Chalkhill Allotment Open Day Friday April 14th 14.00-16.30 - come and see our transformed green space

 

Brent Planning officers back conversion of Salusbury Road ground floor flat to commercial use

 

The current street scene in Salusbury Road, Queens Park

The site and green space behind

Proposed front elevation

An existing ground floor flat at 62, 62A-D, Salusbury Road could be converted to Class E commercial use if a planning application to be be considered at Brent Planning Committee on April 19th  (6pm) is approved.

The loss of ground floor residential space will be compensated for by development of the roof space into a second floor flat and there are proposed extensions at ground floor level.. There are 26 objections to the scheme recorded at present on the Brent Council planning portal some of which come from existing occupiers of the flats.

The agent summarises the proposal:

Specially, the proposals involve the following works:
• The creation of a new high-quality two-bedroom residential unit at second floor level through the conversion of the existing loft space and through a dormer that has been designed to comply with the Council’s SPD Design Guidance.
• The change of use of part ground floor from residential to Class E commercial use. This is an underutilised unit with poor outlook and amenity and the reprovision of residential use at second floor would ensure there would be no net loss of housing.
• The change of use at ground floor would also see minor extensions provided to the rear and side.
• The underutilised rear garden would be landscaped into dedicated communal amenity space for the new unit, along with the two existing units at first floor level. Another small section of this space would be allocated to the commercial units at ground floor.
• Dedicated cycle parking and refuse and recycling facilities would also be provided at ground floor level.
• A new air condenser unit would be provided at ground floor level to provide heating and cooling for the new commercial unit.

A number of local residents are concerned that the premisies may bcome a pub or a restaurant. The Planning Officers respond with an assurance that this is not proposed and supply a very varied list of what the premises could be used for within the E designation:

The physical alterations and additions to the frontage are not considered to impact the amenity of neighbouring properties. In terms of the change of use, objections have been raised about the concerns of a potential use of the ground floor Class E floorspace as a restaurant or bar. The applicant has outlined that the proposed development will not make provision for the Class E unit at ground floor level to be used as a drinking establishment nor a café/restaurant.

 

The applicant does wish to ensure that the commercial unit has suitable flexibility for a range of town centre uses. They have proposes the unit be restricted to the
following use classes: Class E(a) Display or retail sale of goods, other than hot food; Class E(c) provision of financial services, professional services (other than health or medical services), or other appropriate services in a commercial, business or service locality; Class E(d) Indoor sport, recreation or fitness (not involving motorised vehicles or firearms or use as a swimming pool or skating rink,) Class E(e) Provision of medical or health services (except the use of premises attached to the residence of the consultant or practitioner) Class E(g) Uses which can be carried out in a residential area without detriment to its amenity, Offices to carry out any operational or administrative functions, Research and development of products or rocesses, Industrial processes. The proposed uses are considered compatible with surrounding residential uses. These will be confirmed via condition.

Planning Officers advise members of the Planning Committee that the proposal is acceptable in planning terms:

The proposed development would not result in the net loss of residential dwellings and would create a good quality dwelling within the extended building. The proposed additional commercial unit and shopfront within a Town Centre is supported. The proposal is considered to comply with all relevant policies and to be acceptable in planning terms subject to conditions.

 LINK to Agenda Item

Two dates for Brent Air Quality Action Plan Resident Engagement Forum - 19th April and 20th April ON-LINE

 

From Brent Council

Register for Brent Council's Air Quality Action Plan Resident Forum now!

Want have your say on air quality in your local community?

Here's a chance for us to answer your questions and hear your views on how we can work towards clean air in Brent.

This forum will provide an important opportunity to access, participate in and influence council decisions through an interactive session where we will summarise the AQAP.

The two sessions are identical. Two are being held to maximise attendance. Book your on-line place below.

19th April, 12:00pm-1:00pm: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/air-quality-action-plan-resident-consultation-forum-tickets-595888818497

20th April, 6:00pm-7:00pm: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/copy-of-air-quality-action-plan-resident-consultation-forum-tickets-597695472247

 

 

Brent pupils, artists and community to benefit as Punchdrunk Enrichment move to Wembley Park for three-year residency

 From Punchdrunk Enrichment

 

Punchdrunk Enrichment – the UK’s premier education and community-led immersive theatre company has announced a three-year residency in London’s Wembley Park from April 2023, which will deliver the first ever co-created immersive arts space.

 

The residency will be Punchdrunk Enrichment’s largest in scale and ambition to-date. The company will engage with local artists and community groups to co-create an immersive space that will support local artist development, deliver exceptional experiences for families and provide training opportunities for Brent-based young people. The 8,000 square feet of space will also provide the opportunity for the Company to foster new work.

 

Alongside the public programme, the company will introduce a range of inspiring immersive projects for primary schools across Brent including The Lost Lending Library, Punchdrunk Enrichment’s flagship literacy project in which a mysterious travelling library appears overnight in a primary school. The Lost Lending Library has visited over 75 schools and benefitted more than 40,000 children by unlocking creativity and a love of literature in children aged 6-11 years and their families and carers.

 

The residency in Brent has been conceived by Punchdrunk Enrichment’s Artistic Director, Peter Higgin – one of the founding members of the world’s leading immersive theatre company, Punchdrunk – and will be delivered with the support of Arts Council England and the developers behind the transformation of Wembley Park, Quintain.

 

It will draw upon Punchdrunk Enrichment’s historic practice and expertise in immersive storytelling, which are brought to life in unexpected spaces. Previous projects include Greenhive Green, which transformed a room in a care home into an immersive village green complete with a florist, a phone box and the smell of fresh cut grass; and Fallow Cross, a fully functioning townlet in a set of warehouses in Tottenham Hale, Haringey

"Where is the justice when defendants cannot explain their motives, hopes and aims for taking action to save thousands of other people's lives in the UK and around the world?"

 From the Good Law Project

Two climate change protesters, who were sentenced to seven weeks in jail after telling a jury their reasons for taking peaceful action, are challenging that they were found in contempt of court, thanks to Good Law Project. 

Amy Pritchard and Giovanna Lewis were given custodial sentences of seven weeks in prison by Inner London Crown Court last month after they disobeyed a Judge's order not to refer to climate change or fuel poverty as their motivation for blocking traffic with the group Insulate Britain. 

Good Law Project believes it is in the interest of the public to stop the silencing of protesters and will argue that the court was wrong to have withdrawn the protesters' defences and limited what they could say to the jury. 

Amy Pritchard, 37, and Giovanna Lewis, 65, were on trial for causing a public nuisance after sitting in the road to block traffic between Bishopsgate and Wormwood Street in Central London on 25 October 2021. Jurors failed to agree a verdict on their trial but the protesters were found in contempt of court and given seven week prison sentences after they addressed juries at their trials to speak about climate change and fuel poverty as their reasons for the direct action. 

Inner London Crown Court has been ordering Insulate Britain protesters not to refer to climate change or fuel poverty whilst addressing the jury in their trials, saying that their motivations for acting the way they did had no relevance to what the jury had to decide. Many campaigners and lawyers have expressed concern at what they believe to be an extension of the more punitive treatment of protesters following the 2022 Police Crime and Sentencing Act.  

Jennine Walker, Legal Manager, Good Law Project said:  

We cannot celebrate the protests of the suffragettes yet stand by and do nothing as people protesting peacefully against climate change are silenced and punished by increasingly repressive laws and judicial system. We hope the Court of Appeal will put an end to these disturbing decisions that silence climate protestors and undermine the crucial role both protest and jury trial play in upholding our democracy.

Appellant and activist, Amy Pritchard said: 

The Judge's order to keep silent about our motivations is outrageous, and I could not follow it. I think this Judge's decision, and the direction it moves us in, is deeply disturbing.

Appellant and activist, Giovanna Lewis said: 

It is shocking and unbelievable that a UK crown court Judge could, or would even want to, prevent ordinary people from mentioning the words fuel poverty and climate change in a British court of law.  Where is the justice when defendants cannot explain their motives, hopes and aims for taking action to save thousands of other people's lives in the UK and around the world?

Brent Council to let several floors of the Civic Centre to commercial clients

 Cash-strapped Brent Council is advertising some 19,309 square feet of space at the Brent Civic Centre at £32.50 a square foot to realise a planned income of £680k in 2024-25. If the Council  fail to let the space it will mean further cuts.

At the same time the Council is reviewing existing commercial contracts.  Earlier this year Cabinet approved a £2m remodelling claiming it would improve 'customer experience' and also make the building more attractive to commercial tenants.

The planned lets include the first floor restaurant space that closed during the pandemic and has since been used by voluntary organisations as a commnity kitchen.

The space has been freed up via a 'restack' operation that moves existing staff around to maximise space for letting out.

As well as seeking commercial companies the Council is also looking at letting to a 'flex-operator', an organisation that lets flexible space to start ups and other small companies. LINK

Delegated authority is being sought to enter into new leases with the following:

· A new lease at an agreed market rent with the Valuation Office Agency
(VOA to relocate from the 8th Floor North to the 8th Floor West that was
recently vacated by Air France.

· A new lease at an agreed market rent with the Old Oak and Park Royal
Development Corporation for their current demise on the 1st Floor West - or
a suitable alternative space.

· A new lease at an agreed market rent with the NHS to co-locate them with
Brent’s Adult Social Care and Health department on the 2nd Floor.

· A new lease at an agreed market rent with Warren Bakery who occupy a
retail unit on the ground floor.

· Any other existing tenants as appropriate in line with the re-stack project
and any new prospective tenants seeking space within the Civic Centre

I am not sure about the status of Starbucks which is not mentioned in the Cabinet Report.

This is the brochure already available to potential clients:

1 Morland Gardens –Brent’s latest NON-development (and a planning complaint).

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

1 Morland Gardens on 1 April 2023. (Photo by Margaret Pratt)

 

The photograph above is similar to one that introduced a previous guest post in January 2023 (1 Morland Gardens – How many more times can they get it wrong?). It was taken on 1 April, but this is no joke. The “April Fools” are at Brent Civic Centre. 

 

If the Senior Officers, Council Leader and Cabinet members had listened, to me and others opposing their plans for redevelopment of the (now former) Brent Start college at 1 Morland Gardens since early 2020, they could have amended their project. They could have retained the heritage Victorian villa they seem determined to demolish (in complete contravention of the Council’s own heritage planning policies), and had a scheme which still delivered perhaps 20 affordable homes as well.

 

The wide footpath, from Hillside, with community garden on the right. (Photo by Margaret Pratt)

 

Instead, they pressed ahead with plans which were supposed to deliver 65 affordable homes, built partly on land that is a wide footpath and a community garden. They currently have no legal right to build on that land, despite claiming it is part of their site, and there are objections to the Stopping-up Order they would need. That is because their plans would force pedestrians to walk through heavily polluted air, and remove many trees, in breach of Brent’s Air Quality Action Plan and Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy.

 

The funding for the project, which Brent’s Cabinet approved in January 2020, included £6.5m from the GLA’s Affordable Housing Programme 2016-2021. Although this programme was extended to 2023, local authority projects for funding under it had to “start on site” by 31 March 2023. As a number of photographs taken around 1 Morland Gardens on 1 April by a Willesden Local History Society member show, no actual work had begun on the site by then.

 

Blue hut in the car park at 1 Morland Gardens, 1 April 2023. (Photo by Margaret Pratt)

 

An “Oasis” self-contained welfare unit (including canteen and toilet facilities) had recently been delivered to the former college’s car park, ready for any workers to use. But none of the “Start on Site Works”, as defined in the GLA’s funding agreement, had been carried out by the key date. Brent Council has therefore lost that £6.5m funding, for a scheme it was already admitting, in the November 2022 affordable housing report to Cabinet, was unviable. So the Cabinet approved recommendations to “value engineer” the 1 Morland Gardens project.

 

Construction details from the February 2023 Construction Logistics Plan.

 

From the latest documents I have seen, that “value engineering” means ditching the more environmentally friendly “award winning” design which was given planning consent in 2020, and switching to a traditional concrete frame, with precast infill panels. This will require much stronger foundations, involving 454 20-metre-deep concrete piles across the site. It seems all too reminiscent of the methods used to build Brent Council’s Chalkhill and Stonebridge estates in the late 1960s / early 1970s, which had to be demolished around 30 years later!

 

Construction of a “Bison” concrete block of flats at Chalkhill, c.1967.

 

My title mentions a planning complaint, and I will ask Martin to attach a copy of my open letter of complaint to Brent’s Head of Planning at the end of this post, for anyone interested in the details. It concerns the Construction Logistics Plan (“CLP”) for the Morland Gardens development (application 22/4082) which I wrote about in my January 2023 article.

 

That application could and should have been refused, yet I found out last week it had been granted consent on 27 March. But it wasn’t the CLP submitted with the application in December 2022, it was a completely new one submitted in February 2023. That new CLP was not published on Brent’s planning website until 17 March, there was no consultation on it, and even those of us who had commented on the original CLP were not notified of its existence!

 

I don’t think the secrecy over it was part of a “plot” to try to get the CLP approved in time for work to “start on site” at 1 Morland Gardens by 31 March (it was too late for that), but this is far from the transparency Brent residents are entitled to expect, especially when the application relates to a proposed Council development.

 

Will the loss of the £6.5m GLA funding make Brent Council finally accept that their current plans for 1 Morland Gardens are hopeless? It should do, but the past 3+ years have shown that their foolishness is not just confined to April.

Philip Grant.

 

New Government measures to tackle sewage dumping scandal are a drop in the ocean

 In response to the Environment Secretary's announcement of the Government’s new ‘Plan for Water’, Legal Director of Good Law Project, Emma Dearnaley, said:
 

Overwhelming public outrage has finally forced the Government’s hand on the sewage scandal blighting our country.

But the reality is that the Government’s ‘new’ plan, some of which is repackaged from previous years, only aims to reduce the number of sewage spills by private water companies through storm overflows into our rivers and beaches by 10,000 per year - to a mere 290,000 a year based on recent figures. This is a drop in the ocean.

We need more robust and urgent action to bring the shocking practice of sewage dumping to an end if we are to protect our waters for generations to come. That is why Good Law Project is supporting a number of legal challenges to hold this Government and water companies to account over what has become one of the biggest environmental scandals of our times.