The ‘Special General Meeting’ on 12th September 7pm – please attend and vote against ratification of the CBWRA committee, constitution and 140% fees increase – vote FOR freedom of speech, fair elections and resident control of service charge expenditure

As you may be aware, preparation for a Right to Manage application is underway at Chelsea Bridge Wharf albeit that it is led by people (Larissa Villar Hauser and Louis-Sebastian Kendall)  who were part of a committee which told residents for two years that RTM was not possible, forced me off the committee for refusing to close this petition against Rendall and Rittner (following pressure from Rendall and Rittner) and closed my CBW app account for stating that Right to Manage was possible and that the CBWRA committee were misinforming residents that it was not. 

This committee also misinformed residents in January 2022 that a Right to Manage process had been started when it had not (it was in fact a pointless and doomed attempt to invoke a 10 year old contract with Fairhold Artemis for retendering of the management contract and was always doomed to failure as it relied on the voluntary participation of Berkeley Homes). This process wasted a whole year when we could have been pursuing Right to Manage as well as up to £9,000 of residents’ money.

CBWRA continues to suppress criticism of Rendall and Rittner (and the CBWRA committee) on the CBW app (private social media platform). Residents who do criticise the committee or Rendall and Rittner may find they receive a private message asking them to reconsider their comments and ultimately if they do now wish to comply, then their app account can be closed. There is no written process for dealing with the closure of CBW app accounts (it is ‘discussed in committee’), and no appeal so it is essentially an entirely subjective process, rather than one where behaviour is judged against objective criteria such as the rules of use of the app. There is no objective process for deciding the merits of complaints made against CBW app users.

CBWRA have given no explanation or apology for misinforming residents about Right to Manage for two years, and the horrendous behaviour towards me personally (which led to me and at least one other resident making complaints to the Police about the former Chair) and other residents who argued for Right to Manage from 2021 to the current time. My CBW app account remains closed, making fair elections impossible and suppressing any opposing views to the committee. No evidence of any rule breaking by me has been presented by the CBWRA committee and my account was closed without any due process. .

Still, this is progress! Right to Manage is important but if we get it and residents are still being excluded and not consulted then we will only have won half the battle. So until such time as the CBWRA committee treat me and other residents with respect, consult us fairly on important decisions and hold fair and free elections for Chair and committee, and allow freedom of speech on the CBW app and end arbitrary account closure,  and stop treating non-leaseholders as irrelevant second class people who have no right to any input to the place where they live, then I ask CBW residents to attend the CBWRA special general meeting on 12th September at 7pm  (online only, via Teams)  https://teams.live.com/meet/9413383969775?p=ryGgMuf3MR4c28ML and vote as suggested below or appoint me as your proxy (contact me if unclear how to do that then please email me:   residents@chelseabridgewharf.org.uk)

At the ‘special general meeting’ please: 

Vote FOR these motions proposed by me and seconded by other leaseholders:

These motions concern freedom of speech, fair elections, and the importance of residents control of how our service charge money is spent, both before and after Right to Manage

CBWRA should ensure there are quarterly HYBRID  meetings with URANG if/when they are appointed  as managing agents with ALL residents, including non-leaseholders, welcome to attend

That Joint candidacies for Chair of the CBWRA committee are not compatible with fair elections. They should not be permitted and if the constitution has been amended to allow them then it must  be changed back to not allowing them  

That there be an independent (non committee) investigation into the Garton Jones (estate agents) involvement  in the Chair elections in 2023 and other violations of good practice and fairness in the 2023 elections (the joint candidacy of Louis Sebastian Kendall and Larissa Villar Hauser which is in clear contravention of the constitution at that time which states that a CHAIRPERSON shall be elected, the denial of CBW app access to one candidate and the repeated attacks on that person on the app by committee members and others which were allegedly in violation of the CBW app rules of use)

The CBW app advertising slot for estate agents /letting/sales must be put  out  to competitive tender. It is the view of the proposers that residents are potentially losing thousands of pounds of revenue a year. 

 No resident’s CBW app account should be closed without a formal and transparent process, which is in writing, and in which the evidence of breaking the rules of use is  presented to the resident concerned, they have a chance to respond and  that they are given two warnings before account closure.

Click here For a full explanation of these motions and why they are important

At the ‘special general meeting’ please: 

·         vote AGAINST  ratification of  committee (because they are not consulting residents, the consultations they do carry out are biased/ leading and the proposed quarterly ‘forums’ are too infrequent and exclude non-leaseholders.  Also  there is not freedom of speech on the app, and the CBWRA committee misinformed residents about RTM and have not explained or apologised for that). Also that there should be ELECTIONS not ‘ratification’

·         VOTE AGAINST the ratification of the constitution because we are only being given 10 days to see it before the meeting (it will only come around on 30 AUG AFTER the deadline for submission of motions for the SGM – this is to prevent any resident from proposing a motion to change the constitution).

·         VOTE AGAINST CBWRA fees rise because CBWRA have never given any meaningful justification for the 140% increase in fees  which they carried out in Feb this year. They claimed it was partly for legal fees to do with RTM but they have also said Urang (the proposed new managing agent) are covering all fees or will recover them through the service charge. CBWRA have been far from transparent about how they spend our money and clearly have wasted up to £9,000 of membership fees on the pointless attempted ‘retendering of the management contract’ in 2022, which they claimed would deliver to a new managing agent by June 2022 but in fact achieved nothing at all. £6,000 was spent on a ‘service charge audit’ which CBWRA refused to share with residents for many months and then decided not to pursue in any way shape or form. CBWRA have also made some very bad decisions in relation to spending of service charge money (including £30,000 for security guards for ten weeks from the end of 2022) and £13,000 was wasted when CBWRA ordered the wrong colour of reliner paint for the fountains. According to Rendall and Rittner, CBWRA insisted that a budget of £8,000 be created for ‘seasonal community events’. No explanation of what this money is for has been provided, to the best of my knowledge. CCTV was installed in block foyers in April 2023 without any resident consultation. According to Rendall and Rittner this was on the personal authority of the former Chair and the CBWRA committee say they were unaware of it. Do you want this to continue after Right to Manage? Or should residents be consulted on how our money is spent, whether it be RA subscription fees, or service charges?

I encourage residents to consider withholding all payment to CBWRA until they adopt normal standards of governance in respect of fair elections, free speech and resident consultation. #NOSAYNOPAY

Will any of this be an obstacle to Right to Manage? No, not at all, it just means that CBWRA will have to respect residents and adopt normal standards of governance before they can get our support, financial and otherwise. Right to Manage should mean passing power from the freeholder to ALL residents, not just passing it to a tiny group of residents who are unelected / unfairly unelected and who do not have a strong record on informing, consulting or involving residents.

We need Right to Manage AND a fair and democratic residents’ association. Until we get both, the fight goes on. Please contact me: residents@chelseabridgewharf.org.uk for further information or with a view to supporting.  

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