Important Notice: Brent Unapologetic about Work on Headquarters at Cost of £102,457,370.00

Brent Civic Centre, Engineers Way, Wembley. Projected Cost = £102,457,370.00. Green Party Freedom of Information Request, information supplied 27 September 2011. (Background)

Wembley Point, a conveniently located and cost-effective alternative for co-locating Council offices?

Letter in Brent Times: Civic Centre Sums Don't Add Up

8 September 2011 edition

Back-of-Envelope Civic Centre Finances Revealed

On 14 July 2001, I advertised that I had requested from Brent Council financial data for the civic centre project, under Freedom of Information law. Unfortunately, I find their response dated 9 August 2011 wholly inadequate. Here it is.
2011-08-10MrAliFOIInformationsupplied[1] To make matters worse, the covering letter to the response stated:

Brent Council: "Following careful consideration, [Brent Council] can inform you that we have decided not to disclose some of this information. [We] attach a copy of the information which can be disclosed in the form of a pdf file. The remainder of the information you requested is being withheld.

The exemption applied is Commercial Interests (public interest test) section 43. This exemption applies because it applies to trade secrets and to information which if disclosed would, or would likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person, including the authority holding it." (10 Aug 2011)

I have since written to the local papers, and replied to the Council themselves. Here is the gist of my follow-up to the Council:

SA: "Thank you for your FOI response. Unfortunately, I do have a number of follow-up questions, which I feel should have been covered in your original reply but have not been. Allow me to put them here:

- What is the cost of the Civic Centre? Remarkably this is not in there.
- What is the cost of financing the debt?
- What is "the most recent financial assessment of the project benefits"?
- How is the £89m figure quoted made up in terms of "reduction of operating costs" and "other efficiency savings"?
- On what basis has the "risk adjusted" figure of £2.85m per year over 25 years been arrived at?

I was looking for a response more akin to a balance sheet, showing income and expenditure over the lifetime of the project. Moreover, any reference to other documents should surely be referenced - and means of access to further data given, or hyperlinked where appropriate - and it not be assumed that the enquirer knows what is being referred to. Certainly, no prior knowledge should be assumed and the response should be self-contained and inclusive."

The good people of Brent await a High court ruling to have the Council's reckless decision to axe half the borough's libraries overturned. By such means the Council sought to save £1m. Since, on their own inadequate terms, Brent seeks to make savings of £2.85m per year over the next 25 years, to make the Civic Centre work, are we not entitled to know what further "efficiency savings" lie in store for us?

For an informative overview of the most recent Council budget, with reference to the Civic Centre, read my colleague Martin Francis. The full budget documents are still available as appendicies here. In particular, note that on page 3 of Appdx. B, the income line (red parentheses) is without evidential basis.

Previous Soapbox slot on why the Civic Centre is such a bad idea. Recent press letter, Harrow Times: How will this be paid for?.

Freedom of Information Fightback against Lips-are-Sealed Back-of-Envelope Costings

Last night I attended the Willesden Area Consultative Forum to give a soapbox on the unaffordability of the civic centre proposal - hot on the heels of the Wembley ACF the previous evening. In summary, I used my three minutes to point out that:

1. LACK OF CONSULTATION. Nobody but the political elite of Brent, in past executives, wanted this glass, steel and concrete behemoth, or thought they needed it. Moreover, none of the residents had ever been asked whether they wanted it, and it wasn’t just a case of them not realising yet that they had asked for it!

2. UNAFFORDABILITY. The Council’s maths just didn’t add up: to pay back a £100m loan from the government over 25 years using £4m annual savings from vacating the pre-existing portfolio of 14 office buildings. What about the certainty of the interest on today’s loan against the uncertainty of year on year savings? We were entitled to see the evidential basis for these back-of-the-envelope in-house calculations so that we could scrutinise them. Moreover, the latest assertions contradicted the conclusions of a £75k feasibility study, commissioned by the Council in 2003, which demonstrated that the project could not become cost-neutral for 25 years, meaning it would be more expensive year on year than the status quo until then. Try telling the thousands of residents set to be deprived of half of the boroughs libraries that this project was affordable!

3. ENERGY RATING. The Council boast that all would be forgiven when the energy efficiency rating of the new building is taken into account, failed to factor in the colossal “embodied” energy required in the extraction of raw materials, manufacture of steel, then their transportation and erection. For such reason the cost to the planet of new build over retrofit is generally much greater.

Finally, I called upon the Council to put its costings and savings balance sheet into the public domain – especially since it was caught out by ill-fated investment in Icesave. I implored the audience to have in the forefront of their minds, throughout the sales pitch to follow, the question: How are we going to afford all this at the current time, and how can it be right to forgo libraries in order to do so?

Mr Choudhury attempted to address my question after his presentation alongside the Skanska contractor. Firstly, he drew an analogy with mortgages, saying how the savings from expiring leases could be used to support the project, and explained how carbon reductions could also be achieved equivalent to taking 95 cars off the road per year. Unfortunately, the mortgages analogy failed to account for the prospect of negative equity. Moreover, a paper presented to the Executive in December 2010 identified risks relating to the early surrender of leases on outlying buildings. Regarding Mahatma Gandhi House, for example, the lease is not due to expire until Sept 2016 and the paper lists: “Legacy issues: 1) dilapidations; 2) costs of potential early surrender; 3) unlikely to be able to sublet for remaining three years of lease.” (See paper 10 here.)

Second, the aforementioned feasibility study was dismissed by Mr Choudhury as “out-of-date”. However, that flied in the face of the detailed case studies, appendices and work that went into the report, ostensibly future-oriented – none of which studies have been reproduced. If the feasibility study is suddenly out-of-date, then shouldn’t the Council be asking for £75k back – for a study that it commissioned for that specific purpose. To the contrary, isn’t it more probable that the Council is out-of-date, not just with the current economic reality, which compounds the negative recommendation of the original report, but also out-of-touch with the feeling of the residents it was elected to serve?

Third, when I pressed again to see Mr Choudhury’s calculations in detail, as opposed to back-of-the-envelope, we were advised that it would be in “breach of confidentiality clauses”.

This attempt at concealment, to which some responded with gasps, must not go unchallenged or uncorrected. With this aim in mind, I have now submitted a Freedom of Information Request to the Council demanding sight of the evidential basis for these costs and savings figures. If the information is going to continue to be withheld then we must be furnished with the reason, on public interest grounds, why we cannot see the sums for an unaffordable project that nobody but the Council wants.

Other attendees, notably Graham Durham, donning a Save Our Six libraries T-shirt, added their criticisms about the monstrous expense against the backdrop of lack of consultation and lack of political accountability. Mr Durham did a good job of challenging Mr Choudhury on the presumed carbon savings. Extending the cars-off-road-equivalent analogy, Mr Durham asked, But how many more actual cars are to be put on the road through increased use by residents and employees no longer able to visit one of the fourteen offices that used to be within walking distance of them? No answer was given.

Mr Choudhury came up to me at the interval, after an admittedly testy public exchange, to thank me for the spirit in which I put my questions, and I thanked him for his attempt to answer me; albeit I remained highly dissatisfied. I believe that it is our councillors and executive who primarily need to be put on the spot, ahead of officers.

NB. The Save Our Six libraries campaign is scheduled to challenge Brent Council in the High Court next Tuesday 19 July.

Brent Council Fails Civic Centre Consultation and FOI

Brent Greens have made a formal objection to the Planning Application for a new civic centre for Brent on grounds of inadequate consultation (application still on-line at time of this post).

We have been campaigning for local democratic input on this issue for 18 months. Here is a timeline:

2003: Council Executive commissions a £75k feasibility study. Completed in 2004 by Jonathan Edwards Consulting.

Mar 2008: Council Executive approves plan for Civic Centre and supported by other political parties.

Nov 2008: Anna Woda, Civic centre project director makes presentation to Kingsbury Area Consultative Forum. In response to a question, she makes the following honest admission: "On the subject of consultation, that's right, we haven't". See our press letter.

Dec 2008: Brent Greens make FOI request for feasibility study. First supplied with wrong document. On repeat request, Chief Executive apologises for error and supplies correct document minus some appendices.

Jan 2009: Kingsbury ACF. Residents ask for minutes to accurately reflect the honest admission of November 2008. Council circulates a paper at the meeting stating when they say consultation has occurred.

Apr 2009: Kingsbury ACF minutes still not accurate. Meeting unanimously agrees to wording to correct the omission of Nov 2008, assisted by the chair. Wording transcribed with all present and notes checked after meeting.

July 2009: Kingsbury ACF minutes contain false record of what was explicitly agreed at previous meeting - 8 words deleted and 28 substituted. Chair says that she cannot resolve the issue at the meeting because a resident is pursuing a formal complaint with the Council. However, Council said following day they had not received a formal complaint.

Aug 2009: Resident receives transcript from Council of minute taker's notes of Nov 2008 confirming what was already known about the omission in the published minutes.

Aug-Sept 2009: Extensive coverage of claims of falsification of minutes in local press. Example. Brent Greens organise residents' petition against the threat to Town Hall and the lack of consultation over civic centre proposal.

Oct 2009: Kingsbury ACF Chair refuses to address the question of accuracy of minutes claiming that a complaint was still being dealt with. However, this was neither relevant nor true.

Oct 2009: Brent Greens make FOI request for transcript of minute taker's notes of April 2009, in particular, the part relating to the wording agreed unanimously.

Oct 2009: Extensive coverage in local papers questioning economic feasibility of Civic centre proposal and threat to local jobs and council services, on basis of findings of the 2003 feasibility study itself. Brent Times story. Brent Times lead letter. Wembley Observer story.

Nov 2009: Brent Green and local resident meet with Council officials to discuss why they are not able to comply with the latest FOI request. Council says they no longer have the note in question. Council official says that this is not a conspiracy. Brent Green replies that let the facts speak for themselves.

Nov 2009: Letter in local paper calling for action against uneconomic plan.

2 Feb 2009 (tonight): 7pm, Kingsbury ACF. Minutes not on-line at time of posting.

Appendix. Extract from "BRENT COUNCIL NEW CIVIC CENTRE: OUTLINE FEASIBILITY STUDY 2003" [Obtained by repeat FOI request Dec 2008, italics added]

Page 15 "property costs" section: "Based on the assumptions made, a fair representation of future costs of retaining a dispersed portfolio is £127m in net present cost terms. By comparison a new civic centre shows a net present cost of £142m-£145m, an increase over 25 years of £16m-£18m. In other words, ignoring any benefits, a civic centre is likely to cost more than a dispersed portfolio [the status quo]."

Page 19: "The graph shows that over time the procurement of a new civic centre would cost the Council substantially more than the baseline situation. In fact, it would not become cheaper on an annual cost basis until around 2025/2026."