Notes from the Right to Manage meetings at CBW (30 Nov and 1 Dec)

Thanks to all who attended these meetings and to Canonbury Estate Management for providing expert advice. I will provide fuller notes in due course but the standout points are:

i) The advice given by CBWRA that Right to Manage for the whole development is not possible because of the supreme court judgement of First Port v Settlers Court is categorically WRONG according to the advice received. David Breare of Canonbury added that in his view, any competent advisor/consultant would come to the same conclusion (i.e. it’s not a grey area), This confirms Canonbury’s written advice of June 2022 https://chelseabridgewharf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/canonbury-summary-advice-1.6.22-correspondence-1522672.pdf

Residents should recall that this judgement of First Port v Settler’s Court was (according to Mr Thompson/CBWRA in the May 2022 newsletter) the reason why Right to Manage was not pursued at the start of 2022 and why the management contract retendering was chosen (this failed in Sep. 2022, at a cost of up to £15,000 of residents’ money).

ii) The current position of CBWRA (after 2 years of saying that Right to Manage is not possible/unviable) is that they will investigate RTM on a block by block basis. Canonbury were equally clear that this will not work because all blocks are linked by an underground car park, and therefore cannot be considered as separate for the purposes of RTM (they are not vertically separated). Even if it was somehow possible to do individual Right to Manage applications for particular blocks, there would be little gain because individual block applications do not get control of external areas (e.g. garden areas, fountains, lighting, cleaning, maintenance) and this is where a great deal of your service charge expenditure is incurred.

iii) There is not any legal obstacle to a RTM application for the whole development. Indeed in the view of Canonbury (and indeed other advice I have received) this is the ONLY way in which RTM could proceed at Chelsea Bridge Wharf.

I would add (in passing) that my CBW app account was closed (for the 3rd time!) in May 2022 for basically stating the above points which Mr Thompson/CBWRA have perversely called ‘misinformation’.

It is indeed an Orwellian organisation that calls the truth ‘misinformation’ and tries to silence those telling the truth.

Until we get Right to Manage we cannot get back control of our development and we cannot stop Rendall and Rittner from hiking service charges and delivering a poor service, and we cannot get Right to Manage until we have a democratic and open residents’ association, which is elected by the residents, consults with residents and encourages discussion, so that we can build understanding of RTM amongst residents and get the job done. Two years since the reactivation of CBWRA have been largely wasted in my view, at least as far as Right to Manage is concerned – we must not let this continue.

Mike O’Driscoll
4.12.22