Update on Special General Meeting 12th September – two important motions passed despite improper voting procedures, CBWRA’s attempts to supress discussion and chronically low resident engagement

Many thanks to those who seconded and supported the motions I put forward for this meeting which focussed on freedom of speech on the CBW app, trying to ensure fair elections for the future and also trying to ensure that Right to Manage actually delivers increased power to residents not just to a handful of people on an unelected/unfairly elected committee. The meeting also included a vote on ‘ratification’ (i.e. not an election) of the committee and a new (extensively modified) constitution. Two of the five motions I proposed were passed. These motions (in plain language) were:

• That no resident’s CBW app account can be closed in an arbitrary manner without a written/formal process (as was the case with the closure of my account in May 2022). The arbitrary closure or threat of closure of CBW app accounts has created a ‘chilling effect’ on the CBW app which means that residents are afraid to say what they think or to be critical of the CBWRA committee in any way.

• That there will be quarterly meetings with the new managing agent (Urang) assuming that RTM goes ahead and they are appointed – the meetings will be hybrid (face to face with the option to attend online) and ALL residents will be welcome not just leaseholders.

I note that CBWRA state that they intended to hold quarterly meetings with Urang in any case but I doubt that is true since they have been very happy to allow Rendall and Rittner not to hold meetings with residents (a total of 4 have been held since the CBWRA ‘reactivated’ in January 2021 and these have resulted from resident pressure, not pressure from CBWRA) and CBWRA were also happy for Rendall and Rittner to move to wholly online meetings and to exclude non-leaseholders from the meetings. CBWRA also plan to exclude non-leaseholders from the proposed quarterly ‘leaseholder forums’. These would be the first regular meetings with residents ever held since CBWRA was reactivated in January 2021 (residents were very generously able to attend committee meetings at mute observers, but even that was verboten following a committee meeting in May 2023 when the CBWRA committee were heavily criticised by residents present who chose not to be quite so mute, but there have never been regular meetings of the CBWRA committee and residents). The passing of the SGM resolution ensures that residents will be able to interact directly with Urang, to build relationships with them and to ask the questions they want to ask, face to face.

The three other motions which I submitted were not passed (although one which related to into Garton-Jones demand that no other estate agent be allowed to advertise on the CBW app came close). I have also drawn attention to interference in the 2023 CBW Chair elections by Chris Garston (of Garton-Jones estate agents) and numerous other abuses of the electoral process including the closure of my CBW app account, a vicious smear campaign against me by the former Chair Stephen Thompson and other committee members prior to and during the election and the pooling of votes through a joint candidacy of Larisa Villar Hauser and Louis Sebastian Kendall which is in clear contradiction of the constitution. The ‘co-Chairs’ response to my motion confirms that they initiated this interference in the electoral process by Chris Garston and were well aware that Garton-Jones would not send an impartial message to their client list encouraging them simply to take part in the election but rather that Garton-Jones would recommend voting for Larissa Villar Hauser and Louis Sebastian Kendall. In any case ANY contact at all with voters by third parties, once voting has commenced, is clearly inappropriate. if this had happened in the context of a local or national election it would certainly have broken the law. The co-chairs seemed laughably desperate to defend Garton-Jones in the SGM and they certainly did not condemn this blatant electoral interference in any way. Chris Garston has confirmed in an email to me (2.8.23) has also confirmed that it was CBWRA which initiated this interference in the electoral process, although this hardly absolves Mr Garston of responsibility for his actions.

As you can see in the table of results below (provided by CBWRA committee – I have no way to check it) the reason why three of my motions were not passed was largely because around 40% of voters abstained on each of these motions. This was because CBWRA refused to post the motions, or my supporting notes, on the CBW app and they were only emailed to those who had a) decided to vote by proxy and b) asked CBWRA to be their proxy. It was also possible for residents to vote ahead of the meeting even if they had not asked for a proxy vote, because the voting link was distributed on the morning of the meeting (rather than after the meeting opened). Residents who asked for the publication of these documents on the CBW app were aggressively attacked by people (or trolls as some people might call them) who seem to be strong supporters of the CBWRA committee, leading to at least one complaint. It follows that many people voted without having seen the supporting notes for the motions or the discussion at the meeting (where I put the case for the motions and a reply was given by CBWRA committee). This means that the CBWRA committee created a third category of voter – people who did not cast a proxy vote nor attended in person but simply voted online ahead of the meeting potentially without seeing either the motions or the discussion at the meeting. Just 146 leaseholders voted at all (approximately 14% of all 1,150 leaseholders at CBW) and just 44 leaseholders attended the online meeting (around four per cent of all leaseholders at CBW).

Apparently, the meeting narrowly met the threshold to be quorate (i.e. at least 25% of CBWRA members casting a vote by proxy, attending the meeting or being in the ‘third category’ mentioned above) although there is no way for anyone to independently check how many members CBWRA has or how many people voted/attended. Given the way in which the Chair elections were conducted and the issues I mention above, it might be difficult for many to have confidence in the CBWRA committee’s electoral administration, to say the least.

A majority of those who voted (144 leaseholders) did support the ‘ratification’ of the new constitution but since this was only made available to residents 10 days before the meeting (after the deadline for the submission of motions had closed) was not published on the app and that residents were misinformed by CBWRA that the constitution contained only minor changes it is likely that the vast majority of those voting had not read this document before voting. In fact the new constitution gives the CBWRA committee sweeping new powers (including the power to expel residents from CBWRA if they are deemed to behave in ways which are ‘not consistent with the aims of CBWRA’ which is a catch all term that can mean anything that the CBWRA committee want it to mean – it is basically a tyrant’s charter and also abolishes some important forms of scrutiny such as the right of residents to inspect the correspondence between CBWRA committee and the freeholders.
Thanks again to those who supported my motions – this shows that residents can come together to resist the ever more controlling behaviour of the CBWRA committee and ensure that residents’ rights and views are respected.