Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity
1. The Victorian mission hall (now Harriet
Tubman House) and Community Centre in Hazel Road, NW10.
How often have you heard complaints that Brent Council’s Planning Officers
appear to favour developers, rather than the local community? Well now there is
clear evidence that they have done that, in a blatantly unfair way, in the case
of the application (ref. 25/0041) by the Making The Leap (“MTL”) charity to
demolish a heritage Victorian building, and replace it with a larger four storey aluminium-clad building.
In January 2025, Martin published an
article about opposition from Kensal Green Residents’ Association (“KGRA”) to
these plans. KGRA asked Willesden Local
History Society for help with the heritage aspects of the application, and as a
result I prepared an
alternative heritage statement (“my AHS”),
which was shared with Wembley Matters readers in February.
This will be a long guest post, but I hope you will stay with it while I
take you, step-by-step, through the evidence, to show the underhand way in
which this application has been dealt with.
Much of the evidence comes from Brent’s response (on 2 September, after
taking the full 20 working days allowed) to a Freedom of Information Act
request by Kensal Green Residents' Association. This asked for copies of the “feedback” on the
application, given by Brent’s Planning Officers to MTL or its agents. The
information was in thirteen separate pdf documents, with titles like ’07.04
corr_redacted’, containing copies of email exchanges between January and early
August 2025. As some of the emails referred to my AHS, KGRA forwarded
the response to me.
Most of the email correspondence was with Brent’s Planning Case Officer,
and I have added extra redactions to the copies included in this article, so
that this is not a personal attack on one Council employee. I will refer to the
Planning Officer as “AB” (with “A” the first name and “B” the surname – you
will see why!). It seems unlikely that the Officer was “one bad apple”, and
more likely that what has occurred in this case is symptomatic of a wider
culture which operates within Brent’s Planning Department.
Before I show you what was wrong with the handling of MTL’s application
25/0041, I hope you will forgive me for explaining the way in which planning
applications should be dealt with. In Brent’s Case, this is set out in a
Planning Code of Practice, which forms part of the Constitution (the rules
which govern how the Council operates).
2. Two key extracts from Brent Council’s
Planning Code of Practice.
Brent’s Planning Code of Practice makes clear that Officers must deal
with planning applications fairly and impartially and comply with the
standards set out by the Royal Town Planning Institute (“RTPI”) in carrying out
their work. These are two relevant extracts from the RTPI’s ‘Practical Advice
on Ethics and Professional Standards’:
3. Two key extracts from the RTPI guidance
‘Probity and Professional Planners’.
“Probity” is not a commonly used word, but it is a very important one
(also repeated in the Local Government Association’s guidance to local planning
authorities: “Probity in Planning”). It means carrying out your duties with
a high standard of honesty and integrity, and according to the
procedures and rules set out for those duties. Sadly, as I’m about to show,
that was not the case with application 25/0041, which was submitted in January
2025.
4. Email of 6 January from DP9 to the Case
Officer – application submitted.
DP9 are the planning agents handling the application on behalf of MTL.
From the way in which the Case Officer is addressed by their first name, and
the familiar tone of the email, the Senior Planner at DP9 appears to already
know the Planning Officer who will be handling the application on behalf of
Brent Council. This was probably because of pre-application advice which was
sought before the application was submitted. That is a service which Brent’s
Planning Department offers, and which potential applicants are encouraged to
use (but see the note at the bottom of this advice).
5. The Pre-application advice section from
Brent’s Planning website.
Not only is pre-application advice informal, with no guarantee that it
will lead to a subsequent application being given planning permission, but
Brent’s Planning Code of Practice makes clear that the advice given at that
stage must not lead to pre-determination or bias in the way in which the
application is dealt with by Brent’s Planning Officers.
6. Extract from the Pre-application Advice
section of Brent’s Planning Code of Practice.
The January 2025 correspondence, which followed from the 6 January email
at 4. above, was mainly about the “validation” of application 25/004, and also
involved a Technical Support Officer. Although Brent’s planners did not accept
that the application was valid until 16 January, they agreed (at DP9’s request)
to backdate the validation date to 7 January. That date is when the time limit
for deciding the application starts to run.
It was expected that the decision would be made at Delegated Team
Manager level, and it appears that MTL were hoping its application would be
approved within the time limit, so that work could begin in April 2025.
However, by the end of January there were already enough objections, mainly
from local residents but also from Queens Park Ward councillors, to ensure that
the application would have to be decided by Brent’s Planning Committee. Many
had been submitted by email, and DP9 wanted copies:
7. Email from DP9 to the Case Officer on 4
February 2025.
After a chasing email from the planning agent, the Case Officer
responded on 20 February, saying: ‘We would have to do a lot of redactions to
remove personal information from the objections we’ve received which would be
very time-consuming. So instead I think its best if I just send across a
summary of the main objection points received from these objections in question
- would this be ok with you?’
The next day, the Case Officer did send the Senior Planner at DP9 a
large batch of information on the objections received, with an email beginning
(after ‘Hi [first name], I hope you are well’):
8. List of main objection points from Case
Officer’s email to DP9 on 21 February 2025.
I had submitted my
AHS on 13 February, setting out why the
application failed all six of the tests in Brent’s heritage planning policy BHC1,
and other Brent planning policies, and must be refused. My AHS was also
referred to in the 21 February email, along with advice on how the
planning agent should respond to it! This is what the Case Officer wrote:
‘Just further on the heritage element, you may have
also seen an objector submit an alternative heritage statement online? This has
been made in response to the formal submitted one. I have shared with our own
heritage consultant who has advised that as it is well researched, an updated
heritage statement should be submitted to consider the significance scoring as
set out in the alternative HS. It would
also need to better justify the proposals as well as set out the benefits. For example, in terms of 'good design', the
need for a fit for purpose building and one that delivers public benefits. The fact that it can't be delivered currently
within the building and needs to be on this site (not elsewhere) etc.’
9. The Case Officer’s email to DP9 on 27
February 2025.
The Case Officer followed up that email on 27 February (see image 9.
above), and it is clear from the second highlighted sentence that ‘we’ (Brent’s
Planning Officers) were already getting ready to put the application forward to
Brent’s Planning Committee. They would only do that if they were going to
recommend that the application should be approved, despite all of the
objections received showing that it failed to comply with Brent’s adopted Local
Plan policies. In ‘trying to pre-empt some of the questions that councillors
would have’, they were looking to find ways of justifying why the application
should be approved, despite failing to comply with planning policy. That
goes against Brent’s Planning Code of Practice, which is ‘designed to ensure
that planning decisions are taken on proper planning grounds’!
There were exchanges of emails between the Case Officer and DP9 during
March 2025 (on first name terms), and on 26 March the Case Officer sent the
agent a copy of the pdf document version of my AHS (which had been redacted, to
hide my identity). I have no objection to that action, as it was only fair that
the planning agent should have the opportunity to respond to my detailed
demolition of the application’s original heritage statement!
10. The Case Officer’s email to DP9 on 4
April 2025.
The email on 4 April (see image 10. above) clearly shows that the Case
Officer hoped to get MTL’s application decided at a Planning Committee meeting
in early May, and was chasing for a revised heritage statement (which would be
needed so that Planning Officers could claim that it answered the points raised
in my AHS). That revised heritage statement was submitted with an email on 7
April, following a telephone call with the Case Officer, which DP9 had asked
for ‘to discuss some items on the application’.
11. Email from DP9 to Case Officer on 7
April, sending applicant’s revised heritage statement.
The Case Officer responded by email on 8 April, saying:
‘Thank you for your call yesterday and for sending
the revised heritage statement and the drainage plan which we will review.
As mentioned to allow for enough time for review
and given that we do not have space at the May committee, we are therefore
targeting the June committee for determination. Please can we agree to a time
extension until the end of June (30.06.2025)?’
The revised heritage statement was loaded onto the “View Documents” page
on the Brent planning website for application 25/0041 on 17 April. On the same
date (the last working day before the Easter long weekend) there was this
exchange of emails between the Senior Planner at DP9 and the Case Officer:-
12. Email of 17 April at 14:38 from DP9
Senior Planner to Case Officer.
13. Email of 17 April at 16:24 from Case
Officer to DP9 Senior Planner.
DP9 had to submit a revised version of their revised heritage statement
after the Case Officer had pointed out that the document sent on 7 April still
referred to the Barnet Core Strategy as the relevant local policy! The Case
Officer’s final comment, that they’re hopeful of ‘reaching a positive outcome
at committee’, confirms that Brent’s Planners intend to recommend that the
planning application is approved, despite its failure to comply with a number
of Brent’s adopted planning policies.
I had seen that there was a revised heritage statement when checking the
planning website, and submitted another objection comment online on 28 April.
This made clear that it was only a slightly revised version of the original
heritage statement, and did not undermine the case I had made in my AHS of 13
February:
‘My AHS set out clearly, at paragraphs 4.2 to 4.8,
how the proposals in application 25/0041 failed to meet the requirements of all
six parts, a) to f), of policy BHC1, as well as Brent’s Local Plan policies
DMP1, BD1 and BP6 South East. That is still the case, and those failures, both
individually and combined, are very good reasons why this application must be
refused.’
A few days later, on 2 May, the Case Officer sent this email to the
person who had taken over responsibility for the MTL application at DP9:
14. Email from the Case Officer to DP9 on 2
May 2025.
By saying that: ‘unfortunately we do not consider that [the April
revised heritage statement] has fully addressed the matters raised in the
alternative heritage statement’, the Case Officer is admitting that I had shown
the application failed to comply with the Council’s heritage planning policy.
It would not be possible for Planning Officers to recommend approving planning
consent unless they could claim that my AHS had been disproved (or at least a
key part of it).
However, the Case Officer did not leave it to DP9 (or the apparent
author of its heritage statements, The Townscape Consultancy) to consider how
they should respond, for a second time, to my AHS. They actually told them,
in the final highlighted paragraph, what they should write! That would not
deal with the whole of the case I had set out as to why the application must be
refused, but it would allow Planning Officers, in their Committee Report, to
make the argument that the application fulfilled the requirements of the
crucial paragraph e) of Brent’s heritage planning policy BHC1. And when the
second revised heritage statement (“RHS2”) was
submitted, its paragraph 1.3 was almost a copy of the final paragraph of the
Case Officer’s 2 May email!
15. Extract from the May 2025 revised
heritage statement on behalf of the applicant.
The RHS2 was sent to the Case Officer on 27 May, by the Associate at DP9
who had taken over from the Senior Planner. I will ask Martin to attach a copy
of that statement at the end of this post, if possible, so that anyone who is
interested can read it.
16. Email from DP9 to the Case Officer on 27
May, attaching the second revised heritage statement.
The Case Officer replied to that email the same afternoon, thanking the
Associate at DP9 for the document. In the final paragraph of their email the
Case Officer wrote:
‘Moving forward, we are looking at future committee
dates and we have a target for the July committee which is set for the 9th
July. However, I will confirm this with my manager and this date may depend on
whether a re-consultation for the revised heritage statement is necessary. I
will keep you informed.’
It was correctly decided that a new public consultation period was
necessary, and the Case Officer sent out letters about this on 10 June 2025:-
17. The top section of Brent’s
re-consultation letter of 10 June 2025.
The re-consultation was specifically so that anyone who wished to could
comment on the RHS2, which had been submitted on 27 May, and the letter went on
to say: ‘Comments should be made by: 10 July 2025.’ However, the RHS2 was not
published on the online “View Documents” planning webpage for application
25/0041 until 9 July!
18. Extract from the “View Documents” menu
for application 25/0041 on Brent’s planning website.
Was this just a “clerical error” by Brent’s Planning Department, or was
it a deliberate attempt to try to prevent any further objections to the RHS2,
which said what the Case Officer (and others?) wanted, as set out in the email
of 2 May (see image 14 above)? I do know that an email I sent to the Case
Officer on 10 June, with a copy to the Head of Planning (“HoP”), should have
alerted them to the fact that the RHS2 was not available to comment on. I
wrote:
‘Dear A B,
Application 25/0041 - Harriet Tubman House, 28
Hazel Road, NW10 5PP
Can you tell me what is going on over this
application, please?
Today I have received eight emails from
RegenAdminservices, each with a copy of a 10 June letter from you attached,
telling me about a "new" consultation period for this application.
I went to the webpage, and could not see anything
new, but when I read the letter more closely, I saw that the only
"new" item was the revised heritage statement, which was received
around eight weeks ago! I submitted a comment in response to that revised
statement around 28 April, showing that it was only marginally better than the
pathetic original attempt at a heritage statement submitted as part of the
initial application.’
I received no reply to that 10 June email to the Case Officer, and it
was only when I was checking the website for application 25/0041 in late July,
for anything “new”, that I discovered the RHS2, which had only appeared there
on 9 July. I also saw this on the “Important Dates” page:
19. The “Important Dates” page for
application 25/0041, as shown on 28 July 2025.
The redacted emails supplied by Brent, in response to KGRA's FoI
request, show that on 25 June the Case Officer had written to DP9 saying:
‘The revised heritage statement is out for
consultation, and we are aiming for a committee date of the 6th August, however
the latter is subject to the progression of a draft legal agreement. I am about
to instruct our legal team on this and I will inform you of the heads of terms
shortly.’
That legal agreement, about which there was further correspondence, was
the Section 106 agreement which would be required as part of the planning
consent, involving various financial contributions and undertakings from the
applicant. However, other problems emerged, which meant that the application
could not go to the August Planning Committee meeting:
20. Email of 22 July from the Case Officer to
DP9.
Network Rail had made an early objection to the application, because of
the possible effect of the proposed demolition, and construction of a new building,
above railway tunnels that run under the Hazel Road Open Space and part of
Harriet Tubman House. The Case Officer was telling the planning agent that
this objection had to be withdrawn ‘before we can take this to committee’ – in
other words, before we can recommend Planning Committee to approve the
application.
At that stage, the Case Officer did not see the heritage objections
(there were others beside my own) as a problem, because no one had raised
objections to the RHS2 (for reasons which are obvious above!). However, on 19
August I did submit a further detailed objection comment (‘in response to the
Revised Heritage Statement submitted in July 2025’ – not knowing then that it
had been submitted in May!). I will ask Martin to attach a copy of that
document at the end of this article, if possible, for anyone who wishes to read
it.
My August objection comment disproved the claim that the RHS2 rebutted
the method of scoring the heritage significance of the Victorian building (I
had used the method adopted by Brent’s Planning Committee in July 2015!), and the
claim that the demolition would only cause a low to medium level of harm to the
heritage asset. As yet, there has been no published response to my latest
objection.
21. Email of 7 August from the Case Officer
to DP9.
The most recent email from the Case Officer, obtained through the FoI
request, is dated 7 August (before my latest heritage objection comment), said
that Planning Officers were ‘aiming to get this case heard at the September
planning committee.’ But it was not on the agenda for that meeting, and the
request for ‘an extension of time until the 31st October 2025’
suggests that they hope to get the application approved at the next meeting, on
23 October.
Thank you, if you have had the patience to read through this article,
and the copy documents I have displayed in it. I hope you will agree that the
evidence shows a lack of both impartiality and fairness by Brent Planners, through their Case Officer in particular, in dealing with the MTL
application 25/0041.
There were numerous valid objections, from the local community, pointing
out failures to comply with planning policy over the size of the proposed
building, it being totally out of character with the Victorian street,
overlooking and loss of sunlight to neighbouring properties, among other
reasons. All of these objections were treated as if they did not matter –
they could be argued away in the Officers’ Report to Planning Committee, either
as minor and “acceptable” breaches of Brent’s Local Plan policies, or that
Officers “consider” that those policies were complied with. (How many times
have we seen that in other Reports!)
On my own objections, over the failure to comply with Brent’s heritage
planning policy, the applicant’s own heritage statements could not make a
strong enough case to show that their application met the necessary
requirements. The Case Officer actually told them what they should write, so
that Brent’s Planners could claim that my AHS of February 2025 should be
discounted. The evidence is there, in the Case Officer’s emails to the
planning agent of 21 February and 2 May (see image 14 above). That action is
the opposite of the requirement in Brent’s Planning Code of Practice that
Officers must consider and decide planning matters ‘in a fair, impartial and
transparent manner.’
Throughout the email evidence, which has only come to light because of a
Freedom of Information Act request (thanks to KGRA!), it is
clear that the Case Officer has been biased in favour of approving the planning
application, and that their Manager(s) have done nothing to prevent this.
Not only has there been bias, that appears to have been the attitude from the
time application 25/0041 was submitted in January 2025, so there are reasonable
grounds for suspecting that there was pre-determination by Brent’s Planners,
that they’d already decided it should be approved. That would be a
serious ‘procedural impropriety’ (to use the words of the Planning Code of
Practice), or in plain English downright dishonest, and potentially unlawful.
Having seen the evidence, I felt that I must share it publicly, to
expose what has gone on in the Council’s Planning Department over the Hazel
Road application. It was unacceptable behaviour, and must be challenged and
dealt with if Brent is to have a fair and honest planning system.
Philip Grant.
