As you’ll know, the May local elections unseated the three pro-tower incumbent councillors in Queen’s Park and two of the three in Kilburn, replacing them with LibDem councillors who campaigned as being anti-tower.

This was great news as not only did it give us sympathetic local councillors for the first time but it also changed the balance of power in Brent Council generally so that rabidly pro-tower Council Leader Ann John was replaced by Paul Lorber, leader of the LibDems.

Many thanks go to everyone who leafleted for STT during the election. The result was very close and it’s likely that without STT’s campaign we’d have ended up with a very different outcome.

NEW BRIEF

The new councillors met STT soon after taking over and listened to our longstanding request that the planning policy for the site be changed to include a height cap.

The LibDem council leadership put this to Brent Planning, asking them to come up with a new policy.

Brent Planning, with typical slipperiness, came back with a document that specifically precluded a height cap, and had dodgy clauses in it that would have made a low-rise development difficult.

HEIGHT CAP

Brent Planning’s document went before the council Executive on the 23rd of August. Fortunately, the LibDem leadership invited STT to make a written submission and speak at the Executive, so we were able to make our case against Brent’s dodgy new policy.

Crucially, Council Leader Paul Lorber then put forward an alternative motion, calling for a predominantly low-rise building of mostly 4 to 5 storeys, with the highest part restricted to no more than 12 storeys. This was approved, so Brent Planning now have to draw up a new policy that reflects this. This is a great result for everyone who has supported the campaign to stop giant blocks being built in QP.

WHERE WE ARE NOW

12 storeys is more than most people want. The QPARA survey showed that 66% want 8 storeys or less, and that the majority of local people want fewer than 6. STT’s poll gives the average maximum height that the local community would accept as 7 storeys.

However, since the existing policy calls for tower blocks up to 20 storeys tall, a height cap of 12 storeys is a big step in the right direction. And Paul Lorber’s motion specifies that the tall part of the building must only be a small part, the rest being low-rise.

In addition, it was made clear at the Executive that a cap of 12 storeys was just that – a cap – and not a mandate to necessarily build that high. So the finished building can still be lower.

STAKEHOLDER FORUM

Brent Planning’s rigged Stakeholder Forum finished its work last month. Despite what you may read elsewhere, there was no consensus on the designs put to it. Brent hired Munkenbeck and Marshall (an architectural firm with a good reputation) to come up with some alternative ideas.

Brent extended the site under discussion (it now includes Cullen House and the bus stop part of Premier Corner as well as the car park and Kenniston Press). Munkenbeck and Marshall put forward a courtyard design, mostly low-ish but with a tower at one corner.

This is the context behind the reference in Paul Lorber’s motion to a “small part” of the development which is taller than the rest.

It’s not clear which corner will have the tower under the current proposals. STT prefers having it on the South-East corner, where the land is lower.

WHAT NEXT

Munkenbeck and Marshall’s courtyard proposal seems preferable to Genesis/O’Hara’s huge blocks. But it’s not necessarily optimal – it was the only option presented to the Stakeholder Forum, despite residents’ requests to be shown a range of options. It’s not the product of a competition, or even an involved design process.

Fortunately, Paul Lorber’s motion calls for consultation on the new policy, so this time residents will get a chance to have some input - something that didn’t happen when Brent drew up their tower block policy.

We’ll do our best to keep you informed of when and how the consultation is happening. October/November is the likely time.

Finally, Stop The Tower remains unaffiliated to any political party. If this email sounds pro-LibDem it’s simply because, thus far, the new councillors and leadership are delivering on their election promises.

That’s it for now.

Barney for STT

Queen’s Park now has three LibDem councillors, all of whom campaigned on an anti-tower ticket.

Kilburn has two new LibDem councillors.

The election was very close, with less than fifty votes between the highest-polled Labour candidate and the lowest LidDem, so it’s very possible that the Stop the Tower campaign made a decisive impact.

We are, however, still waiting to know what next for the Council and its leadership since no party has an outright majority.

We’ll keep you informed. For now, a big thank you to everyone who helped leaflet.

Here’s to increased hopes of a tower-free future.

We’d like to make sure you know the truth before casting your vote on Thursday.

• Labour Brent’s current policy is for a 20-storey tower on the station carpark. This is spelt out on page 84 of the 2005 Supplementary Planning Document. Labour Brent refuses to change this policy.

• Labour’s letter says it is “not true” that Labour is backing a 26-storey tower in Queen’s Park. But we never said they were. Their policy is for a 20-storey tower – something they don’t deny in their slippery letter.

• Stop the Tower has been trying for seven months to get Labour Brent to listen to the over 400 people who wrote to the Council objecting to the towerblock plans. But Labour Brent has refused even to consider the possibility of changing the 20-storey planning policy.

• Instead we’ve had a waffle-shop (the “Stakeholder Forum”) designed to kick the issue into touch until after the elections. The Forum has met once in the five months since it was promised by Labour leader Ann John. Its membership has been rigged by Brent. Local people have been excluded. And it hasn’t been allowed to consider building height.

• The Labour candidates’ woolly “commitment” that any new planning application must be “sympathetic and suitable” and have “wide community support” is the sort of bureaucratic blather we hear from Brent whenever we try to get a clear answer on anything tower-related.

Brent describe their policy for a 20-storey building as being “broadly supported by the community” despite having held only three public meetings on it, all in the same week, and with attendances of 10, 11, and “approximately 6″ people respectively.

• Labour Leader Ann John’s alleged promise that the tower “will be no higher than the surrounding buildings” is dangerously vague. Which surrounding buildings does she mean? Does she include the 15-storey blocks on Carlton Vale? Does she include Trellick Tower? Residents who attended the Area Consultative Forum in December 2005 will know how dismissive Ann John is of residents’ concerns over her towerblock plans.

• Labour quote QPARA’s Colin George saying “the tower is dead”. We have to ask - how would he know? We’ve been at the same meetings he has, and there has been no commitment to a low-rise building on the site. Indeed, a motion for a height cap was put to the council and Labour Councillors voted against it.

• Labour’s claim that the Genesis application for a 26-storey building was withdrawn thanks to pressure from Labour Councillors is laughable. 400 local people wrote to Brent to protest. Meanwhile, Labour Councillors manned the Genesis-sponsored tent at Queen’s Park day to try and sell the highrise development to the community.

• The Labour candidates were in office when Brent drew up the towerblock policy in the first place. How good a job did they do of involving you in the so-called public consultation on the policy? And, once it was adopted, how good a job did they do of letting you know about the new policy and what it meant for your neighbourhood?

• The Labour candidates were still our local councillors when the Genesis proposal was put in - how good a job did they do of informing you about the proposal and, in particular, the height of the buildings? Did they want your opinion, or did they try to slip the towerblock through on the quiet?

• One of the signatories to Labour’s letter, Steve Crabb, has written to us to say that neither he nor Natasha Finlayson gave permission for their names to be used in this way.

Stop the Tower is not a politically-aligned group. We receive no support, financial or otherwise, from any outside source. Many of us have been life-long Labour voters so taking this stand has not been easy. But we feel it’s essential that the people of Queen’s Park and South Kilburn know what’s going on.

A VOTE FOR LABOUR IS A VOTE FOR THE TOWER

Sounds weird? Well, the SKNDC council tenants were balloted on what they wanted to live in, and they said 6 storeys or less.  As a result most of the new buildings in South Kilburn will be low-rise.  This means that to hit density targets in South Kilburn as a whole, Brent has to build tower blocks near the station to compensate for the lowering of the existing estate. If you think this sounds like simply shifting the problems of tower blocks north and westwards, we’d agree with you.  And if you think raising the other buildings from six storeys to seven would be better than building a tower block, we’d also agree with you.

We got this information from Peter Jones at the Stakeholder Forum. You may be interested to know that the head of the pro-tower SKNDC, Jack Davies, and his deputy have just been suspended from their £100k/year and £80k/year jobs for using a flat provided for NDC office-use as a London pied-a-terre.

Brent Council is determined to push through plans to build a massive tower block next to Queen’s Park Station, despite enormous opposition from the local community.

The council received over 500 letters from residents objecting to the tower on grounds that it was out of keeping with the surroundings, restricted light, and was being built to make money for the council rather than enhance the area.

Brent Claim that the building supports the Mayor’s policy to create new housing and to erect landmark buildings. Head of Brent Council Ann John states: ‘We think this is the right place to erect a tall, landmark building.’

But architect Lora Nicolaou, who wrote the Mayor’s book with guidelines for high buildings, disagrees and questions the term itself: ‘A landmark building does not have to be a tall one,’ she says. In her view, the Queen’s Park site is an inappropriate place to build a tower because it would divide the area rather than enhance it.

In the face of local opposition, the council formed a consultancy group with 45 local residents and members of Brent planning. This week 40 of the 50 stakeholders decided to boycott these staleholder meetings on grounds that the meetings were merely a ‘box-ticking exercise’, which could effect no real change.

‘Local people’s main concern is the proposed height of the tower,’ says Stop the Tower spokesman Barney Cokeliss. ‘So long as Brent’s Planning brief calls for a tall tower on the site, then that’s what will be delivered.’ Stakeholder members believe that until Brent can agree to modify the planning brief itself, discussions with local residents are pointless. ‘Residents don’t care whether the tower is clad in silver or blue. The fact is they don’t want a tower on that site. Instead they want a landmark building which is small and which enhances the community.’

Interestingly, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens have both made stopping the Queen’s Park tower central to their forthcoming local election campaigns. They are aware that hundreds of local people will vote for councillors who champion this single issue. In the last election, Labour won Queen’s Park’s 3 council seats by a slim majority of 300 votes. Brent council only has a Labour majority of of 4. If they lose hold of Queen’s Park, they could lose control of the council.

Brent planner Dave Carroll announced today that Brent will ignore the views of an overwhelming majority of the Stakeholder Forum it set up to consider plans for a towerblock in Queen’s Park.

The Forum’s official purpose is “to provide… recommendations on the local community’s preferred… design” for the proposed site by Queen’s Park station. It was set up following massive community objection to council plans for a 20-storey tower block. But residents who opted into the Forum were astonished to find that Brent want to limit membership to just a handful of people, with key voting positions given to representatives of Brent Council and Genesis, the annointed developer. Both have a financial interest in the tower going ahead.

BRENT SAYS NO TO LOCAL DEMOCRACY
“It’s an absurd situation,” says Forum member Colette Hillier. “Brent and Genesis aren’t the local community – they’re the landowner and the developer. They want to be the judges of their own cause – it’s like a trial where the accused gets to sit on the jury.” In response, pressure group Stop The Tower came up with an alternative structure: a Forum open to all, with majority voting. 38 of the 45 people who attended the Forum startup meeting have signed up to this proposal. Since some of the people at that meeting were Brent and Genesis officials, this is an overwhelming majority of the community. But Brent insists on turning a deaf ear to the community’s views. Dave Carroll says that despite the community’s preference for an inclusive Forum, he “will… be writing to those on the original list to seek nominations to the smaller representative group”.

RIGGED FORUM
Stop The Tower co-founder Barney Cokeliss says: “This scandalous indifference to the community’s views shows Brent Council’s true colours. They take months setting up a Forum and then rig its membership so that it tells them what they want to hear. Where’s the democracy in that?”

“Brent Council have thrown residents’ goodwill back in their face.” says Forum member Vivien Kelly. “Everyone who gave time and effort to the Forum is outraged that Brent have turned it into a sham. Brent won’t get away with it – the tower is going to be the live issue at the May council elections.”

Local residents are horrified at the idea that Genesis, a local housing association, might succeed in its planning application to build a 24-storey tower on the Queen’s Park station car park site. Brent Council supports and is actively promoting the planning application. The proposal is possible because Brent Council’s own planning guidance earmarks the site for adevelopment of between 15 and 20 storeys. Until that planning guidance is changed, the residents of Queen’s Park live under the threat of this multistorey development. The Stakeholder Forum was set up in the aftermath of public meetings held at the Queen’s Park Community School in November. Over 400 residents turned up to that meeting to express their outrage at the plans. The application has now been put on ice until just after the local elections in May 2006, when Genesis are expected to put in a new application. By that time, the Labour councillors who run Brent hope to be safely re-elected. Stop The Tower want the forum to be inclusive, representative and democratic. The Council has proposed excluding local residents from the consultation by restricting membership to one or two members of local groups such as Stop The Tower and QPARA. They propose the rest of the consultative group should be made up of people from Genesis and Brent Council Officers. Local elected councillors have also been excluded. Stop the Tower proposes that decisions made by the forum should be by simple majority voting. Any local resident should be allowed to attend, listen to the debate, make time-limited contributions from the floor and – most importantly – to vote. Access to local residents should not be restricted, just because they won’t tell Brent what it wants to hear.

“The clock is ticking on this issue,” said Stop The Tower member and local resident Vivien Kelly. “If Brent succeeds in stalling until after the election, there will be no pressure on them to listen to the people and change the planning policy. We can’t let Brent use rigged consultation to window-dress a decision that they’ve already come to. An open, democratic forum is the only way to ensure that residents’ voices aren’t drowned out by those with financial interests – namely, the Council and the developer.” Stop The Tower says that the Forum must focus first on building height, the issue which unites local opinion. It is Brent’s policy of putting up a tower block that inspired hundreds of local residents to object. Those were the objections which led Brent to set up the stakeholder forum in the first place. Both Genesis and Brent Council have a financial interest in the height of the building. Brent owns the site and has already entered into discussions with Genesis about selling it to them to allow the development to go ahead. Stop The Tower does not see how the forum can be a genuine local consultation if those two organisations hold a disproportionate number of votes on the consultative body. Brent Council continues to refuse to revise the Supplementary Planning Document’s height indication for buildings in the Queen’s Park station area. Stop The Tower will be calling for a vote on height at the next meeting of the stakeholder group.

We believe that there was broad consensus on the key issues at the start-up meeting onthe 12th of December. However that meeting, facilitated by Miffa Salter, was geared to raising as many issues aspossible rather than identifying which concerns were most widely shared. We wereasked not to repeat each other’s views, even if we shared them. And we didn’t get a chance to agree anything (e.g. put any of the issues to a vote). If we had, we’d have hadnear-unanimity on most issues and a sense of having got somewhere by the end. We believe that the height of any buildings on the site is the issue which unites localopinion. It is Brent’s policy of putting a towerblock by the station which inspiredhundreds of local residents to object. And it is those objections which led Brent to set up the the stakeholder forum in the first place.We share concerns about transport and traffic management, social infrastructure and comprehensive development.

However the Forum must focus more precisely if it is toproduce an interim report in time for Brent to respond before the March 23rd cut-off. So we propose a way forward that focusses initially on what most residents are concernedabout – the height of the buildings. And we propose a simple majority voting system, where all 40 or so current members ofthe forum can vote on the issues. Brent’s proposed make-up of the forum (two representatives from Genesis, two fromQPARA, two from Brent, etc.) will distort its representation of the community. Whenyou have hundreds of people against a proposal and hardly any in favour, a group madeup of equal numbers from each group is not representative.In her meeting note, Miffa Salter sets out the Forum’s purpose as follows: “Overarching Aim • To provide credible and robust recommendations on the local community’spreferred future design of the Queens Park Station site which will be givenserious and genuine consideration by Brent Council.” We can’t see how Genesis – the developers with a financial interest in the height of thebuilding – can be thought of as part of “the local community” in this context. Likewise, itseems odd that Brent Council, by whom the report will have to be considered and who also a have a financial interest in the development, are also considered part of “the localcommunity”. We are not opposed to elected representatives of the sort Brent suggests leading thediscussion at public meetings. We can see that this might help streamline theproceedings. But we can’t see a reason for giving these representatives sole voting powers.Instead, we propose that each Forum meeting be open for all current members to attend, listen to the debate, make time-limited contributions from the floor and – mostimportantly – to vote.

SummaryHere’s a summary of what we propose: • Height is the unifying concern. The Forum must focus on it in the short term, toproduce an interim report in time for Brent to respond before 23 March. • Stakeholder group to continue with same people (i.e. no reduction).• Majority voting to be adopted. • Discussion may be led by a panel of elected representatives as set out by Brent(QPARA, SKNDC, Genesis, Stop the Tower, Brent Council, etc) if this is agreedby the majority at the next meeting.

• Next meeting to include a vote on the following:The Forum calls for the revision of Supplementary Planning Document’sheight indication for buildings in the Queen’s Park Station Area, because it believes consultation on the SPD to have been inadequate with regard tobuilding heights in the QPSA. • If we vote yes, immediate subsequent ballot on what the height cap in the SPDshould be revised to. • Ballot to be analysed there and then: mean, mode and median heights to becalculated. • We then vote on which of these to recommend as the revised height cap.• We then issue an immediate interim report on height to Brent.

What now? The only way Brent will agree to this way forward for the Forum is if a large number of Forum members support it.So we need your support. If you agree with the route set out above, please let us know. You can sign the slip belowand return it to us at 23 Hartland Road. Or you can email us at: qptower@hotmail.com Once we have a majority of Forum members in favour we will make a formalrepresentation to Brent. The proposal already has the support of over 15 Forum members.

Brent Council worked closely with Genesis on the application but has concerns about certain requirements, which were also expressed by the Greater London Authority (GLA).

The GLA’s main issues were regarding elements of the design of the building as well as whether it meets sustainability requirements and was able to deliver local improvements.

Genesis has taken the opportunity to listen to residents in Queens Park, South Kilburn and Westminster and will continue to actively involve those groups in future plans for the site. Genesis plans to submit a new proposal next year following further consultation.

Anu Vedi CBE, Chief Executive of Genesis Housing Group, said: “We are committed to providing much-needed affordable homes on this site. We intend to continue to work with the council in agreeing further consultation with the local community on the future of the Keniston Press and Salusbury Road carpark site.”

Councillor Ann John, Leader of Brent Council, said: “I would like to thank Genesis Housing Association for agreeing to take another look at this scheme and consider the matter further with local residents and planners.”

Brent Council’s Planning Service has arranged a public meeting on 3 November to update local residents and explore future options for the Salusbury Road Car Park site, south of Queens Park Station.

Councillor Neil Nerva, Chair of Kilburn and Kensal Area Forum, said: “The meeting on 3 November provides a real opportunity to explore how local residents can be actively involved along with Genesis and Brent Council in plans for this site.”