BREAKING: Capital City Academy in Brent to be taken over by Harris Federation Academy Trust chain

Capital City Academy (Photo: Foster & Partners)
 

This is the announcement posted on City Academy's website on  Friday. It will be the first Harris Academy in Brent. Questions are likely to follow about how a major school in the borough can be taken over by an academy chain without any apparent reference to teacher trade unions, local residents or the local authority.

Capital City Academy, a successful secondary school in Brent, has announced its intention to join academy trust the Harris Federation, from September 2023.

Founded more than 30 years ago by Lord Harris of Peckham, the Harris Federation runs 52 primary and secondary academies in and around London. Two-thirds of Harris secondary academies are rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted – compared to less than a fifth nationally – and they receive around four applications from parents for every place available.

Capital City Academy was founded by sponsor Sir Frank Lowe in 2004, who built a state-of-the-art school, designed by world famous architect Lord Foster, on the site of failing Willesden High School. The school has thrived and provides exceptional facilities and an environment that nurtures academic, artistic and sporting success.

Sir Frank Lowe said:

Sponsoring and opening this academy has been a very fulfilling personal achievement for me. I first became involved because I wanted to give something back and, in the nearly twenty years that have followed, I have greatly enjoyed seeing our pupils flourish. I am forever grateful to the children, families, staff and governors who have shared my vision and helped make the academy what it is today.

I have long admired the Harris Federation, an academy trust known for consistently brilliant outcomes for pupils.  The idea of joining was initiated by the 2022 Schools White Paper, which called for every Single Academy Trust to be in or on its way to joining a Multi-Academy Trust by 2030. After meeting the Harris Federation, I clearly saw many benefits and opportunities, and strongly felt joining was in the best interests of the school.  I am also keen for the academy to have the stability that comes with being part of a successful larger trust – particularly in these uncertain economic times. Capital City Academy is a thriving school, but it can achieve even more as part of a like-minded group, dedicated to providing opportunity for all pupils to reach their full potential

As part of the Harris Federation, Capital City Academy will have access to a consultant team of 70 leading subject specialists whose job is to create excellence in every component of the curriculum.

Pupils from the academy will participate in initiatives such as the Harris Experience, designed to broaden the cultural and academic experiences of the most academically promising young people, and which has helped ensure Harris pupils now attend Russell Group universities at a rate of more than twice the national average.  

The Harris Federation will provide training, support and career development opportunities for staff as well as expert, hands-on teams in finance, estates, IT, HR and recruitment, freeing up teachers and leaders to focus on one thing and one thing only: the outstanding education of their pupils. 

Sir Dan Moynihan, CEO of the Harris Federation, said:

We are very pleased to be welcoming Capital City Academy to our Federation and know we can help it continue to deliver Sir Frank’s original vision for the school, which was to help ensure local children had access to the best quality educational opportunities. It is a successful school, and we are looking forward to working with students, staff, parents and governors to ensure a smooth and collaborative transition in time for the next academic year.

Capital City Academy came out of Labour Party support for academisation of 'failing schools'. Harris Federation was started by Carpetright millionaire Lord Harris of Peckham (knighted by Margaret Thatcher and made a lord by John Major).  The Harris Federation does not provide trade union facility time.

Harris Federation accounts LINK.

Jenny Cooper, co-secretary of Brent Education Union said:

The NEU are extremely concerned to hear this news second- hand and look forward to being invited to a consultation. We will support our members to exercise their rights to TUPE and a full and thorough consultation.

Difficulties with South Kilburn redevelopment?

We know that rising costs of regeneration schemes in the pipeline have led to proposals for changes in tenure. There is a clue to possible similar problems in South Kilburn in the last paragraph of the Finance Report going to Cabinet on Monday morning that follows information on slippages totalling £16.2m.

South Kilburn

South Kilburn has a budget variance of £16.2m, owing to slippage.

There is a £5.2m slippage due to acquisitions being forecast in future years primarily on Austen House and Blake Court. A £4.9m SCIL contribution from the NWCC projects will not be used within the financial year. There is a £4m slippage on the Carlton and Granville project, the project has moved into the construction phase after procurement and the forecast now reflects a more realistic schedule. There is slippage of £1m on the District Energy Network
project which will be used in future years due to the concept design being reworked to meet the amended requirements of the London Plan. There is also a £1.1m slippage on the infrastructure works at Peel and Carlton Vale Boulevard.

Risk and Uncertainties

The mixed-use nature of the scheme relies on developers making the schemes viable and providing the affordable housing alongside the private units. Possible difficulties with high inflation could make this more difficult, so the programme is reviewed regularly to ascertain the potential impact on future phases.

Brent Council to allocate funds to help qualifying schools with redundancies as they face in-year budget deficits

 Wembley Matters has reported previously on the budgetary difficulties faced by Brent schools as overall funding reduces in real terms and some experience falling pupil numbers, while others that were expanded to cater for more pupils have never filled to capacity.  Add to that inflation and energy costs and governing bodies face hard decisions.  Brent is also moving towards the level of the Government's new National Funding Formula which represents a reduced amount for London boroughs.

A report going to School Forum reveals how many of our schools are facing financial problems and unable to balance their in-year budgets (i.e. current income and outgoings balancing):

The number of Brent schools experiencing difficulties in 2022/23 has increased with 67% projecting an in-year deficit. 23% of these schools’ plan to use over 50% of reserves to balance their budgets in 2022/23. 

Schools will be forced to restructure their staffing, seeking voluntary redundanies, as staffing this takes up the major part of their expenditure. Brent is proposing to Schools Forum that monies that should be delegated to schools instead be 'de-delegated' back to the authority to allocate to schools in 'exceptional circumstances' tand if they are eligible, to help with rededundancy payments.

 It is therefore proposed to continue to de-delegate funds to support schools in financial difficulty. There is a £0.02 increase in the proposed rate for 2023/24 at £8.53, due to reduced number of pupils, to allocate £0.175m. Schools Forum agreed in January 2022 that if in exceptional circumstances school redundancies are eligible to be funded centrally then these will need to be found from within wider Direct School Grant funding. It was agreed that redundancies should be funded from the Schools Facing Financial Difficulties Fund (SFFDF). However, the budget was not increased to allow for the additional costs from redundancy pay outs.

 
It is therefore proposed to allocate £0.2m at a rate of £9.73 per pupil for centrally funded redundancies, where schools are eligible for funding. This is based on forecast payments in 2022/23 and the expectation of increased requests in 2023/24.

The report concentrates on the financial issues but of course redundancies will impact on the people concerned who will often be female and ethnic minority support staff on low pay.  The contribution of support staff is often underestimated but they have contributed hugely to recent improvements in school standards, so there will also be an impact on the quality of education.

An additional mainstream schools allocation grant (MSAG) will be made later in the spring which will also help. 

The budgets (minus MSAG) are tabled below. As an aside it reveals very low pupil numbers in the two South Kilburn schools that have been cited in the controversy over the re-location of Islamia Primary School to the Preston ward. Carlton Vale Infants have 52 pupils against a capacity of 230 pupils and The Kilburn Park School Foundation 72 pupils against a capacity of 240. Brent Council expects numbers to increase as the South Kilburn population increases through the new developments.  Islamia Primary has 421 pupils.

Newman Catholic College with 466 pupils is the smallest secondary school, and smaller than many primary schools.

Click bottom right square full pull page view.

Extraordinary Brent Council Meeting on January 23rd to appoint Brent's new Chief Executive

 

The Seniot Staff Appoints Panel, consisting of 4 (three women and one man) members of the Labour Cabinet and Conservative Cllr Suresh Kansagra as well as two officers including the outgoing CEO Carolyn Downs, will be interviewing candidates for the post of Brent Council Chief Executive Officer and Head of Paid Services on Tuesday.

All Brent councillors have been summoned to an Extraordinary  Full Council Meeting the following Monday, January 23rd  at 6pm, to hear the Panel's recommendation and approve the appointment (it is unlikely that they won't but there may be limited dissent).

Carolyn Downs' term finishes in April. Lately, as part of her legacy, she has sough to improve relations between the three parties represented on the council. 

 

Brent’s Wembley Housing Zone contract award – still too many secrets!

 

Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

In a guest post last month (‘Tis the Season to be Sneaky!) I suggested that Brent Council might be trying to use its “urgency procedures” to get the decision to award a major contract for its Wembley Housing Zone (“WHZ”) development slipped through over the Christmas / New Year period, in the hope of avoiding it being called-in for scrutiny.

 

Although the decision was scheduled to be made on 19 December, it wasn’t officially made, by Brent’s Chief Executive, until 10 January, and published on the Council’s website the following afternoon. Normally, 28 days clear notice of a Key Decision has to be given, but the Urgent Key Decision Form sent to a Scrutiny Committee Chair on 12 December said that was not possible. Yet the decision was made 29 days after “urgency” was claimed!

 

Part of the Evaluation Process section from the Officer Key Decision Report.

 

In fact, notice of a Key Decision for this contract could have been given at least several months before 12 December. The Officer Report (undated), on which the decision to award the contract was based, says that the tender process started on 30 April 2022, when the Council advertised for initial expressions of interest from contractors. Eight had provided the necessary responses by the closing date of 31 May. The four short-listed contractors were invited, on 3 July, to submit tenders, and three had submitted valid tenders by the closing date of 18 October.

 

The Recommendation from the Officer Key Decision Report.

 

After all of the evaluation of the tenders by Council Officers, the recommendation which Brent’s Chief Executive accepted was to award the “developer partner” contract to Wates Construction Ltd, for a price of £121,862,500. That is a lot of money! In fact, the report shows that it could be even more than that, perhaps as much as £133m (and that is after an estimated £4m already having been spent on architects’ fees).

 

Extract from the Financial section of the Officer Key Decision Report.

 

It appears that the £126.5m will be the cost of building 304 homes on two sites which Brent Council already owns. That is a building cost of around £416,000 per unit. As para. 4.2 in the Report extract above states, part of this will be funded through capital receipts from the sale of private homes. When Cabinet agreed this scheme in August 2021, it included allowing the development partner to have half the homes (152, and all on the more favourable Cecil Avenue site, which will be completed first) to sell privately, for profit. How much will Wates be paying Brent for those homes as part of the contract deal? We don’t know – it’s a secret!

 

Part of the funding will also come from the ‘capital receipts from … intermediate homes’. In plain English that means the sale of percentages in shared ownership flats within the 152 homes that the Council will own. In August 2021, Cabinet agreed that 61 of the 98 homes which Brent would retain on the Cecil Avenue site should be “intermediate”, with only 37 of them for London Affordable Rent. Following the November 2022 Cabinet meeting, will the figure of shared ownership be increased?  We don’t know – it’s a secret!

 

Wembley Housing Zone extract from the “Affordable Housing” report to Cabinet, 14 November 2022.

 

Martin published a guest blog I had written about that Affordable Housing report to the November 2022 Cabinet meeting, and another which I wrote following the Council Leader’s response to questions which Cllr. Anton Georgiou had asked at that meeting. I showed that there is already a surplus in shared ownership homes on offer in Brent, which is likely to continue and increase, and that shared ownership is not really affordable to most people in housing need in Brent. So why is the Council planning to make many of the WHZ homes shared ownership, which won’t help the people its affordable homes policy is meant to house?

 

Outline of the contract from the Officer Key Decision Report.

 

The contract, as shown by the extract above, is in several parts. This is because although both WHZ sites were given planning permission in February 2021, Ujima House only has outline permission. Because of the long delay in getting to the contract award stage (which has greatly increased the cost of the project), the “developer partner” has to prepare, submit and get approval for the actual Ujima House plans. That’s why there is a completion date of 31 December 2026 (nearly 4 years away!), with a possible extension, for those homes to be delivered.

 

The former office block at Ujima House still has some “meanwhile” occupants, including the thriving Stonebridge Boxing Club, a vital resource for the local community. They have still to find an alternative home. Despite the long lead time before any work at Ujima House can begin (apart from its possible demolition, leaving an empty site, like that of the former Copland School buildings, where work on the Cecil Avenue homes could start straight away), Brent Council wants to ‘seek to assist them in finding suitable alternative premises’ (evict them a.s.a.p.). 

 

Extract from the Equality Implications section of the Officer Key Decision Report.

 

The Report’s determination ‘to ensure a start on site by the end of March 2023’ must mean that the extra £5m funding the Council has obtained from the GLA comes from its 2016-2021 (but extended to 2023) Affordable Housing Programme. There is probably some “spare” money in that pot because Brent will fail to start some of its other New Council Homes projects before the 31 March deadline! The £5m looks like the grant for 50 London Affordable Rent homes, at £100k per home. The Cabinet’s August 2021 decision (possibly since watered down) was for all 54 homes at Ujima House to be for LAR, but only 37 at the Cecil Avenue site, so at least some of the latest GLA agreement must relate to Ujima House.

 

One final point. The documents published with the decision notice include the Council’s Tender Evaluation Grid, where Wates appear as contractor “C” (the identities of “A” and “B” are secret). Although “C” scored highest overall, because their Financial score was much better than the other two (meaning their price was lowest), they were only second in the Quality section. Their Quality score was 68.6 out of 100 (contractor “B” was best with 72.0). Brent has had problems over poor quality housing developments in recent memory.

 

The Quality section of the WHZ contract Tender Evaluation Grid.

 

Non-Cabinet councillors have five working days to call-in the Key Decision for scrutiny, if they consider there are reasonable grounds to do so. As it was published on 11 January, at least five members would need to call-in the decision by 5pm on Wednesday 18 January for the award of the contract to be put on hold, so that (probably) Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee could consider it. It will be interesting to see whether that happens!

 

Philip Grant.

 

An Olympic Games tile mural – Quintain’s reply (what do you think?)

 Guest post by local historian Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

The Olympic Torch tile mural, currently hidden away in the Bobby Moore Bridge subway.

 

When I sent a New Year request to Quintain’s Chief Executive Officer in 2022, it was two months before I received a full reply. This time, Quintain took just two working days to reply to my 1 January 2023 letter, which suggested that the Olympic Torch tile mural in the Bobby Moore Bridge subway should be put back on public display, in time for the 75^th anniversary of the 1948 London Olympic Games at Wembley.

 

I will ask Martin to attach a copy of Quintain’s letter below, so that you can read it if you wish to. It is almost 500 words long, but it can be summed up in a single word: “No”. I’ll include my reply to that letter at the end of this article.

 

There are two passages in the letter I received which suggest that Quintain are not inclined to uncover any more of the tile mural scenes in the subway between Wembley Park Station and Olympic Way:

 

‘… the lighting installation under Bobby Moore Bridge has full planning permission … and is not subject to any time limits.’

 

‘… we think that the lighting displays are an important part of our cultural offering now and for the future.’

 

The letter talks as though Quintain think that they own the Bobby Moore Bridge and the tile murals on the walls of its subway. In fact, they are owned by the London Borough of Brent (which, as far as I know, is not legally under Quintain’s ownership or control). 

 

But what do you, as citizens of the Borough, think about the idea of Quintain’s lighting displays, as against the tile murals celebrating Wembley’s sports and entertainment heritage, which are currently hidden behind the LED light panels? If you’ve not seen them, or can’t remember what they look like, here are a few reminders:

 

Part of the murals on the west wall of the subway, in 2012. (From a “Soundscape” web page)

 

 

A message on the west wall LED lighting panels in July 2021.

 

 Some of the mural scenes on the east wall of the subway, pre-2013.

 

 A lighting display, either side of the footballers mural, on the east wall of the subway, July 2021.

 

Would you prefer to see the heritage tile murals back on permanent display, or Quintain’s modern ‘cultural offering’ of lighting displays? Please feel free to give your honest views in a comment below.

 

My response to Quintain on 9 January suggested an alternative solution for the Olympic Torch mural, using their LED light panels. This is the text of my open letter (which was written to Quintain’s Head of Masterplanning and Design, with a copy to James Saunders, the CEO):-

 

Dear Julian, 

 

Thank you for your letter of 4 January 2023, in response to my New Year letter to James Saunders. 

 

I note the reasons given as to why Quintain will not be taking up my suggestion for uncovering, and putting on display, the Olympic Torch tile mural, on the east wall of the Bobby Moore Bridge subway, in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the 1948 London Olympic Games in July 2023.

 

You have set out your view on the history of the current lighting arrangements in the subway. I don’t think that it would be helpful to argue over this now, However, I do remember that when you and Quintain’s lighting designer came to a Wembley History Society meeting in October 2018, to set out your vision for the subway, several members suggested to you that the plans should be changed. 

 

Instead of putting all of the murals on the walls on display, with sufficient lighting in the subway for that purpose, as members had asked, you chose only a minor amendment to your original plans, which displayed just one of around a dozen tile mural scenes. The Society did agree that if just one scene was to be displayed, it should be the footballers playing at the “twin towers” stadium, which included the plaque unveiled by Bobby Moore’s widow in 1993.

 

It is disappointing that you seem to suggest it is Quintain’s intention to retain the lighting panels, which cover the rest of the tile murals in the subway, as a permanent feature. I am aware of the various planning and advertising consents. However, I would remind you that while Quintain’s ownership of the tile murals on the walls of Olympic Way is not in dispute, the Bobby Moore Bridge and the tile murals in its subway belong to the London Borough of Brent.

 

Since my suggestion for uncovering the Olympic Torch tile mural is not acceptable, I will offer an alternative suggestion, which I hope will meet with the approval of yourself and your colleagues at Quintain. 

 

This mural is covered with LED light panels, which can be programmed to show particular displays. As part of ‘the changing programme of lighting displays which has been integrated into the overall arts and cultural strategy at Wembley Park’, I would suggest that the panels over the Olympic Torch mural could be programmed to show an image of that mural, during at least July and August 2023. 

 

You already have a clear photograph of the mural, showing the design and its colours, which I included in my 1 January 2023 letter. The LED digital version of it could provide a temporary addition to the Wembley Park Art Trail this summer, adding to the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Games, on the wall next to the displayed “footballers” mural - as marked on this image:

 

 

I look forward to hearing that this alternative suggestion will be taken up, as part of the Olympic Way local history enhancements for this important anniversary year.

 

 Thank you.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Philip Grant.

 

 

 

UPDATE FROM PHILIP GRANT (see January 13th comment below) 

 

How an image of the Olympic Torch mural could be displayed, in the same way as an advertisement in another subway.

Brent Libraries - closure or 'transformation'? Putting the record straight

 

Mike Phipps reviews Transforming Brent Libraries, by James Powney, published by AuthorHouse, and sets the record straight on an important local struggle. Reprduced on Wembley Matters with the permission of the author. Furst published on Labour Hub.

Some years ago I was involved in a small way in the campaign to prevent the closure of a local library. Frustrated at the fact that the Chair of my Constituency Labour Party repeatedly and on specious grounds kept ruling out of order my branch’s motion opposing the Council’s cuts to local libraries – the CLP Chair was himself a Councillor, never a good idea – I gave an interview to the local paper.

I said there was real anger about the library closures and it was proving to be the most toxic issue for the Party locally since the war in Iraq. I added: “I think it is inevitable that James Powney will be held personally responsible for the way he has handled these closures.”

 

Naming this local Councillor, the lead member responsible for the closures, was not mischief-making on my part. It was intended to protect the local Party from a wrong, vote-losing policy, which was allowing local Lib Dem activists to grandstand over the issue – the same party in government that was cutting local authority grants which put councils in such a desperate financial plight. “The tragedy would be that the Liberal Democrats would benefit when it is their government pushing through these cuts,” I pointed out.

 

It must have been a quiet week in Brent, which is in northwest London, because the interview was put on the front page. It elicited a phone call from the Chair of the CLP, who had never contacted me before (or since), saying how much he admired all the work I did for the Party, etc., etc., but couldn’t I just drop this issue and move on?

 

That would have been difficult. The whole library closure programme felt like a great injustice locally, given that 82 per cent of residents who took part in the consultation said they didn’t want the libraries to close. In the interview, I said: “I don’t think the consultation was undertaken seriously and I don’t think that the process whereby local groups were invited to put their ideas forward to rescue the library was taken seriously either.”

 

The contempt with which campaigners’ alternative proposals were met by Councillors responsible now seems undeniable from the latest evidence – an account by the key perpetrator of the closure programme.

 

I didn’t know James Powney had written a book about all this until I saw a letter he wrote to the Guardian last December publicising it. Transforming Brent Libraries is mercifully short at 71 pages, and self-published, for good reason. It would be hard to see this making the best-seller list.

 

As Lead Member for Environment and Neighbourhood Services in the London Borough of Brent, Powney “oversaw the successful transformation of Brent Library service in raising both the total number of loans and visitors to become one of the most successful public library services in the UK,” trumpets the opening line of his biographical note.

 

But this doesn’t tell the full story. He also presided over the closure of half of the Borough’s libraries. The scale of protests – meetings, demonstrations, media activity, celebrity involvement – within and beyond Brent was immense. Powney later refers to protesters as a “baying mob”.

 

He claims the campaign was “principally led by a small number of single issue campaigners, many of whom were not from the area.” But the anger against the closures was very local and was reflected inside the local Labour Party where Powney was a Councillor.

 

 'Pop Up' Library outside the closed Kensal Rise Library

 

One of the most contested closures was that of Kensal Rise library, originally opened by Mark Twain over a century earlier. It was located in Kensal Green ward where I was Chair of the local Labour Party branch and which Powney represented as a Councillor. Meetings were poorly attended until the closures were announced. Then angry members began to turn up in droves. At the earliest opportunity, Party members voted to deselect him as their Council candidate.

 

In the Acknowledgements, Powney writes: “In writing this book, I should acknowledge some debts, possibly including the Friends of Kensal Rise Library (FKRL) who through sheer determination and litigiousness stretched the whole saga out to make enough material for a book.” This mocking, supercilious tone towards campaigners, invariably disparaged as “litigants”, becomes increasingly wearing as the book drags on. The unfortunate Powney finds he has do a lot of ‘explaining’ of how things work to the ignorant activists, a “continuous barrage” of whom had the cheek to turn up to his Councillor surgeries.

 

Equally ignorant, in this version of events, were the celebrities that campaigners sought to “drag in” to promote their cause. They are treated with some contempt here – apparently, celebrities care about libraries only because they remind them of their childhood.

 

Creative ideas to take over the running of libraries that the Council was seeking to shed from its remit are dismissed as the interference of a “lumpenproletariat”, hopelessly tainted by association with Cameronian notions of a “Big Society”.

 

At the end of this tedious rant, Powney attempts to draw some lessons from the whole sorry experience. The main one seem to be: what a pain pressure groups are, and how unscrupulously they are prepared to exploit their celebrity backing to “magnify the noise made without any interest in truthfulness.”

But happily, “After the decision is done, those who opposed it are surprisingly forgetful of the position they took.” That can’t be right – if it were, Powney would not have been deselected as a Kensal Green Councillor by his own Party.

 

It would be unfair to blames James Powney solely for this debacle. As he rightly says, all members of the Council Executive voted the libraries project though unanimously, despite what he concedes was a “massive petition” in opposition.

 

 

Arguably the campaign against library closures and the publicity it generated contributed to the ousting of the then leader of Brent Council in May 2012. By then the issue had been in the local newspaper virtually every week for eighteen months, taking up quite a few front pages, as on November 18^th 2010, when the Willesden and Brent Times opened, under a banner headline “IT’S OUTRAGEOUS” with “Council chiefs spent more than £600,000 on refurbishing two libraries – just months before announcing plans to close them.”

 

Editor's note.  Many thanks to Mike Phipps for permission to republish this article. Search Wembley Matters for further coverage of the issue.