A North London council has been accused of ‘misleading residents’ over claims about its house building achievements last year. In a leaflet sent out as part of this year’s council tax bill, the local authority claims it built more than 500 affordable homes last year.
However, a Freedom of Information Request (FOI) appears to show the actual number to be lower than the one stated. Brent Council said construction projects are ‘rarely straightforward’ and claimed the figures were ‘correct when the leaflet was printed’.
All Brent residents will have recently received their bill for the 2025/26 council tax year, which has seen a 4.99 per cent increase on the previous year – the maximum annual increase allowed without a referendum. Alongside this, residents will have also been given a leaflet that outlines how their council tax was spent last year.
Under the heading ‘Prosperity and Stability in Brent’, the council claims to have delivered 530 affordable homes last year. Upon receiving the leaflet, Brent resident Philip Grant – who worked in the housing charity sector prior to retiring – told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that he ‘could not understand’ how the council could claim this figure and submitted an FOI to ‘obtain the facts’.
The response Mr Grant received back from the council, which has been seen by the LDRS, confirmed that between April 2024 and March 2025, due to ‘completion delays’, only 434 were actually delivered. This is nearly 20 per cent less than the number claimed in the leaflet, which has prompted Mr Grant to accuse the council of ‘misleading residents’.
The FOI also reveals that, of those 434 affordable homes, only 101 were at the London Affordable Rent Level. The other 333 properties were made up of Shared Ownership Units, Affordable Rent, Discount Market Sale and London Living Rent, which Mr Grant claims are not ‘genuinely affordable’. He also questioned whether many of the schemes were actually delivered by the council or other social housing providers.
Mr Grant told the LDRS: “The way that the housing claim was included in the leaflet […] gives the impression that all of those 530 – but actually 434 – affordable homes were built by Brent Council. My FOI request also asked for the locations of the new homes, and whether they were delivered by [the council] itself or by another registered provider of social housing.
“The answer was that only 26 affordable homes, at Learie Constantine Court, had been built for Brent Council. Claiming to have delivered 530 affordable homes when the reality was only 26 is not just misleading, it is downright dishonest.”
A council spokesperson told the LDRS that Brent has ‘one of the best records in London for housebuilding and was one of only three London boroughs to ‘exceed our housing delivery target’ last year, by approving a total of 3,266 new homes.
They added: “The figures in the council tax leaflet were correct at the time of printing, based on projected housing completions for the last and current financial year. Construction projects are rarely straightforward and some of these homes will now be completed slightly later.
“In 2024-25 Brent oversaw the delivery of 434 new affordable homes, and the remaining 96 are all due to be completed shortly. All these homes meet the definition of affordable housing under the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and Greater London Authority (GLA) guidelines.”
The leaflet also makes claims of 1,000 new council homes to be built between April 25 and March 26. However, the FOI response confirmed that this number will actually be 899 as a scheme set to deliver 110 units ‘has now been delayed and not expected to be delivered in the period’. Mr Grant also feels that these figures are ‘misrepresented’ as 564 of the homes are being purchased from private developers rather than being built by the council itself.
Mr Grant said: “’I have only looked at one very limited area of the claims in the council’s leaflet, on a subject I know something about. I can’t help wondering what other misinformation is being passed off as fact […] in that leaflet. The council must know the true position for each claim made, so why are they misleading residents in this way […]?”
The council spokesperson said the new council homes scheduled for completion this year ‘have been adjusted to 899’ due to delays, with the remaining homes ‘to follow’. They added that the Church End development, which will provide 99 new council homes, is ‘on track to be completed soon’.
Regarding which entity delivers the housing, the spokesperson said: “In a housing crisis, councils need to use all methods at their disposal to increase the supply of homes – buying homes from developers is standard practice and local people then benefit from genuinely affordable rents. Whether built by a registered provider, directly by the council or acquired through planning agreements, these homes form part of our commitment to increasing affordable housing.”
Grant Williams is a journalist and Local Democracy Reporter (LDR) for Reach PLC, reporting on local government, politics and community issues across London. As part of the Local Democracy Reporting Service, he has contributed to Harrow Online, covering council decisions, housing developments, transport, planning matters and stories affecting local communities across Harrow and Brent.
