Brent Fights Back - organising meeting November 30th 7pm Black Music Co-op, Willesden

 

Brent gets 'enormous slice of funding' from Arts Council for 6 organisations

 

 Some Deafinitely Thatre productions

From Brent Council

 

Six creative and cultural organisations in Brent are set for a £5million boost over the next three years, ensuring more local people can enjoy fantastic, fulfilling art and culture on their doorstep.

 

The funding from Arts Council England is part of their investment programme for 2023-2026. This massive investment comes at a time when Arts Council England has prioritised bringing art, culture, and creativity to more people outside of central London. As an outer London Borough Brent will benefit from the approach to spread funding culture to outside central London.

 

£5,061,423 is being split between the following organisations:

• Deafinitely Theatre, £795,249
• Fresh Arts C.I.C, £300,000
• Kiln Theatre, £2,837,703
• Magic Sound Ltd, £450,000
• Mahogany Community Ventures Limited, £473,532
• The Children's Bookshow, £204,939
  

 

By funding new organisations in new places, the Arts Council is delivering on the vision set out in its strategy, Let's Create: that everyone, everywhere, deserves to benefit from public investment in culture and creativity.

 

Cllr Fleur Donnelly-Jackson, Cabinet Member for Community Engagement, Equalities and Culture said:

We are proud that six incredible cultural organisations that are based in Brent have been awarded this enormous slice of funding by Arts Council England. Brent is the Borough of Cultures, brimming with talent and diversity.

Our successful Brent 2020 programme helped build a tremendous amount of momentum and this extra Arts Council funding is further evidence that the creatives industries are alive and well in Brent.

This funding will help this infectious energy go even further and I can’t wait to see the positive impact of this investment come to life.

 

Clary Salandy, co-founder of Mahogany Carnival Design, said:

We were very moved to receive the email with positive news about remaining in the NPO portfolio. In these times, this is not just a lifeline for a little arts organisation like us; it is also an investment in the creative futures of the diverse people of Brent and in the preservation and evolution of the Carnival art form.

This NPO success will create more opportunities for developing the creative skill of our community through more brilliant carnival work.

Speech extracts from Enough is Enough Rally at Brent Central Mosque, Willesden Green

 

 

 

Speakers at the West London Enough is Enough Rally included Dr Riaz, Chair of the Mosque, Dawn Butler MP, Jo Grady of UCU, Sarah Emm of ACORN, Muhammed Butt, Leader of Brent Council, and Mick Lynch (RMT).

Mick Lynch sets Brent on fire at West London Enough is Enough Rally at Central Mosque of Brent

 

Hundreds of local people attended the  West London Enough is Enough Rally at the Central Mosque of Brent last night and heard from Dr Mohammed Riaz, Chair of the Mosque, Dawn Butler MP, Sarah Emm of ACORN, Jo Grady of the UCU and Mick Lynch of the RMT.

Brent Trades Council announced the formation of Brent Fights Back to bring together local workers and their trade unions, with community organisations and individuals who are campaigning on the issues affecting their daily lives. The audience (and readers) were invited to an open meeting on November 30th at 7pm to launch the organization. It will be held at Brent Black Music Co-op, 385 High Road, Willesden, NW10 2JR to discuss what we should do in Brent and how to take the campaign forard.

 

Brent’s New Affordable Council Homes promises shredded!

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity 

 

When I shared my open email to the Council Leader on Morland Gardens in a guest post earlier this week, I drew attention to the “Update on the supply of New Affordable Homes” report, which is going to next Monday’s Cabinet meeting. Now I will highlight some points from that.

 

It’s only a month since I wrote about Brent’s Affordable Council Housing – the promises and the reality, but that reality has got a whole lot worse. Then I was writing about Social Rent, London Affordable Rent (“LAR”) and Shared Ownership (“SO”), which is neither ownership nor “affordable” housing. Now Council Officers want to include some new terms, Open Market Rent (“OMR”) and Open Market Sale (“OMS”) into Brent’s New Council Homes programme.

 

Extract from the “Update” Report for the 14 November Cabinet meeting.

 

They are saying that some (in fact, quite a lot!) of the new homes the Council builds can no longer be for social housing, which is what Council homes are meant to provide. They will have to be for rents that are not genuinely affordable, such as OMR (or Local Housing Allowance level, as it is sometimes referred to), or they will have to be for shared ownership or sold off privately, the same as any other developer would do. 

 

‘What is the point of the Council building new Council homes which are not new homes for rent to Council tenants?’ you might ask. The answer from the Corporate Director, Resident Services, is that you have to “convert” some of those homes to unaffordable homes, or homes for sale, in order to be able to afford to build other homes which are for affordable rent. But the Council, as a social housing provider, can’t offer unaffordable homes to Council tenants, so it has to pass on the OMR and SO homes it is “converting” to someone else.

 

The start of a long list of recommendations for Cabinet to agree on 14 November.

 

The Report recommends that the “conversion” will be done by ‘Officers’. Which Officers? – it doesn’t say (why is that?), but many of the other recommendations delegate the power to make decisions to the Corporate Director, Resident Services (the Officer who signed off the Report, Peter Gadsdon). 

 

As will be seen from my first extract from the Report above, the “conversion” will be ‘via the Council’s wholly owned subsidiary company i4B.’ Because i4B is a separate “legal person”, it can charge higher rents than the Council itself would be allowed to charge. The Council would build the homes to be “converted”, then sell them to i4B (who would pay for them with a loan from the London Borough of Brent), for rent to Brent residents (possibly homeless families). 

 

But as well as making these recommendations, Peter Gadsdon is also a director of i4B, which would benefit from the extra properties in its portfolio. Isn’t that a conflict of interests? And another director of i4B is Cllr. Saqib Butt, the brother of the Council Leader who will chair the Cabinet meeting considering the recommendations. I have raised these potential conflicts of interest with Brent’s Monitoring Officer, and await her response.

 

How many of the New Affordable Homes are likely to be “converted” to unaffordable ones? It could be as many as 50% of them, on the basis of this recommendation from the Report:

 

And it is not just ‘new planning permission applications’ that that are at risk of losing up to 50% of their affordable homes. Windmill Court, which has an “affordable housing” condition in its planning consent specifying that the tenure of the homes must be for no more than LAR, is one of the schemes proposed for “conversion”. The planning consent gave the reason for the LAR condition as: 'In the interests of proper planning.'

 

Extract from the Update Report, including proposals for Kilburn Square and Windmill Court.

 

Also on this particular list (there are others) for “conversion” is Rokesby Place. Regular readers may remember that I have been challenging the action by Brent’s Planning Officers in secretly changing the tenure for those two new 4-bedroom Council houses from Social Rent to the more expensive LAR. Now the Report to Cabinet wants to change things again, and either sell off one of the houses, or transfer it to i4B, to be let out at OMR! 

 

The Rokesby Place  planning application was pushed through, against the wishes of existing residents, on the grounds that the Council had to use any “spare” land on its estates to build genuinely affordable homes for local people in housing need. Now one of the two houses won’t be, despite the Report’s empty words: ‘Large family sized homes at low rent remain a priority for the Council.’

 

 
The Update Report’s section on the Council’s Wembley Housing Zone.

 

Another housing “battle” I’ve been having with Brent, for the past 15 months, is to try to get more genuinely affordable Council homes at their Cecil Avenue development. It’s a vacant, Council-owned site which has had full planning permission for 250 new homes since February 2021. The Report says that since Cabinet approved the project in August 2021, ‘officers have advanced competitive procurement of a delivery partner.’ When there are 250 homes which could be for Brent residents in urgent housing need, that’s very slow progress!

 

The delay has been even longer, because Officers carried out a “soft market testing” exercise in April 2021 (which was so soft that it guaranteed the result they wanted, to justify their recommendations to Cabinet). They could have started the project last year, when the cost of borrowing to build the homes (152 for the “developer partner” to sell for profit, 61 as intermediate housing - SO or OMR – and only 37 for LAR!) would have been much lower. What further cuts to the affordable housing in the Wembley Housing Zone are hidden in ‘(Exempt) Appendix 3’, which the public will never be allowed to see?

 

 Now, quickly, here are two more recommendations to Monday’s meeting from the Report: 

 

 

What are Modern Methods of Construction (“MMC”)? I would suggest you read a blog article on “Airspace” which Martin published in October last year. ‘A minimum of 25% of all homes’ out of the 700 the latest round of GLA funding will almost certainly include Gauntlett Court in Sudbury, and probably Campbell Court and Elvin Court in Kingsbury. Has there been any genuine consultation with residents of those Council estates yet?

 

 

 

 

The Report is recommending “conversion” of LAR homes the Council proposes to build to SO, when it has no evidence that there is any demand for them! There are already a large number of shared ownership homes built by, or in the pipeline from, private developers on big schemes in Wembley and elsewhere. Those developers are forced to provide a proportion of affordable homes as part of their plans, and they make as much of it as possible shared ownership, because that is recognised for planning purposes as “affordable housing”, even though it is unaffordable to most people in housing need in Brent.

 

There was an interesting Q&A on Council housing, and shared ownership, as part of consideration of Brent’s Draft Borough Plan 2023-2027, at the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee meeting on Tuesday, 8 November. I’ll end this post with a transcript (from the webcast recording - at around 2hrs 5mins in!) of that exchange. 

 

Cllr. Anton Georgiou (“AG”): Just for complete clarity for the committee, what does Brent Council define as a Council home? Most people define a Council home as being a property owned by the Council that is let at Social Rent.

 

Carolyn Downs, Chief Executive (“CD”): That is what we do as well.

 

AG: From documents that I’ve read, it seems that Brent have extended this to include Shared Ownership, London Affordable Rent, temporary accommodation and assisted living.  

 

CD: Absolutely not. When we talk about one thousand general new Council homes they are Council homes. It is Council housing.

 

 

AG: This isn’t Shared Ownership?

 

CD: We have not ever built a single Shared Ownership. Developers might, we the Council haven’t.

 

Shout from an unidentified person: Not genuinely affordable!

 

Cllr.Muhammed Butt, Council Leader:  Apologies. What you just said there, right, comes under the broad banner of affordable homes, right, but we do actually build Council homes.

 

Cllr. Rita Conneely, Chair: So, I’m going to draw this item to a close.

 

You can make up your own mind, from what was said at that meeting and from the Report, how committed Brent Council are to their promise of ‘genuinely affordable housing for families in Brent’. 

 

My own “Update on the supply of New Affordable Homes”? Far fewer than were promised ahead of last May’s local elections!

 

Philip Grant.

 

Join the Global Day of Action for Climate Justice on Saturday. Assemble 12 noon at Shell Building on the South Bank

 

 

London Demonstration assemble 12 noon at the Shell bulding on the South Bank on Saturday 

 

Nov 12th will see mass mobilisations across the country and put thousands of people on the streets to demand Climate Justice in solidarity with the Global Day of Action called by Egyptian groups at COP27. From the cost of living crisis, to floods in Pakistan and Shell’s criminal profits – we will come together as one movement to demand justice.

Implications for neighbouring schools' pupil numbers & budgets if Islamia Primary moves to Preston ward

A Brent resident has written to Brent Council raising issues over the impact of an Islamia Primary School move from Queens Park to Preston ward.

It's important to recognise the negative impacts the proposed move will have on the other nearby schools. The School Cuts site (schoolcuts.org.uk) illustrates the financially difficult position they are already facing next year, notwithstanding any previous or current budget deficits:

 

    - Byron Court Primary face £134k cut in 2023-24, equivalent loss of £180 per pupil

    - East Lane Primary face £181k cut, loss of £289 per pupil

    - Preston Park Primary face £61k cut, loss of £117 per pupil

    - Wembley Primary face £121k cut, loss of £148 per pupil

    - Mount Stewart Infant face £71k cut, loss of £281 per pupil

    - Mount Stewart Junior face £60k cut, loss of £192 per pupil 

    - Sudbury Primary face £152k cut, loss of £185 per pupil 

 

Moving Islamia Primary into an area with a high density of primaries may solve one problem but will create many more for the other schools, who will lose families wanting to attend Islamia as a faith school, exacerbating their financial problems and inevitably lead to cuts in activities and staff redundancies - a very slippery slope that is difficult to recover from. 

 

A very real example of this was the closure of Roe Green Strathcona Primary (a local authority school) on the exact same site. The public consultation in 2019 found 541 respondents in favour of keeping the school open whilst just a single respondent disagreed. Previously the then Lead Member for Young People and Schools, Cllr Amer Agha cited a drop in demand and excess places to justify the closure. Our local authority schools are already under immense pressure, and these proposals could very well over time lead to more closures. 

 

It’s vital that these proposals fit into the Council's School Place Planning Strategy 2019-23, https://legacy.brent.gov.uk/media/16419833/school-place-planning-strategy-2019-23-refresh-nov-21.pdf  yet it doesn't appear that they do:

 

    - South Kilburn - very close to Islamia's current location - is cited as an existing growth area for housing (page 6) with many developments already completed or in the pipeline. In contrast, Northwick Park is still many years away from that

 

    - the Council's duty to provide a 'reasonable offer' within 2 miles of home for children under 8 (page 9) clearly doesn't work for existing families if the school moves 6 miles away from the current site

 

    - strategy document recognises the difficulties spare places can cause schools (page 11). The operating principles (page 12) offers support to schools re changing demand and sustainability, minimising disruption to provision, and use planning areas for primary places. Yet none of this seems to have been undertaken in light of the proposals, especially since I know that Byron Court Primary and possibly other schools have not been consulted themselves or offered support 

 

    - the Planning Areas (pages 22-27) illustrate the capacity and projection in each area. Moving Islamia out of Planning Area 5 will reduce the capacity from 1252 to 830; based on a reasonable assumption that 20% of children will not move with the school and instead find another school place in the same area (80 children), this would reduce the surplus Reception places in 23/24 from 209 to 129. In contrast, the capacity in Planning Area 2 will increase from 750 to 1172; bringing the remaining 80% into the area (342 children) will lift the projected Reception intake to 928 but increase the overall surplus from 164 to 244. That surplus would not be evenly distributed if the 20% spare places in Islamia are quickly taken, as expected, by families with children in existing local schools

 

Finally, the report and subsequent decision to award a contract for technical consultancy for the Strathcona site development on 1 Nov makes absolutely no mention of the current public consultation or the award being contingent on the move being confirmed. This clearly implies that consultation is merely a tick-box exercise with a pre-determined decision already made to move the school.

 

 

'We want your school to stay open but we don't want it here' Islamia Primary School Consultation

 Extra chairs had to be brought into the hall of Preston Park Primary School last night as residents flocked to the last public consultation about the move of Islamia Primary School to the area. The mood of the often-rowdy meeting can be summed up by one comment shouted from the floor to the Islamia Chair of Governors, 'We want your school to stay open, but we don't want it here.'

 

The Chair of Governors Sofia Moussaoui was flanked on the platform by other members of the Governing Board, the pastoral adviser to the pupils, Shirley Parks, Brent Interim Operational Director, Safeguarding, Partnerships and Strategy and the Brent Council Transportation officer responsible for School Travel Plans. Several councillors were present including Cllr Gwen Grahl, Cabinet member for Children Young People and Schools. Cllr Grahl was initially incognito in the audience but perhaps should have been on the platform to give support when Shirley Parks was showered with sometimes angry questions. Both were only appointed to their posts in May of this year.

 

The headteacher of Islamia Primary School was unable to be present because he had been involved in an accident that evening and there was no representative of the Yusuf Islam Foundation, that has served an eviction notice on the school, in attendance.

 

At the beginning of the meeting there were complaints that local people had not been consulted, some had only heard about the plans for the move a week ago (they clearly don't read Wembley Matters!), and many had not read the consultation paper before coming to the meeting. The school had made some copies, and these were distributed.   The Chair of Governors denied a claim that locals who had given their emails in order to receive further information at the last meeting had not received anything.

 

As well as local residents the meeting was attended by a group of Islamia parents who were vociferously opposed to the move because of the difficulty of travelling from their homes in what they said was a 6-mile journey four times a day.  They had suggested in a 509-signature petition that Brent Council should make the proposed South Kilburn site, earmarked for the, to be merged, Kilburn Park Junior School and Carlton Vale Infant School, available to Islamia instead. They cited very low numbers in both the schools in contrast to the 420 pupils at Islamia.

 

Shirley Parks said that this was not possible because a community school. open to all, was essential on the estate as it developed, and the population rose. Work had already started in the two schools towards occupation of the new premises. The new school was part of the long-term plans for the area and needed to be open to all pupils, not those from just one religious group. In any event the new building would not be available until well after Islamia's eviction deadline from the Queens Park site.

 

After many interventions from the floor, including suggestions that the closed South Kilburn Job Centre site could be used, the Chair of Governors said that if there was a possibility of a move to South Kilburn the Islam Yusuf Foundation could be approached to delay the eviction until a new site there was available.

 

Residents already concerned about traffic congestion in the area, particularly at school run times when cars often drove on the pavement, were shocked when Sophia Mousssaoui revealed that 160 parents had said they would travel to the site by car, 51 by bus, 58 by train and one cycling. When pressed she was unable to say how many parents would not be able to travel to the new site at all. The 223 bus that runs close to the site is already over-crowded at school times.

 

There was derision from the audience when a School Travel Plan was mooted as a solution. It was claimed that Islamia did not have an extant Travel Plan on its current site and the Travel Plans of schools in the Preston area made little difference.

 

Cllr Kennelly, Preston ward councillor, said that the environment and meeting climate targets needed to be considered when looking at traffic issues. If the move were to go ahead there was the challenge of how to make it work. There would be a need to reduce the number of cars making the journey as low as possible.  

A resident from SKPRA (South Kenton and Preston Residents Association) asked why a request to see the feasibility plans for the Strathcona Road site had not been published. He doubted that there would be adequate playground space and whether it would meet DfE standards for a 2 form entry primary school. Shirley Parks replied that there was a caveat on the study that meant it could not be published.

 

The question of how many pupils would not be able to travel to the new school because of transport difficulties or special needs gave rise to two concerns.

 

Firstly, if numbers dropped would Islamia still be viable? Shirley Parks responded that there were many successful one form entry primary schools in Brent (in fact there are only a handful) and Islamia could operate as a one form entry school.  The Chair of Governors said there would be plenty of demand from neighbouring areas - that produced cries from the audience about more car journeys and the impact on the Council's Climate Emergency Strategy.

 

Secondly, if there were spare places at Islamia once established, would local Muslim children transfer from their present schools, threatening the viability of those schools that were already facing falling rolls and budget issues? Shirley Parks said that parents did not tend to move children from their current schools but there would be impact at Reception level when parents choose their child's future school. A question on how schools were funded was not answered but there is an amount allocated per pupil so that would make an impact if classes were only half full. In the 1970s when falling rolls hit London there were some schools where year groups were merged to make mixed age classes.

 

A member of the audience suggested that some schools, low in pupil numbers could be merged on one site and the building vacated allocated to Islamia. Shirley Parks said that a review of primary provision was in progress.

 

Emerging at times during this discussion was whether voluntary aided faith schools should exist at all. Shouldn't Brent as a multi-cultural and multi-religious borough have mixed schools open to all?  Cllr Michael Maurice, citing his own children attending the Jewish Free School l(JFS), mounted a strong defence of faith schools and Islamia's right to exist. Members of the audience quoted the number of schools in the borough of various faiths, compared with only one Muslim primary school.  Islamia was popular, followed the National Curriculum and had received a Good Ofsted Report LINK.

 

A resident raised 'the elephant in the room', Yusuf Islam and his Foundation and the fact that the Foundation had been given the opportunity to redevelop the Islamia site to improve provision by Brent Council, with funding, a long time ago but the Foundation had ended the discussion. There was an 'education use' only covenant on the site so the Foundation would be using it to expand their private secondary provision:

 

 'Yusuf Islam is going to get a free site and Brent Council will pay £10m to move the school.'

 

I pointed out that the Foundation's actions had divided the community and Yusuf Islam had not responded to requests for a comment on the situation.

 

A former Islamia Primary pupil who had gone on to the private secondary school spoke in defence of Yusuf Islam and the foundation.  He had put his own money into the project and the Foundation was a charity, he was not making money out of it. He should be accorded respect.

 

Amid this a member of the audience who works on Pupil Voice in local schools asked if children had been spoken to about their views and how this affected them as they would have heard what was going on. Shirley Parks said from a safeguarding point of view she would be concerned that such discussions would worry the children. However, the member of Islamia staff responsible for pastoral care and said that there had been questions from pupils and that these could be addressed through the Pupil School Council. 

 

The issue of lack of provision of information to local residents came up again. Sophia Moussaoui said that the Governing Board could not be expected to leaflet every home in the area. The parent who had organised the petition, Jamad Guled, said that she had prepared a leaflet for distribution to residents informing them of the plans but had been barred from distributing it by the Governing Board. The chair of the Board said they had seen the leaflets and that it was written as if from an outsider and they thought that it would create panic and division in the community.

 

Contributing from the audience Gwen Grahl, Brent Council Lead Member for Young People and Schools, said she recognised that this was a difficult situation. Brent Council had been approached by the Islamia Governing Board for help when the school received the eviction notice. Islamia was obviously a very popular and successful school and unique as the only Muslim state school in Brent. She understood that other schools were being built in Brent but the site in South Kilburn was inappropriate for a lot of reasons. Teachers, parents, and pupils of the merging schools were really excited about moving to the new school and in any case, it was not opening until 2023.

 

Cllr Grahl said that it was her job to scrutinise the council officers to make sure they were doing their jobs properly and she could assure residents and parents that they had looked at every single option for finding a site nearer to Queens Park. The Yusuf Islam Foundation had commissioned their own search and couldn't find a site either:

 

 'You can't build a site just anywhere it has to be big enough and accessible and crucially available in the very small window to 2024.' 

 

She recognised that there had been some problems with the informal stage of the consultation, not least that the Governing Board had not expected to have to undertake the consultation process. As a result of representations from the ward councillors the consultation period was extended, and the Council played a bigger role in ensuring the process was transparent and organising additional meetings. It was going to be her job to steer any proposal through Cabinet:

 

If I am not satisfied that either parents of the school or residents support the proposal, or its not feasible for any other reason, then I won't be voting for it. So, I ask everyone to engage in the consultation. We want to hear from you, but to be honest, my challenge was that 420 children go to a school, and it's going to close. I wish that it could have been able to remain in Queens Park - I wish they hadn’t been evicted.

 

This is the proposal that we have managed to come up with. The capital funding comes from Strategic CIL and is not coming from any other Council department. It had to be allocated as here is no guarantee that it would be available at a later date.

 

Cllr Grahl went on to assure that audience that the Council was here to listen and would see what happened at the end of the process. She finished, 'In terms of options I really wish there was another option, but there isn't one.'

 

 The Chair of Governors Sofia Moussaoui said that the Governing Board did not want to move either but were faced with the stark choice, 'Move or close'.