Cllr Tatler on the 'perfect storm' facing Brent Council finances

 Cllr Tatler made no bones about it at Brent Scrutiny last night: Brent Council is facing a 'perfect storm' regarding its finances:

 

 

As already reported by Wembley Matters the combination of increased homelessness (150 families a week seeking help from Brent Council), inflation, rising interest rates, rising private sector rents and reduced private sector rental properties as a result of landlords exiting the market; combined has led to a £13m overspend by the Council.

The Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee delved deeper into the repercussions and possible mitigations last night.  

One focus was the 600 plus empty properties that could easily house the 500 families and single people (858 people in all) currently in expensive bed and breakfast accommodation.  The challenge was how to contact the owners so that the Council could lease the property.  Some councillors there were more than 600 empty properties and asked how the  Council collected the figures. A councillor asked if this coudl be checked against the most recent census. In response Cllr Tatler said that the Council could reactivate the campaign to ask residents to report empty properties.

Contact Empty Property Team

Opening hours: Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm

Phone: 020 8937 2384 option 1 then option 4

Email: empty.property@brent.gov.uk

 

There are also 600 empty council properties on the South Kilburn estate in blocks that are due to be knocked down. However, officers said many are not habitable and were needed for decanting.

There was a need to look at buying new properties and building on existing council land.  There was a corporate exercise across the Council to ensure it is not missing out on potential subsidies but subsidies were also reducing:

Extract from Officers' Report

The loss of subsidy cost is forecast to rise to £8.6m in 2023/24 (from £3.7m in 2022/23) as rents increase but the Local Housing Allowance  remains unchanged at its current level. Benefits paid to those living in Temporary Accomodation  is limited to 90% of the 2011 LHA rates which, particularly since the pandemic, is significantly less than rents being charged by most private sector landlords today. A percentage of the Housing Benefits subsidy received from DWP when compared to the total amount paid to residents is forecast to reduce by 14% when compared to the average over the last three years (67% versus a 81% average). 

Councillors also asked about loss of Business Rates with commercial properties left empty. Could the Council charge double if left empty for more than 2 years as with empty homes? They were told that was not currently within the Council's powers. Cllr Tatler said that 90% of Brent businesses are SMEs (small and medium enterprises) who had been badly hit and thus no longer viable. Chair Cllr Conneely agreed with Cllr Malloy that she would rather be asking profit-making businesses to pay more than hard-pressed residents.

Cllr Malloy said that he knew of a commercial property in South Kilburn where the big property company owner had smashed all the toilets so they they could claim the property was unusable and therefore not pay business rates. This resulted in an interesting exchange with Brent Council leader Muhammed Butt:

 

 

 Questioned about the possible use of reserves to help meet the deficit the Head of Finance said that Brent's reserves around the mid-way point for London Councils. Much was earmarked for projects and it was prudent to have reserves available for unexpected events such as a pandemic. However, there was a case for a review of use of reserves that were not earmarked. Cllr Tatler pointed out that if reserves were spent they would have to be rebuilt in subsequent years. More information on the status of reserves will be included in the Budget report in February.

 

The Head of Finance noted the cross-party  'Eastbourne letter' to the government published on Wembley Matters LINK from 119 council leaders about temporary accommodation costs. It was signed byu Muhammed Butt.

 

Recommendations:

 

1. Council to lobby government on business rates.

2. Council to have a clearer plan on effective collection of business rates.

3. Council to investigate use of census data to help identify empty properties.

4. Council to work on ways of turning empty properties into usable properties.

Information requests:

Detailed information of subsidy loss.

Data on voids.

List of empty properties if data legislation allows.

 

Consultation meeting at Birchen Grove Garden Centre on Barnet's West Hendon Playing Fields plans - Saturday 18th November 2023

 

 

 

From COMMON PLACE CONSULTATION

 

Barnet Council wants to transform West Hendon Playing Fields into an exciting new park and we want your views on how it should be improved. The new park proposals will include new play areas, recreational spaces, sports facilities, improved infrastructure, and expanded leisure amenities.

Your input is vital to creating a thriving destination that is inclusive and accessible. We are planning engagement opportunities where we would love to hear from you.

1- You can join us in person at our drop-in events to meet the project team, learn more about the project proposal and share your aspirations for the park:

• Session 1: Wednesday, 15 th of November 2023 at Barnet Multicultural Community Centre, NW4 3TA from 3:00pm – 7:30pm.
• Session 2: Saturday, 18 th of November at Birchen Grove Garden Centre, NW9 8RY from 10:00am – 3:00pm.

Both venues have accessible wheelchair entry and toilets.

2- For those who are unable to attend in person, we are running two online webinars on 21st of November for you to learn more about the project proposal and ask any questions that you may have:

• Session 1: 6:00pm – 6:45pm. Register here.
• Session 2: 6:45pm – 7:30pm. Register here.

3- Take part in our survey by 17th of December. This will help us understand how you currently use the park, and your vision and aspirations of the West Hendon Playing Fields.

 

 

Our emerging project vision is to breathe new life into the site, turning West Hendon Playing Fields into a thriving destination that puts People, Place, and the Planet at the core of improvement efforts. The park will be inclusive to all ages and abilities, enhance local wildlife and biodiversity, and offer ample opportunities for physical activity and recreation.

We came up with this vision based on Barnet Council's aspirations for West Hendon Playing Fields, past engagement exercises, and what we know about the area. We need your input to make sure the final vision captures what the community wants. Complete our survey to share how you experience the park, your feedback on the vision and your ideas for improvement. We will use your feedback to design a park that you will enjoy.

 

Who will we be engaging?

We are committed to broad-reaching engagement with a diverse range of communities. We will be engaging with a wide range of groups, including: 

• West Hendon Residents
• Tenants of West Hendon Playing Fields
• Conservation and Nature Groups
• Accessibility-focused groups
• Sports Groups
• Schools in the area
• Voluntary, Community and Faith (VCF) groups
• Local councillors

We will also be consulting with the following organisations to ensure that our proposals meet statutory requirements. They include: 

• Brent Council
• Sport England
• Greater London Authority
• Canal and River Trust
• Metropolitan Police 
• Environment Agency
• Natural England
• Thames Water
• UK Power Networks

How will we be engaging?

We are committed to engaging with residents and stakeholders in a way that is: 

• Resident-first: We put residents first and emphasise the importance of the local community in shaping our proposals.
• Existing Knowledge: We leverage existing knowledge bases and networks from voluntary organisations and other groups to ensure that all communities, especially under-represented groups, have an opportunity to participate. 
• Transparent: We establish clear parameters of engagement from the beginning to promote honesty and transparency.
• Innovative: We use best practices and innovative approaches, both online and in person, to engage with the community.
• Engaging: We raise awareness of West Hendon Playing Fields and generate excitement for our proposals to ensure early activation.
• Tailored: We tailor our engagement topics to the specific aspirations and needs of the community and stakeholders.
• Ongoing: We engage and communicate throughout the project lifecycle to keep you updated and involved.

We believe that these principles will help us to build strong relationships with you and your community, ensuring all voices are heard as we develop the proposals for West Hendon Playing Fields. 

Our Promise of Feedback - Your voice matters!

We will listen to and record every comment you make. Our communication channels will be open, consistent, and transparent. We offer both offline and online communication channels to ensure accessibility for everyone. At the end of each key stage, we will tell you how we incorporated your input into the design of the Playing Fields. Where feedback has not been incorporated, we will clearly explain why. 

 

 

LINK TO KNOWLEDGE MAP to comment on different aspects of the park.

 There was a Master Plan for the area back in a 2018 consultation that includes various proposals LINK

 

UPDATE: Thames Water says sewer service at Wembley Triangle restored and traffic should be back to normal by the end of today.

 

I was told to expect a statement from Thames Water about the situation at Wembley Triangle yesterday but none was forthcoming by midday today so I tweeted them at midday.  The incident began on Thursday. LINK

Their answer is above. 

UPDATE - Neil Levy of Thames Water has sent the following message:

We managed to work all night yesterday to repair the sewer and we have demobilised from the site now.

 
We found that the sewer was severely blocked with rubble, bricks and fat, which we believe may have caused a break in the pipe.

 
We have restored the sewer service and there has been no further flooding or pollution impact to the environment.

 
We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused but traffic should be back to normal by the end of today.

BREAKING: Lyon Park Primary strike suspended pending talks

 Lyon Park Primary strike action has been suspended because the cCuncil stepped in and agreed to fund all the voluntary redundancies applied for and has agreed to facilitate talks, starting tomorrow, to resolve all the other issues. 

 

The NEU will go ahead with the dates of strike action next week if these talks do not resolve the outstanding matters.

Brent Consultation on Adult Social Care opens - reduction in minimum income guarantee and increased charges. Will safeguards be enough?

 

Cllr Neil Nerva, Brent Cabinet Member for Public Health and Adult Social Care

 

Brent Council opened consultation on changes in Adult Social Care charges on Thursday that propose a reduction in the minimum income guarantee support and increased charges for service users.  This will reduce Brent Council spending on Adult Social Care overall. Adult Social Care is the biggest area of Council spending.

 

Attempting to put a positive gloss on the proposals, Councillor Neil Nerva, Cabinet Member for Public Health & Adult Social Care, said:

These proposals for the charging policy are essential to ensure that we can continue to deliver a high-quality Adult Social Care service for years to come. If adopted Brent’s Adult Social Care charging policy would still be one of the most generous in London but it would be more consistent and sustainable for future years.

The Council said:

The proposed changes to the charging policy are essential to ensure the council can continue to provide the Adult Social Care services thousands of residents rely on in a sustainable way for years to come.

The proposals include:

• Changes to the minimum income guarantee – There is a minimum level of income which a person must be left with after charges are taken. This changes according to a person’s circumstances. Currently, Brent tops this up by 25%. It is proposed to reduce this to 10%. This change only affects the half of service users that contribute towards the cost of their homecare and these people will still receive 10% more than the minimum level of income they need to live, which would be one of the most generous schemes in London. The consultation will ask whether this should be implemented in full in April 2024, or phased over time.
• Increasing the amount charged to service users if they do not participate or cooperate with their financial assessment – The vast majority of service users take part in the financial assessment process, but if after four weeks they do not, it is proposed they are charged the full cost of their care. The average care cost will also be raised for financial assessments that take longer than expected to complete. The consultation will ask whether residents agree with this proposal.
• Increasing the hourly rate charged for homecare from £12.97, which will increase annually – This will impact self-funders (people who pay the total cost of their care) and some people on low incomes who have a small care package, however everyone will be re-assessed to ensure they can afford to pay. The consultation will ask what steps the council should take to support those affected.
• Charges during admissions to hospital – Proposals include not reimbursing service users for the cost of their adult social care while they are in hospital, for up to seven days if they receive homecare, or 28 days if they are in a residential or nursing home

 

In only the second proposal are residents given the opportunity to reject it outright. Public consultation meetings will be arranged to discuss the proposals.

 

More information is available on the Consultation website LINK . This includes a Powerpoint presentation from which I have extracted some case studies below:

 

 

The Council seek to reassure service users:

Share your thoughts on the consultation by Sunday 17 December. The council will then review all feedback and present the final proposals to Brent’s Cabinet in January. The earliest that any changes will take effect is April 2024.

Muhammed Butt joins 118 other council leaders in calling for urgent action by the Chancellor on councils' housing costs

 Brent Council was recently warned by its finance officers about the financial pressures on the Council and the need to make further ‘savings’ that will impact on services. The warning comes in the wake of a substantial increase in the Council’s housing costs as a result of the soaring numbers of homeless people, higher rents in the private sector when placing such families in temporary accommodation, and the shortage of private rented accommodation. There are also pressures on the Adult Social Care budget (higher charges are in the pipeline) and some local authority schools are running deficit budgets.

 

Faced with that situation the leader of Brent Council, Muhammed Butt, has signed a letter along with 118 other council leaders to the Chancellor calling on him to address the homelessness and temporary accommodation crisis that threatens local government’s financial sustainability and the services upon which England’s most vulnerable people rely.

 

The letter is signed by councils from across the country led by Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, the Green Party and Independents. It follows an emergency summit held last week (Tuesday, 31 October), co-hosted by Eastbourne Borough Council and the District Councils’ Network. 

 

According to the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the cost of temporary accommodation to councils reached £1.7bn last year and it is increasing rapidly.

 

The signatories included 108 district councils – two-thirds of the total. In many parts of the country, district councils are the tier of principal government closest to communities and they oversee services including housing, leisure centres and waste collection. The rising cost of temporary accommodation hits district councils particularly hard due to a large proportion of their budgets being devoted to housing.

 

The Councils are calling for a meeting with the Chancellor ahead of his Autumn Statement to consider their demands:

 

This is the letter:

 

 

Dear Jeremy,

 

The unprecedented pressure on temporary accommodation services

 

An unprecedented number of people are turning to councils as the last option for support when they face homelessness. As councils, we are proud of the help we give to people when they need it, but our situation is becoming untenable. We have had no option but to rapidly escalate our use of temporary accommodation, which is threatening to overwhelm our budgets.  

The level of concern was demonstrated when 158 councils attended an emergency summit on 31^st October, organised by the District Councils’ Network (DCN) and Eastbourne Borough Council. The scale of the problem was also shown by a recent DCN survey in which 96% of our member councils reported an increase in use of temporary accommodation – four-fifths of them describing this as ‘significant’. 

The ensuing increase in costs is a critical risk to the financial sustainability of many local authorities and we urge you to act swiftly to ensure we can continue our vital work. The pressure is particularly acute for district councils because housing costs constitute a far bigger proportion of our overall expenditure. 

Without urgent intervention, the existence of our safety net is under threat. The danger is that we have no option but to start withdrawing services which currently help so many families to avoid hitting crisis point. There will also be a knock-on impact on other cherished council services, which councils could also have to scale back, and on other parts of the public sector – such as the NHS – which will be left to pick up the pieces. 

Councils and our partner organisations in health, policing and education, as well as the voluntary sector, have had considerable success in recent years in moving the whole local system towards preventing homelessness, rather than just dealing with the consequences.  

However, the supply of permanent, affordable housing has fallen in many places while the impact of the rising cost of living is making housing too costly for many people. This impacts on the health and wellbeing of households affected. Some areas also experience added pressure due to the placement of asylum seekers in local hotels and other temporary accommodation. 

We do believe there is a way forward, as DCN set out to you in our Autumn Statement submission on 13 October. We are urgently calling on the Government to: 

·       Raise Local Housing Allowance rates to a level that will cover at least 30% of local market rent and commit to annual uprating. 

·       Provide £100m additional funding for Discretionary Housing Payments in 2023-24 and an additional £200m in 2024-25.  

·       Provide a £150m top-up to the Homelessness Prevention Grant for 2024-25. 

·       Review the cap for housing benefit subsidy rate for local authority homelessness placements. 

·       Develop policy to stimulate retention and supply in the privately rented sector. 

·       Give councils the long-term funding, flexibility and certainty needed to increase the supply of social housing. 

Considering the urgency and scale of these matters, we would welcome a meeting with you ahead of the Autumn Statement. 

We firmly believe that action on these issues will ensure that all councils can continue to provide an effective homelessness safety net. We also believe that these measures will be cost effective by ensuring homelessness is prevented, reducing public expenditure in future. 

The human cost of homelessness is immense. With your help we can prevent it worsening.

 

In total, 119 council leaders from across England have signed this letter.

 

 

UPDATED: Thames Water report Wembley Triangle sewage leak. Potential pollution of Wembley Brook.

 

WEMBLEY TRIANGLE TONIGHT

 A resident reported: No engineer in sight but  no leak either. From Wembley Hill Road the road is closed to the left if you wished to go down Harrow Road. From Harrow Road coming into Wembley there is no right turn into Wembley Hill Road.

By all accounts is chaos, as from Wembley Hill Road you have no choice but to turn right into the High Road.  Vehicles are going across this junction and turning in St Josephs RC Church car park then leaping out to turn right on to Harrow Road towards NCRd.  A few are attempting to turn left at the triangle and  dicing with death as it doesn't appear that the traffic lights are giving them the option.

 Thames Water has reported to Brent Council that a 'big crack' opened up overnight on the road at Wembley Triangle. Sewage escaped from the main sewer about 3 metres below ground and cascaded into roadside gullies.

Thames have classified this as pollution as it leads into the Wembley Brook (of recent fame).  At the time of informing Brent Council. Thames said there had been no real impact on the brook at present but further work would be done today to investigate further and survey the pipe. This will establish the reapirs need to return the sewer to normal service and prevent any further flooding or pollution.

Wembley Matters has asked the Thames Water officer responsible for an update on the situation after today's investigation.

Do you want to participate in Brent planning process re quality and benefit? Consider joining the Community Review Panel. Applications close December 4th

 

Brent Council has retweeted the invitation above which may indicate a lack of response. This is what the Council website says about the Panel:

 

Community Review

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) emphasises the importance of involving communities in the decision-making process. The aim of this is to increase design quality and place benefit. Whilst no specific mechanism on how to do this is set out in the NPPF, community review panels are becoming increasingly popular amongst local authorities for enabling greater participation in the planning process.

Brent Community Review Panel

The council is looking to recruit local people to a new Brent Community Review Panel (CRP). This aims to give a voice to local people on new developments in their area.

The panel will help the council to better understand the needs of the local community by playing an independent advisory role in the planning process through discussion of issues around housing, transport, public and green spaces, and the environment. This will help ensure that new developments are of the highest design quality, and meet the needs of people living in, working in, studying in and visiting Brent in the future.

Frame Projects, who manage the Brent Quality Review Panel on behalf of the council, is responsible for recruiting and managing the panel, ensuring that it is independent, well-briefed, and able to effectively communicate its views. Frame Projects will provide panel members with the support needed for their role through free training sessions.

Who can be on the panel?

The panel is aimed at residents, workers, students and regular visitors within the Brent community who are at least 16 years old. We are keenly looking for candidates who do not already have a strong voice or position of influence in their area. Councillors and Brent Council employees are not eligible to apply.

Will I be paid to be on the panel?

Panel members will receive a £25 voucher for each two-hour review meeting they attend, with reasonable expenses for travel and other necessary costs also covered.

How can I find out more and apply to join the panel?

You can email Frame Projects at brent@frame-projects.co.uk or call 020 8164 9980 to find out more and request an application form.

Application forms must be submitted by 5:30pm on Monday 4 December 2023.

If shortlisted, you will be invited to a selection workshop in January 2024 (exact date to be confirmed) with other candidates, from 6.30pm to 8.30pm.

Panel Chair

Daisy Froud

Daisy is a community engagement strategist, design critic and educator with over 20 years’ experience of devising tools and processes that allow communities to meaningfully contribute to built environment decision-making. She has particular expertise in enabling diverse groups to find common ground in situations where policy constraints or low budgets pose challenges, specialising in brokering productive communication between professionals and non-professionals. Daisy sits on a number of design review and advisory panels across London, including serving as the Chair of the Ealing Community Review Panel.