Brent Green Party strongly condemns the comments made by
Reform MP Sarah Pochin on the depiction of Black and Asian people in
advertising as entirely racist and call for her resignation. We support our Brent
East MP Dawn Butler in her criticism of Pochin in Parliament.
The Green Party opposes the Labour Party and Dawn Butler MP
on many issues and will continue to do so, but we are members of the many
communities of Brent, and we find that Sarah Pochin’s remarks were prejudiced,
offensive and hurtful.Furthermore, they
give encouragement to those political tendencies that seek to encourage hatred
and prejudice as a false solution to the political, economic, and ecological
problems that we all face.
It is accurate to see such remarks as motivated by racism
and we are glad that Dawn Butler made this point in Parliament.
Brent Green Party leaflet session at Roundwood Lodge Cafe
Following the deselection of 8 Brent Labour councillors last month and ex-Labour Cllr Rajan-Seelan crossing the floor to join the Conservative Party today, we are aware that there is some speculation about current Labour Party councillors joining the Green Party - and potentially becoming the first Green Party councillors in Brent.
We would be delighted to welcome anyone who shares our values of social justice, environmental responsibility, and community wellbeing to join a membership that has more than doubled since mid-October and continues to grow.
In this context, we think it’s important to inform everyone that joining the Green Party as an elected representative is a formal process of due diligence that may or may not result in a defection to the Green Party.
The interested party needs to express an interest in joining the Green Party - they won’t be invited to defect to the Green Party. They also need to go through an interview process with the central Green Party office.
Following this interview and a general scrutiny process, the central office will give their opinion about a possible defection and the local party will have a say in the matter as well.
We have started our selection process for May 2026 and we’ll continue to do so over the coming weeks.
The Brent Green Party's latest newsletter has just been published. Find out more about the local people standing up for Brent, our campaigning for Palestine both locally and further afield and all those coming together as a community on the issues facing local residents!
A drastic slow down in conventional home building in Brent and a boom in purpose built student accommodation (PBSA) has led to fears of an unbalanced community, particularly in the Wembley Growth Zone.
In 2023-25 planning permission was granted for 8,000 conventional homes in Brent but there were only 656 net additionas to housing stock. Delays were blamed on shortages of labour and materials and updated safety requirements.
Meanwhile the PBSA figures (bedrooms) were:
Completed 6,257
Under construction 1,617
Permitted/approved 1,559
Awaiting decision 2,010
In discussion but declared acceptable by planning officers 918
The Wembley Growth Area
Most of these are in the Wembley Growth area LINK:
As identified however, the
spatial distribution of PBSA provision has been focussed on Wembley Growth Area
where to date 6058 bedspaces have been constructed. Currently 21.8% of the Growth
Area’s population is students either in PBSA or in all student households
renting homes.
A further 1617 PBSA
bedspaces are under construction and planning committee has been minded to
approve 759 more bedspaces, subject to an appropriate S106 obligation. Some
sites are subject to current applications and others are also in relatively
advanced pre-application discussions where the principle of PBSA has been
identified as acceptable. If all delivered, a further 3500 student bedspaces
could be supplied in the next 3 years, resulting in 9558 bedspaces in total. It
is anticipated that 1871 additional dwellings will be completed in the area in
the next 3 years. Students would in three years comprise 26.8% of the overall
population.
More than a quarter of the total population would be students and this is not considered appropriate in terms of a balanced community. A planning statement is proposed that would pause PBSA building. The officers' report suggests this would enable building of conventional housing to catch up and the student proportion of the total population would return to an acceptable 20%.
As this is an interpretation
of policy in relation to clarifying the position in terms of PBSA
over-concentration/ supporting balanced and mixed communities, rather than
writing new policies, it is suggested that the Council issues a policy position
statement. Although not officially recognised in planning statutes as a Local
Development Document or perhaps having the weight of a Supplementary Planning
Document (SPD), if consulted upon and following the same processes as a SPD,
once adopted by the Council it can be regarded as a material consideration in
the determination of planning applications with some weight.
This will provide clarity to prospective
developers or investors in PBSA, particularly in Wembley Growth Area that,
other than schemes already subject to approval or with clear advice from the
Council through the pre-application process that the principle of PBSA is
currently acceptable, the Council is unlikely to support their scheme in the
short term.
Given developers' enthusiasm for profit-making student accommodation and the limited legal status of the 'planning statement' we may well see appeals in the future if applications are refused. Backbenchers have expressed disquiet at the amount of student accommodation being approved versus the lack of truly affordable housing. Whether building of normal homes will actually accelerate is currently unclear but as an interm measures is proposed PBSA developers rather than providing a proportion of afford student accommodation would instead make a contribution to the building of affordable homes elsewhere in the borough.
