Private rents in Brent soar 33.9% in a year ONS statistics show

Source

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for the period to June 2024 show that since June 2023 there has been a 33.9% increase in private rents in the borough.

 

This compares with a maximum increase of 3.8% (for flats) in houses purchases over the 12 month period.

 The latest statistics confirm the problem that Brent Council faces due to the rise in private sector rents when looking for accommodation for homeless families.

They also challenge the claim that the increase in the number of built to rent homes in the borough, let at market rents, will via market pressures reduce rents overall.

On the basis of house prices there appears to  be an economic case for owers of detached houses to convert their property into flats as we have seen in corner site properties in the Salmon Street area of Kingsbury.

Brent today: A tale of two parks. Would you help set up a Friends of King Eddie's Park?

 Guest post by Jaine Lunn

What a difference Brent Council has been made to Sherrins Open Space, this year it is in full bloom as a wild flower meadow with lots of different species, sporting a rainbow of colour,  some I don't know the names of but daisies, poppies and sunflowers. At the beginning of the year special attention was given to the area designated for meadow with some radical maintenance turning over the soil and reseeding and it has made all the difference.   On Saturdays this park benefits from a group of people who have been given Community Service, who not only empty bins but make an effort to pick up all debris around the whole of the park, and sweep the car park.  A good job has been done by all and let's hope it stays this way.

 

Which brings me on to the state of the park locals fondly nickname “King Eddies”  - King Edward VII Park, now a shadow of its former glory,  

 

It was once the premier Green Flag Park  in Wembley. This year is the anniversary of its opening on 4th July of 1914 by Queen Alexandra in memory of her late husband King Edward VII.  It was laid to compensate Wembley residents for the loss of park land of Wembley Park which was being developed as a high class residential garden suburb (this is description is quoted  in a book titled Images of Wembley by Geoffrey Hewlett- a planning officer for Brent Council for most of his career)

 

 The band stand and rather grand looking Park Lane School, 2014

 

 View over King Edward VII Park, 1920

The flower beds

In 2012 for Queen Elizabeth's Jubilee this park was designated protection from "Fields in Trust" one of only three parks in Brent with that protection. The others are Mapesbury Dell and Roe Green Walled Garden in Kingsbury, it obviously has not made any difference here.  Why has Brent Park Forums not intervened?

 

 

The once beautiful flower beds have been replaced by perennial plants, low maintenance plants, or should I say devoid of any maintenance whatsoever, are not attended to at all, are now unloved and not deserving of any merit.

 

The area designated as wildflower meadow and celebrated by Brent Council as a "Bee Highway" is no more, just long unkempt grass, devoid of any flowers, full of plastic and glass bottles, a danger for any children or dogs who choose to venture in.

 

 The footpaths around the park could do with a complete makeover, full of cracks or water bubbling up when it rains hard as the drains can't cope.  Especially the footpath between Collins Lodge and the children’s play area which has been churned up and now houses a huge crater which anyone walking along needs to pay special attention especially mums with pushchairs or anyone who has a mobility issue.

 

 

 

A manhole cover which has been installed has a foot deep gap surround that if anyone was to accidentally step into would surely succumb to a serious injury let alone break an ankle, whether child or adult.

 

 

Bins are left unemptied for days on end.

 

 

Remains of a portable BBQ - which is against the by-laws that  nobody pays any attention to.

 

 

Football area strewn with plastic bottles which are never picked up or deposited in the bins by the users of the pitches.

 

 

It is very sad to see that for our cricket obsessed Asian residents the demise of the cricket pitches that were once marked out during the summer. Now they are only marked out for football and cricketers are resigned to using the MUGA cage or the periphery of the football pitches which is not ideal as it leaves other park users at risk of being hit by a cricket ball!

 

The children’s play area leaves a lot to be desired in comparison to what is on offer in other boroughs close by. 

 

This is now a very well used park, especially by all the residents who now live in all the flats that have been built around Wembley with no outside space, this park is in serious need of upgrade and why can't the council use some of its millions £££ NCIL money to upgrade this park to its former glory.  After all isn't that what Community infrastructure Levy is for?

 

It desperately needs the same as Roundwood Park in Willesden:

 

·      New benches and more seating.

·      A picnic area with tables and benches

·      Larger bins

·      A cafe

·      A water fountain for all users

·      Toilets

 

Whilst I note that planning permission was granted for SBC Boxing Club to build a new pavilion that would house a cafe and toilets this yet remains to be seen whether it will come to fruition.

 

We also don't have a "Friends of King Eddies" association like many other parks in Brent, any chance we could get one going?  I'd be happy to join and help set one up.

 

 

If you would like to help write to Martin at wembleymatters@virginmedia.com with your contacts and I will pass on to Jaine.

 

 

 

 

The Empire Pool / Wembley Arena Story - Part 4

 The fourth and final part of the guest blog by local historian Philip Grant on a key piece of local history. Many thanks to Philip Grant for his tireless efforts to ensure our local history is acknowledged and celebrated.

 

1.  The original (west end) entrance to Wembley Arena in 2003. (Image from the internet)

 

Welcome back for the final part of this story. As we saw at the end of Part 3, the Empire Pool had been renamed Wembley Arena, and although it was still home to some sporting events, it was now being used mainly to stage music and entertainment shows.

 

If I tried to name all of the acts who have performed at the Arena, the list would take up the rest of this article. I will just mention a few, and if I miss one of your favourites, you are welcome to add your memories of the time(s) you saw them at Wembley in the comments below. Among the top British bands that have performed here are The Rolling Stones, The Who, Status Quo, Queen, The Police and Dire Straits. The first two of those both had drummers from Wembley, in Charlie Watts and Keith Moon!

 

It would be unfair if I didn’t also name a few of the top acts from overseas that have also performed here since the name was changed in 1978. Did you see ABBA, AC/DC, Diana Ross, John Denver, Madonna, Meat Loaf, Dolly Parton, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston or Stevie Wonder at Wembley Arena? If so, please feel free to add your memories below.

 

2.  A Torvill & Dean programme from 1985, and a recent Holiday on Ice show. (Images from the internet)

 

One of the original purposes of the Empire Pool was to provide an ice-skating rink. Although Wembley stopped staging its own ice pantomimes, spectacular touring productions from the “Holiday on Ice” franchise have been a regular feature at Wembley Arena since 1978. If you saw it on TV, as I did, you will never forget Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean’s gold medal-winning “Bolero” ice dance at the 1984 Winter Olympics. The following year, as part of their World Tour, they sold out the Arena for seven weeks with their own ice show.

The building was now more than fifty years old, and in the late 1980s Wembley Stadium Ltd invested £10m to upgrade the Arena’s facilities for both performers and the paying public who came to see them. The improvements allowed even more spectacular effects to be included, as the 1990s saw more than 900 concerts performed at the venue. One of the most unusual for Wembley was an arena staging of Puccini’s opera “Turandot” by the Royal Opera in 1991 (building on the popularity of the aria “Nessun Dorma”, which the BBC had used as the theme tune for its coverage of the football World Cup in Italy the previous year!).

 

3.  Concert of Hope, George Michael singing in 1993, and watching other performers with Princess Diana.
(Images from the internet)

 

Charity events had been a feature of the Arena’s programme for decades. The annual Concert of Hope for World Aids Day was supported by Diana, Princess of Wales, and top performers, including another famous musician who grew up in Brent, George Michael.

 

 

Cliff Richard, who first performed here in 1960 as part of a NME Poll Winners’ concert, had 49 shows at Wembley Arena in the 1990s, and was still packing the venue with his 50^th anniversary tour in 2007. A different genre of pop music also came to the Arena in the nineties, with shows from boy (and girl) bands, including Take That, Boyzone, The Spice Girls and Westlife. Two of those groups were from Ireland, but another Irish import, Michael Flatley’s “Lord of the Dance”, was so successful in 1997 that it returned for 21 sell-out shows the following year.

 

4.  “Lord of the Dance” programme and video screenshot. (Images from the internet)

 

February 1999 saw the first solo stand-up comedy act at the Arena (many more would follow) when Eddie Izzard performed “Dress to Kill”, in aid of The Prince’s Trust. Britain (and Brent’s) increasing cultural diversity also saw Wembley Arena hosting more Asian / Bollywood music shows, by performers including Amitabh Bachchan and Asha Bhosle.

 

5.  Eddie Izzard programme and Asha Bhosle poster. (Images from the internet)

 

By the end of the twentieth century, the original Wembley Stadium was about to be demolished and replaced. It had been bought, together with around 100 acres of land that Arthur Elvin’s company had acquired, by the Football Association’s Wembley National Stadium Ltd, but they were not interested in redevelopment. In 2002, they sold some of the land, including the Arena, to Quintain Estates and Developments Plc, which eventually bought 85 acres of Wembley Park.

 

Wembley Arena was only eleven years younger than the 1923 stadium, and Quintain were soon making redevelopment plans, including a major refurbishment of the Grade II Listed arena. Work began in February 2005, and included moving the main entrance to the opposite end of the building, with access from a new Arena Square (it is actually a triangle!). The project cost £36m, and the “new” 12,500-seat Wembley Arena re-opened on 2 April 2006, with a concert by Depeche Mode.

 

6.  The Wembley Arena redevelopment in progress, 2005. (Image from the internet)

 

You can see the Arena being refurbished in the photograph above, but beyond it you can also see an exhibition centre, a triangular office block and a round building, Wembley Conference Centre, which were built by the Wembley Stadium company in the 1970s. The Conference Centre had been the venue for the annual Masters Snooker Championship since 1979, but after Quintain demolished that building in 2006, to make way for its Quadrant Court flats development, “The Masters” moved to Wembley Arena from 2007 to 2011.

 

7.  Scenes from the Olympic badminton and rhythmic gymnastics events at Wembley Arena in 2012.
(Images from the internet)

 

We saw in Part 2 how the then Empire Pool was used for some sports in the 1948 Olympics, and when the Games came to London again in 2012, the now Wembley Arena played host to two different Olympic competitions. First it was the badminton events, followed by the rhythmic gymnastics. Together they brought hundreds of competitors, from more than fifty nations, and thousands of spectators to Wembley.

 

8.  Wembley Arena, with Hilton Hotel and LDO beyond, in 2013.

 

Redevelopment continued around the refurbished Arena and its square. Forum House was the first of Quintain’s many blocks of apartment homes, built between the western end of the Arena and Empire Way. The Hilton Hotel was another early addition, just across Lakeside Way (remember that the Empire Pool was built at one end of the British Empire Exhibition’s central lake!) from the Arena entrance. The former Wembley exhibition halls made way for the London Designer Outlet shopping centre, which opened in 2013, as did Brent’s new Civic Centre, on part of the site of the former BEE Palace of Industry, across Engineers Way from Arena Square.

 

9.  Arena Square, with Brent Civic Centre beyond, summer 2014.

 

Arena Square, with its seasonal fountains, has become a popular open space (especially since the trees planted along its Wembley Park Boulevard side have grown large enough to provide some shade). Another of its features, designed to celebrate some of the Arena’s most popular performers, is the Square of Fame. Although this is on nothing like the scale of the Hollywood Boulevard “walk of fame”, it has become an attraction in its own right. Madonna was the first star to have bronze casts of her hands put on display, in 2006. The most recent addition is Dame Shirley Bassey, in 2019, sixty years after her appearance in the first popular music show at the Empire Pool (although she continued to perform here well into the 21^st century).

 

10.  A Square of Fame compilation, showing some of the stars who have made their mark at the Arena.

 

In 2013, Quintain handed over the management of Wembley Arena to a U.S. music promotions company (now known as ASM Global). They, in turn, entered into a 10-year naming rights deal with Scottish and Southern Energy, so that the building became known as The SSE Arena, Wembley. This made little difference to the shows put on at the venue, which included the annual live final of the X-Factor TV talent show (with previous episodes filmed at Wembley Park’s Fountain Studios, until they closed in December 2016).

 

11.  Outside and inside The SSE Arena on X-Factor finals night. (Images from the internet)

 

The Arena’s name changed again, after SSE sold its retail business to another electricity supplier, OVO Energy, in 2020. What began in 1934 as the Empire Pool is now the OVO Arena Wembley. And twenty years after buying the Arena, Quintain sold it in 2022, raising capital to pay for the construction of more buy-to-let apartments as part of its continuing redevelopment of Wembley Park. Its owner is now ICG Real Estate, part of the private equity firm Intermediate Capital Group.

 

12.  OVO Arena Wembley, from across Engineers Way, July 2024.

 

I hope you have enjoyed discovering more about the history of this famous Wembley Park landmark and venue. It is a story that I have wanted to share for several years, and the building’s 90^th anniversary felt like a good time to do that.

 

As long ago as the 1990s, Brent Council and the Stadium company worked together to celebrate the sports and entertainment heritage of Wembley’s Stadium and Arena. They did this with a series of ceramic tile murals, which welcomed visitors coming from Wembley Park Station through a new subway and onto the newly pedestrianised Olympic Way. Unfortunately, in 2013, the Council agreed to allow Quintain to cover those tile murals with advertisements!

 

13.  Some tile mural scenes celebrating events from Empire Pool / Wembley Arena history.

 

Along with Wembley History Society and a number of local residents, I have been campaigning since 2018 to get these tile murals put back on public display. In 2022, Quintain agreed to put the mural scenes on the walls in Olympic Way, which they own, back on public view. They include the ice hockey tiled picture at the top of the image above.

 

The other four mural scenes in that image are on the walls of the subway, which Brent Council own. I had taken a photograph of the mural celebrating the Horse of the Year Show in 2009, but the other three images, showing a female singer (Shirley Basey?), an ice skater and a basketball player (Harlem Globetrotters?), are all extracted from old views of the walls. All four of these murals are still hidden from view, behind LED advertising screens.

 

Brent Council had the chance to put the subway murals back on public view from the end of August 2024, and there was a strong case for doing so. Sadly, Brent’s Cabinet was unwilling to consider that case, choosing instead to receive slightly more advertising rent. That decision will mean these parts of the Arena’s history (and more scenes from Wembley Stadium’s history) will remain hidden from residents and visitors for at least another four years.

Philip Grant.

 

Ealing Road blocks replacing bank and public house approved by Brent Planning Committee

 

Brent Planning Committee approved the plans for  245-249 and 253 Ealing Road at Wednesday's meeting. Two members voted against approval. There were representations  against the development from nearby residents and from ward councillor Anton Georgiou. The sound quality of the Coucil recording was very poor so Cllr Geogiou has let me have a copy of his representation:

I am here, once again, to be a voice for the residents in Alperton who are fed up with the intense development in this particular part of the ward. An area that has already had to endure years of construction works, that are still ongoing causing misery to the lives of local people. If any of you have visited recently – you will understand why.

 

As a ward Councillor, I often come to these meetings to voice opposition to the wrong type of development and am often attacked by the Chair and others for not understanding the pressures we face as a local authority with regards to our housing needs – these attacks are totally unwarranted.

 

It is important to recognise that the bulk of the development that has occurred to date has not and will not address the genuine and growing housing need in our community. It has though compounded existing issues in my ward whether that is a lack of infrastructure to deal with the increasing population, or the problems that present for existing residents and even our newer residents who are living in some of the new blocks that have been thrown up.

 

Firstly, I think that it is important to read the letter from my resident Alexandra, who is unable to be here today, which outlines her and her neighbours, objections to this development. The issues she highlights are all genuine planning considerations, loss of light, privacy and overlooking issues, the cumulative effect that ongoing development has had and will have on this area. I do believe that before you make a decision tonight you should read her letter and listen to the comments Mathew, another resident at 243 Ealing Road will make, who will also be speaking in opposition.

 

If I could get into the final details of this application, I think it’s important to recognise that whilst some affordable housing is provided, not all of it is the genuinely affordable provision we need. I continue to take issue with the Council’s view that shared ownership is an affordable housing tenure. It is not. 

 

Shared Ownership is a scam, and you only have to speak to the 1000’s of residents in Brent who have been trapped by the false pretence that Shared Ownership is affordable to see this. In the application it is proposed that there will be 10 Shared Ownership units. In my view that is enough of a reason to reject this version of the application entirely. 

 

Whilst I recognise the scheme proposes a 35% affordable housing offer, as an authority we should be pushing for much more from developers if we are serious about addressing our growing housing need. We do not need 56 more private units at market value, who are they for, who can afford them? It is time this Committee stopped saturating the local housing market with what we do not need.

 

Moving to existing issues in some of the new blocks in Alperton, I would like to ask this Committee if they follow up on the developments that have already been approved. If you had you would realise that most new residents are having to already contend with difficulties in new buildings, such as broken lifts, anti-social behaviour in communal spaces, lack of access to communal areas due to safety issues, significant construction issues, including with cladding, the list goes on.

 

My point is that this Committee is approving new developments without recognising that most of these developments from the offset have major, inherent issues with them. You are effectively allowing residents to move into the ward and into Brent who are then forced to cope with a myriad of problems in their new homes from day one. 

 

Is the Council holding the developers, housing associations and construction/ building companies to account – when they make commitments to us at this stage of the process? I am personally having to intervene when issues present in new blocks and it seems unbelievable, frankly a dereliction of the Council’s duty towards residents, that new developments keep being approved despite there being such flaws in new builds. Enough is enough.

 

I would finally like to turn to the financial contributions offered alongside this development.

 

The papers indicate a £45,00 towards a CPZ close to the site, I would like the Committee to tell me if they know where the existing CPZ is, and whether the mentioned extension will simply be imposed on residents. Before accepting more money for CPZ’s I would suggest the Council gets its act together in progressing schemes – they take too long to implement and in the meantime parking havoc ensues on local roads.

 

£7,000 for off street tree planting is welcome but are the Council committing maintenance and upkeep, rather than letting new trees die?

 

£10,000 for improvements to open spaces within the borough but not solely for the ward so again money generated in Alperton being spent elsewhere. This is not fair.

 

Another £150,000 for step free access at Alperton tube. Welcomed. But will it actually happen. TfL are good at sending out press releases on this, but how long will it take? Issues at the station are present now, local people cannot wait any longer.

 

CIL contribution again welcomed, but how much will actually be spent on infrastructure in my ward, to mitigate the impact of this development. Will the Council not be tempted, as it has been to date, to just grow the overall pot and resist spending it on immediate needs?

 

These financial sweeteners are simply not reason enough to justify even more development in Alperton.

 

I will close by saying, the proposed site used to house a public house and bank. Both great amenities, that local people want and need. The worrying trend of pubs closing down and being redeveloped into unaffordable housing will continue if you approve this application. I am sure many of you have fought to save such amenities in your wards. Why doesn’t Alperton deserve the same fight?

 

This Committee is making my ward a place for people to sleep in but not live. It is a concrete jungle, with little to no community vibe. Please pause and think again before agreeing to two more tower blocks here.