Soapbox: Unaffordability and Undesirability of £100m Brent Civic Centre

Here is a recording of the soapbox I gave at the Kingsbury and Kenton Area Consultative Forum on 19 July 2011, entitled "The unaffordability and undesirability of the Civic Centre Behemoth". On the day that the people of Brent found it necessary to take Brent Council to the High Court for library closures, I was entitled to call a spade a spade:



In reply to me, Leader Ann John said that it was unremarkable for the savings figures to change on a monthly basis and that these figures were already in the public domain. Unfortunately, this assertion contradicts the statement made by the Asst Director for the project, Aktar Choudhury on 14 July 2011 that he could not release the figures due to "confidentiality". I await the result of my FOI request, which Brent has already acknowledged receipt of. Following the three-personed sales-pitch on the Civic Centre, two out of four residents who asked questions from the floor focussed on the same concern about unaffordability of this project.

Picture of S Ali by P Murry, taken at an earlier lobby of Council Executive on 11 April 2011.