Stakeholder Forum
You may remember that Brent set up a forum in response to the public outcry over the towerblock and the shoddy consultation behind it. We’ve been working with the forum in good faith but, as many people warned us, it has turned out to be a sham.
After the start-up meeting in December there was a consensus that the forum should focus first on height as the issue that concerned most people, and that it should remain open to all members of the community to attend.
38 of the 40 or so people who attended the meeting signed up to this way forward. This amounted to everyone there who wasn’t a paid employee of Brent or Genesis (the developer).
Brent decided to ignore this consensus and has turned the forum into and invite-only affair, consisting of a dozen or so members, most of whom represented vested interests - Brent, the developers and the SKNDC, all of whom stand to make money out of the towerblock.
The forum’s official purpose is “to provide…recommendations on the local community’s preferred…design of the Queen’s Park Station site which will be given serious consideration by Brent Council”. So giving Brent and Genesis key votes on the forum is clearly absurd - like a trial where the defendants get to sit on the jury. And how are Brent and the developers members of “the local community”? Beats us.
Their indifference to the community’s unanimous view shows Brent Council in its true colours. They respond to our demand that they listen to the people by taking months setting up a Forum, and then rig its membership so that it tells them what they want to hear.
STAKEHOLDER FORUM RESTRICTED
The other ludicrous thing about the Stakeholder Forum is that Brent have refused to allow it to consider the height issue. At the Forum meeting last week (only the second in the five months since the Forum was promised) Brent insisted on limiting discussion to two-dimensional drawings of the proposed building’s footprint.
Since the height of the proposed 26-storey tower is what got most people most aggrieved, Brent’s restriction of the Forum’s agenda is clearly strategic.
DELAYING TACTICS
We know why Brent are being so slow and obstructive. They want to keep the issue tied up in protracted meetings until the May council elections are out of the way, and the Councillors are all safely re-elected.