CCTV installed in foyers – the latest in a long line of poor CBWRA decisions made without notice, information or resident consultation

In mid-April and without any consultation or information to residents, CCTV cameras were installed in block foyers by Rendall and Rittner. No rationale was given for this other than some vague references to amazon parcels being stolen. Following a conversation I had with Brian Klue in May, an email was hurriedly dashed off to residents which did nothing at all to clarify why this happened. Following further questions which I put to Rendall and Rittner it is clear that (according to Rendall and Rittner) this decision was approved by the former Chair of CBWRA, Stephen Thompson. It seems it was not just residents who were in the dark about this but the CBWRA committee also who have said they did not request or approve this and were seemingly unaware of it until it happened. However given that the current co-chairs seem to be ‘continuity Thompson’ and do not believe in consulting residents then even if they had known about this it is unlikely they would have consulted residents. This is simply the latest in a long line of decisions which residents have not been consulted about including around £30,000 on security guards at the end of 2022 which many feel was pointless and wasteful, and the meaningless ‘consultation’ on the appointment of a managing agent to handle the Right to Manage application, the decision not to pursue the audit of Rendall and Rittner’s service charge accounts, the failure to consult on the ponds and fountains. In fact the only meaningful consultation ever carried out, since the reactivation of the CBWRA committee in January 2021 is the residents survey which I carried out in summer 2022, the findings from which were almost completely ignored. Incidentally, CBWRA claimed the rationale for the security guards was to identify the most appropriate locations for CCTV. This struck any intelligent person as total nonsense and indeed Rendall and Rittner have since confirmed that this was not part of the remit for the security guards. So this was a total waste of £30,000 of leaseholders’ money by CBWRA without any attempt to consult residents and CBWRA have apparently yet again misinformed residents on an important issue.

The cost of the CCTV is £107,240 (according to information supplied by Rendall and Rittner to me on 12.6.23). The work was tendered out apparently (i.e. 3 quotes obtained). The cameras are not live yet apparently but will be monitored by existing concierge staff. It is not clear what part of this cost is for the internal block CCTV. Rendall and Rittner state that the foyer CCTV ‘is in response to the significant feedback from residents via email, meetings and the resident App regarding the security of the buildings which was not previously covered’. This of course is nonsense – an unspecified number of emails or app comments is not a consultation. Residents who do not support internal CCTV are hardly going to email R and R saying ‘please do not install CCTV’ unless they knew there was a plan to do that (which they did not). Some residents may support CCTV in foyers, some may not, and that is why a proper consultation should have been carried out before taking such an intrusive and expensive measure which in my view is wholly unjustified and creates an unnecessary atmosphere of danger, given the extremely low crime rate at CBW. It should also be noted that the notices of CCTV in foyer are tiny and almost illegible and in my view not even close to being compliant with GDPR regulations. Some video (i.e. data) has apparently been shared to Police but the protocol for data sharing with third parties (if it exists) has not been made available to residents although this has been promised. In my view this should have been given to residents at the outset.

At the CBWRA committee meeting in May, and the follow-on meeting supposedly to address the 40%+ service charge increases in Warwick building, the CBWRA committee were heavily criticised by residents who were present and on zoom, for the lack of consultation with residents and lack of action on service charge increases and for failing to organise meetings between residents and Rendall and Rittner. One resident (not me) correctly observed that this culture of not consulting residents had been a feature of the previous Chair’s approach but that it was clearly being continued by the present co-chairs (Louis-Sebastian Kendall and Larisa Villar Hauser).

Although this was a rare and very welcome opportunity to actually have a meaningful dialogue with the CBWRA committee (or those few who were present), none of these criticisms made it into the meeting notes other than a meaningless reference to ‘…consultation by the RA, which some felt is below what they would like/expect‘! Action taken by the committee on the massive Warwick service charge increases? – precisely zero. Although I spoke on many of these subjects at the meeting and with a great deal of resident support, and I explained exactly what was wrong with the electricity retendering and how we might investigate challenging it at tribunal, and (at the request of the co chair) supplied them with additional information about R and R failures in the retendering, it would appear from the meeting notes that I did not say or do anything at all at this meeting 🙂. The comment by a member of the committee that Garton-Jones would not assist the Right to Manage process if they were denied exclusive advertising on the CBW app did not make the notes either (unsurprisingly). So we cannot even trust the CBWRA committee to produce accurate or complete meeting notes, so desperate are they to silence resident criticism or debate and in particular to (literally) write me out of the script. Truly Orwellian! I will be publishing my own notes from that meeting shortly. It is notable that CBWRA failed to send out any email invitations for the subsequent committee meeting in June, perhaps they were scared they would get another roasting from residents. They have refused to give any explanation for not inviting residents to the June committee meeting despite several requests from me. There will be no July committee meeting (no explanation given) and I suspect the August committee meeting (if held) will be fully online so that CBWRA can have full control of the meeting and simply mute anyone who is asking awkward questions. CBWRA have already stated that the next attempt at an AGM will be in September and this will be wholly online. The supposed justification is to save money on meeting venues but of course agenda is to have total control of the meeting and it is also much harder to audit attendance at an online meeting, so it will be harder for anyone to determine whether the meeting is quorate or not (i.e. 25% of leaseholders attending).

Sadly this is what we can expect going forward from the current Chairs and committee – they have been explicit that they do not wish to consult with residents because there is ‘low engagement’. This is an astonishingly ignorant and self-serving ‘take’ because they are causing ‘low engagement’ by failing to consult with residents, hold meetings with them etc. Personally I find it terrifying that if Right to Manage succeeds, this tiny group of unelected/unfairly elected people, who literally do not know a focus group from a sub-committee, who misinformed residents in January 2022 that they had started a Right to Manage process, and who then (illogically) told residents that Right to Manage was not possible as recently as Q4 of 2022, will have full control over millions of pounds of service charge money and will continue to make decisions which deeply effect our service charges, our lives, and our our property values, without consulting residents. Nor will it be possible to vote them out given that the elections for Chair are self evidently unfair and the committee are not elected at all.