority to vary conditions. I would request that you do not issue a consent letter on that application until this Freedom of Information Act request has been fully dealt with, as the answers to it may require an amendment to Condition 3, Affordable Housing.

The reason for this request is my concern about the change made to the type of affordable housing tenure for the two new four-bedroom homes at Rokesby Place, and how this came about, as there does not appear to be any justification for it in the documents for this application published on Brent's planning website.

The application form for 22/1400, submitted by Maddox Associates on 13 April 2022, clearly states for each of the two new homes:

 
'Tenure: Social Rent'.

 

The Planning Statement for this application, published on Brent's website on 19 April 2022, when describing the Proposed Development, states:

 
'Tenure
3.4 The houses are all proposed for social rent.'

 

Despite this, the proposed Condition 3 in the Officer Report to Planning Committee on 17 August was as follows:

 
'3. The residential dwellings hereby approved shall be provided as affordable housing in perpetuity, and shall be delivered as London Affordable rent units ....'

 

Freedom of Information Act Request: 

In order to establish why the tenure of the two houses was changed from Social Rent to London Affordable Rent, please let me have the following information and documents (in pdf format, please) in respect of the Rokesby Place planning application 22/1400, covering the period from 13 April 2022 to 17 August 2022:

1. On what dates in that period were there any communications (other than the Application Form and Planning Statement referred to above), in either direction, between the applicant (or its representatives) and Brent Planning Officers about the type of affordable housing tenure for the two proposed new homes at Rokesby Place?

2. Please let me have copies of all of the communications in 1 above.

3. If any of the copy communications requested under 2 above have names redacted, please provide details of the status, employer and job title of each person whose name has been redacted, if this is not shown on the copy where the name itself has been redacted.

4. If there are no communications of the type requested in 1 above, please explain when, how and why, and on whose authority, the proposed Social Rent tenure (shown in the April 2022 application documents for application 22/1400) was changed to the London Affordable Rent tenure proposed in Condition 3 of the Officer Report in August 2022.

Please acknowledge receipt of this email and FoI request. I look forward to receiving your full response to it at an early date. Best wishes,

Philip Grant.

Brent's Head of Planning has replied, saying: 'We will of course look at the questions you raise and respond shortly.'

Are the Tory Government making the same mistakes about Monkeypox as their predecessors made about AIDs?

 

Brent Liberal Democrat councillors and the Liberal Democrat Diversity Officer have written to Dr Melanie Smith (Brent Director of Public Health)  and Cllr Neal Nerva expressing concern over the prevalence of Monkeypox in the borough and suggesting joint action to push the Government into action.. 

Diversity Officer.  Edan Powel, said:

The Government’s seeming inaction shows a lack of care towards the most at-risk communities. To me and the Brent Liberal Democrats, it is sadly unsurprising that the Government are not taking Monkeypox as seriously, given that it is currently mainly affecting men who have sex with men. Parallels can be drawn to the way previous Conservative Governments responded to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, a period of time that still haunts our community. We need urgent action now to prevent mass contagion.

The letter to Cllr Nerva and Dr Smith said:

We are writing to you with huge concerns about rising Monkeypox cases in Brent and across London. According to data released by the UK Health Security Agency on the 9th August 2022, our Borough is in the top 10 in London with the highest number of confirmed cases. This is alarming.

The World Health Organisation has already declared this a public health emergency of international concern. Therefore, we believe the Council must put pressure on the Government and the Department of Health and Social Care to make smallpox vaccines, approved for use against Monkeypox, available to eligible groups, especially in areas where the virus is currently increasing the most.

To date, impacted groups have very limited places to go to get the vaccine. A small Monkeypox walk-in vaccine clinic was open briefly at Guys’ Hospital, which was overflowing with people willing to get themselves and those around them protected. The Government’s seeming inaction shows a lack of care towards the most at-risk communities, and the DHSC’s disregard towards the NHS Constitution principles of bridging the health inequality gap.

As we know, Monkeypox can affect all; however, it is very important to recognise that it is currently disproportionately affecting men who have sex with men. It is not unsurprising therefore that the Conservative Government is not taking this seriously, given their party’s track record of discriminatory policies during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

People’s health and lives are not a game. We must collectively call for urgent action to protect the health of all. COVID has been a real wakeup call and even though many have recovered from the COVID virus, some still live with the damage that the virus has done to their bodies. We should not wait to find out what the long-term impact of mass contagion of Monkeypox could be. There is an opportunity to contain the spread of Monkeypox – let’s work together to push the Government to act now.

Kind regards,

Cllr Anton Georgiou, Leader of the Brent Liberal Democrata , Cllr Paul Lorber, Deputy Leader , Cllr Hannah Matin, Liberal Democrat Councillor for Alperton, and  Edan Powell, Brent Liberal Democrat Diversity Officer

I undesrtand that no response has been received as yet but will publish when available.

Information about Monkeypox from Guys and St Thomas' Hospital on this  LINK

Good Law Project issues judicial review after contracting authority ‘unlawfully’ awarded £70bn public sector net zero procurement process

 Good Law Project  has filed a judicial review against contracting authority East of England Broadband Network (E2BN) after it handed over a £70 billion procurement process to a Cornwall-based ‘micro-company’ specialising in education services.

 

E2BN’s ‘Everything Net Zero’ is a framework agreement that offers the UK’s entire public sector, from the NHS to local government offices, a way to award contracts even loosely connected to ‘climate’ issues without having to comply with the usual rules about public procurement. Despite covering up to £70 billion, management of the framework agreement has been handed over to just one company  - a consultancy called Place Group, listed by Companies House as a ‘micro-company’ run by two directors in Penzance, Cornwall, with net assets of just under £350,000.

 

Jo Maugham, Director of Good Law Project, said:

 

The drive to achieve Net Zero is one of the most important challenges the UK faces today.  Why was E2BN, ‘a regional broadband consortium’, allowed to write such a poor example of a framework agreement and to make a decision that could have such a far-reaching impact on the UK’s climate response? Why did they decide to outsource control over billions of pounds in emissions reductions contracts to the Place Group, a tiny company whose main experience seems to be in the education sector?  Why was Place Group the only company to submit a tender? These are vital questions the public deserves to have an answer to and which E2BN has so far refused to answer.

 

Good Law Project is bringing this action as E2BN’s decisions and conduct in respect of the Everything Net Zero Framework appear to be in breach of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. As it currently stands, it seems that billions of pounds worth of public contracts could be awarded by the Place Group to unspecified suppliers without open, transparent and fair competition. GLP has asked the Court to hold proceedings for a month to give E2BN another chance to provide proper answers.

 

In July, GLP along with Joanna Wheatley, Client Earth and Friends of the Earth successfully sued the Government over its strategy for delivering on its Net Zero targets, on the basis proposals were too vague and lacked enough detail.  GLP will continue to campaign for accountability and transparency where the Government’s approach to the climate crisis is concerned, including its procurement process.  

 

Planning Committee dumps Brent Poverty Commission recommendations on social rent and leave disabled residents of Rokesby Place in the lurch

 

The recommendation accepted by Brent Cabinet in September 2020

The Planning Committee tonight failed to challenge the change of tenure from Social Rent to London Affordable Rent in the Rokesby Place planning application and the conditions tonight. 

I suspect that this may mean that London Affordable Rent (LAR) is becoming the default position on Brent's new council housing. As Alan Lunt did before, in another application, the planning officer presenting the report minimised the difference claiming that LAR was genuinely affordable. She first said that she hadn't got the numbers but LAR was 'very, very similar' to social rent. She was given time to get the figures and stated  that the difference was that LAR was 8% higher than social rent but did not mention that unlike social housing services, LAR services are not capped.  No councillor asked her to explain why the change had been made.  

Making light of an 8% plus increase on the original rent, particularly during a cost of living crisis on accommodation for large families, is not acceptable.

It seems that  Labour members of planning committee can see things that are wrong, ask a question, but then withdraw even when the answer provided is obviously inadequate.

They challenge but don't pursue all under the  emolliative chairing of Cllr Kelcher.

Similarly vague answers from Maddox, Brent Council's agents, were accepted and this included a claim that argued there was no requirement to take into account the disability adjustments needed for existing disabled residents as a result of the development, as well as the dismissing of LAR even though(not mentioned by councillors) their report stated that the development was for social rent. 

This followed a heart-felt presentation by a Rokesby Place resident on the impact of the changes on access of the proposed layout changes on access for those using a wheelchair. It was left to Conservative councillor Michael Maurice )Ken ton  ward)  to oppose the application on grounds of lack of disabled parking as well as parking for visiting carers and medical staff,  reduction of  amenity space for existing residents and an increase in density on a very small site. Cllr Rajan Seelan (Labour - Wembley Central) also voted against on vehicle access grounds but the application was passed 6-2.

In her presentation resident Shahida Khan had said that the present car park that will be removed was the only place for a disabled person to get out of a car safely.  There was no evidence of an equality impact assessment for disabled people and she suggested that councillors get in a wheelchair themselves and tried to get in and out of a car. The process has not been fair and the disabled had not been considered. She wanted the application deferred for further consultation.

Residents voiced oncerns about the difficulty of access for fire tenders but officers argued that the new houses would be fitted with sprinklers so that rather than the requirement for a 45 metre hose distance from appliance to the house that a 70 metre distance would apply.

Cllr Ketan Sheth (Labour - Wembley Central) a former chair of planning committee, gave a 5 minute presentation opposing the application and supporting the residents' views. 

He said that while private amenity space and a shared amenity space had been provided for residents of the new houses, the plans took away well-used existing amenity space for current residents. What was now proposed was a scant replacement for what they would lose.

Residents' everyday experience of parking on the estate meant that they rejected the officers' assessment of parking needs. The suggestion that they park on nearby streets would put them in competition with existing use by staff from the post office sorting office, fire station,  police station and a nursing home.

He challenged the officers' view that it was unlikely that hedgehogs were present in the current green space by saying as well as residents' sighting, he had seen them for himself. The loss of mature trees was disappointing and would discourage wildlife.

Cllr Sheth was also concerned about the new development's impact on the privacy of residents. The new car park would mean that at night headlights would shine straight into bedrooms and the proximity of the amenity meant noise would disturb residents.

He drew attention to the discrepancy in the documents that referred to social rent  in the applciation and London Affordable Rent in Condition 3.  The Council's own Poverty Commssion had identified that LAR was not affordable to most Brent residents. He suggested that Condition 3 be changed back to social rent.

That was not to be.

BACKGROUND: Wembley Matters has raised some questions about the make up of the Planning Committee and its inter-relationships in a previous article Planning and Probity.