Chelsea Bridge Wharf Residents’ Association initiated Garton-Jones Estate Agent’s ‘intervention’ in the 2023 Chair Elections

An estate agent distributing Chair election voting links? While voting is live? And openly supporting one candidate? Yep, perfectly normal… nothing to see here…

CBWRA requested Garton-Jones Estate Agents to ‘intervene’ in Chair Elections
In February 2023, while voting in the CBWRA Chair elections was live, Chris Garston of Garton-Jones estate agents emailed his CBW landlords list (See screenshot of the email from Mr Garston at the end of this post) and asked them to vote for Larissa Villa Hauser and Louis-Sebastian Kendall. He also sent the survey link as if he was acting as an administrator of the survey. It is now clear that Larissa Villar Hauser and Louis-Sebastian Kendall requested this intervention in the 2023 Chair elections and that they were aware Chris Garston of Garton-Jones estate agents would likely send a message in their favour to leaseholders while voting was live. Absurdly, they claim they is was done to ‘increase engagement’ not to increase their own vote! But if the objective was to ”increase engagement” then why would CBWRA allow Chris Garston to send an email which went much further than that and strongly recommended leaseholders to vote for Larisa and Louis. If simply increasing engagement was the aim (rather than influencing voting intention) then CBWRA could have simply asked Mr Garston to copy the the text of the standard (impartial) invite to his client list.

In any case how could Chris Garston ”increase engagement” in the election unless he has leaseholders on his list which CBWRA do not? If that is the case then a) CBWRA have failed to directly contact an unknown number of leaseholders in relation to the election and b) the only election invite which those people received was the high biased communication from Mr Garston/Garton-Jones.

In summary those who should have been ensuring a fair election were in fact commissioning a completely inappropriate intervention in the electoral process.

This is a serious breach of impartiality/fair play by CBWRA – it was not just an endorsement by Garton-Jones estate agent but actually intervening in the electoral process. For a certain number of leaseholders, the email from Garton-Jones may be the first or only communication which that they read about the election – they may have voted without ever having read the official voting invite with both candidates’ manifestos. How can that be anything other than a massive source of bias?

Was there intervention in past elections and will there be interventions in future elections?

There is also a question of whether such interventions occurred in the 2021 chair elections, where Mr Stephen Thompson won by a very small margin (18 votes approximately). Mr Garston is on the record (an email copied to me at the time of the 2021 elections) as stating that Mr Thompson was ‘reliable’ (although in what respect he was deemed ‘reliable’ I am not sure). I have written to Mr Garston about this but Mr Garston has refused to comment on whether he or anyone else associated with Garton-Jones estate agents did intervene in the 2021 elections as he did in the 2023 elections. I do not claim or imply that such interventions occurred in the 2021 election but it is interesting that Mr Garston chooses not to comment nor does he undertake not to intervene in a similar way in any future Chair elections.

With regard to the intervention in the 2023 elections, in the email copied to me by a resident, (see below) Mr Garston says that he has met both candidates (i.e. Larissa and Louis) and believes they are the best choice to continue the ‘good work’ of CBWRA (whatever that may be, since in my view and that of many other residents, the two years of Mr Thompson’s Chairship were largely wasted in denial that Right to Manage was possible, and defending Rendall and Rittner, constantly claiming that they were getting better and just needed more time).

The so called ‘Oversight Commitee’
CBWRA have confirmed that Mr Charlie Garton-Jones was on the CBWRA ‘oversight committee’ during the February 2023 Chair Elections and the others members of this committee were Catherine Thome and Toby Spoerer (Secretary and Treasurer respectively at the time of the election). This committee is supposed to have responsibility for overseeing the election. CBWRA deny that Charlie Garton-Jones had any involvement with the 2023 Chair elections but that seems in contradiction of the fact that he was a member of the ‘Oversight Committee’. In any case it is clear that CBWRA (and especially Larisa Villar Hauser and Louis Sebastian Kendall) not only failed in their duty to ensure fair elections but appear to have actively initiated a massively inappropriate electoral intervention. If the ‘oversight committee’ did not know about this in advance (which seems extremely unlikely) they certainly new after it happened as I reported this as soon as I became aware of it. Yet no action of any kind was taken by the ‘oversight committee’ and they have not condemned or criticised the intervention by Garton-Jones, which suggest that they were well aware of this intervention and had no problem with it.

Garton-Jones Estate Agents free advertising on the CBW app

I wonder why Mr Garston was so worried about me becoming Chair? One reason perhaps is because I have highlighted the deal that Garton-Jones have with CBWRA regarding exclusive advertising on the CBW app and promised in my manifesto to review this arrangement which seems very poor value for residents? i.e. exclusive advertising on the CBW app for FREE (when a single apartment sale is worth at least £8,000 in commission to Garton-Jones estate agents). Or perhaps that is not related at all and Mr. Garston may have some other objections to me or my manifesto. Garton-Jones were paying £504 per year to CBWRA for the advertising (still a joke) but this was reduced to £0.00 in 2021. Did Garton-Jones ask for this reduction? Whose idea was it? Who agreed it? Why were residents never asked if they wanted to give valuable advertising away to Garton-Jones?

Garton-Jones Estate Agents demanded other agents not allowed on CBW app in return for help with Right to Manage

At the CBWRA committee meeting on May 14th 2023, the issue of the free advertising to Garton-Jones was raised by me (Mike O’Driscoll). The Treasurer stated that if CBWRA were to allow another estate agent to advertise on the CBW app then Garton-Jones estate agents would not give CBWRA access to its owners’ database to assist the Right to Manage process. I found this rather shocking. Strangely no reference to this conversation can be found in the CBWRA notes of the meeting. Indeed nothing that I said at the meeting appears in the notes despite the fact that I raised a large number of issues and spoke at length on them, with the support of practically all the residents present so I will be presenting my own notes from the meeting in the near future. CBWRA continues to engage in crass censorship which is pretty tragic and shows in my view that they cannot be trusted.

Independent Election Oversight Committee Desperately Needed
I am not implying anything illegal occurred and that is mainly because Residents’ Association elections are not covered by any legislation. Had these events taken place in the context of local or national elections I think they would be illegal. However, just because something is not illegal does not mean that is it is ethical or acceptable or in the interest of residents. I think that an estate agent should not really be taking sides in a Chair election and even more than that to be distributing survey links while voting is live. Given that Garton-Jones estate agents is apparently taking sides in the elections then some might feel that transparency would be best served if Mr Garton-Jones was not involved in the election in any way and should not be a member of the so called ‘oversight committee’. Regardless of whether he still owns stake in the business or not. More importantly it is clear in my view (and as supported by the evidence I have presented) that the CBWRA committee cannot be trusted to run elections in an impartial way and the people who should have been protecting the electoral process were actively involved in actions which made a fair election impossible. In fact, the intervention by Chris Garston Garton-Jones was only one of the ways in which the 2023 Chair elections were undermined and in which the CBWRA committee were either complicit in or failed to take any action on.

If residents are to have confidence in future elections, and if we wish to avoid further damage to the reputation of Chelsea Bridge Wharf, which many may already see as a ‘Banana Republic’ then it is clear that an election oversight committee is needed which is independent of the CBWRA committee. Garton-Jones’ intervention in the elections should be publicly condemned and they most certainly should not get free advertising on the CBW app nor be permitted to block any other estate agent from advertising there. The leaseholders should decide who is the Chair of the CBWRA committee in a fair and free election – this should be taken for granted but sadly is not the case. Please join me in standing up for fair elections at CBWRA.



Category : advertising, CBW APP, CBWRA, CBWRA finances, Censorship, Charlie Garton-Jones, Garton-Jones estate agents, governance