50% of leaseholders reportedly signed up for Right to Manage at Chelsea Bridge Wharf – but CBWRA denies this and still acting like a banana republic
I am pleased to relate that according to information I have received, the 50% threshold for serving Right to Manage notices on the freeholders at Chelsea Bridge Wharf has been reached or is extremely close. CBWRA deny that the 50% has been reached although their own meeting notes in January referred to a ‘final trenche’ of signatures. CBWRA refuse to tell residents exactly how many leaseholders have signed up and refuse to provide any timelines for serving the notice on freeholders or actually obtaining Right to Manage. In any case I have seen hard evidence of the actual number of signatories in September 2023 and December 2023 and there was not very far to go at the latter point. I will not mention the actual numbers here at those times, but I have also been contacted by someone who claims that the 50% has been reached.
I have been campaigning for Right to Manage since 2020 while the current CBWRA committee and co-chairs were telling residents that Right to Manage was not possible and saying that those who said it was possible were misleading residents. Only after I obtained and published independent advice from Canonbury property management that Right to Manage was most certainly possible at CBW, and that CBWRA were misinforming residents, did this position change but such is the level of entitlement of Larisa Villar Hauser and Louis Sebastian Kendall, and because of the culture of fear created on the CBW app, they have never had to explain why they misinformed residents for 2 years and why they were party to a newsletter which called me (Mike O’Driscoll) a liar for saying that Right to Manage was possible and closed my CBW app account for the same reason. These people have claimed that there is a legal reason why they cannot discuss the closure of my app account but were unable to produce any documentation to support this claim and are unable to explain what this supposed legal reason is.
So I leave it to residents to decide if Larisa Villar Hauser and Louis Sebastian Kendall are telling the truth on this matter and if they are not then I think it is reasonable to ask what else might they not be telling the truth about? In a recent letter which I sent to the CBWRA Chairs, I raised this and a number of other questions that residents need answers on (see below). The fact that the CBWRA secretary Katherine Greenwood has not even acknowledged this letter demonstrates how unprofessional, entitled and out of control they are, in my view. It seems that the CBWRA Chairs and committee think they are entitled to be in power indefinitely and do not need to play by the rules.
Residents demand an answer to these questions:
Why has it taken a year to get to 50% of leaseholders signed up when in fact a large chunk of leaseholders were already signed up (those who signed up for RTM in 2012 are included in the current application, provided they are still leaseholders. Urang have apparently only contacted leaseholders who are not signed for RTM, in the last few weeks - why was this not done months ago? Many may suspect it is because of a wish to announce the 50% threshold had been reached just before Chair elections are called,
Why were the CBWRA committee not allowed to see and vote on approval of the contract with Urang?
Why are residents not able to see the contract with Urang?
Why is there is still no timeline for serving the RTM notice on freeholders or actually obtaining Right to Manage?
Why are there no elections for Directors of the Right to Manage Company?
Why have the ‘co-chairs’ decided to stay in office at 4 months beyond their elected term?
Why has no date or procedure been announced for the 2024 Chair Elections and what will CBWRA do to ensure that the elections are conducted appropriately?
Why have CBWRA finances declined from £27,000 to around £5,000 in two years? What does this say about the committee’s ability to oversee a £5 million service charge budget after RTM?
Why have CBWRA not published full accounts?
Why has CBWRA changed the constitution to remove the requirement for resident auditors?
Why has CBWRA changed the constitution to remove leaseholders’ right to inspect correspondence between CBWRA and the freeholders and managing agents?
Why have CBWRA refused to acknowledge or deal with a formal complaint about the misconduct of the 2023 Chair elections?
Why is someone who has been the subject of multiple complaints to the Police still a member of the CBWRA committee and a director of the Right to Manage company?
Why is pro-committee online bullying and arbitrary account closure still the norm on the CBW app?
Why has the motion passed by residents at the SGM in September 2023, calling for a formal written process to govern the closure of CBW app accounts still not been enacted?
Why were no notes from the ‘leaseholder forum’ meeting in October 2023 (Hint: the committee were heavily criticised for lack of progress on RTM and poor communication and online bullying was also raised)
Why is CBWRA requesting me to remove from my blog the reporting of their extremely biased consultation on the fountains?
It is good news that 50% of leaseholders (or very close to it) are signed up for RTM and no one has worked harder or long for RTM than me. I respect the work that CBWRA have done (eventually) but not the way they are doing it. Hopefully this is the start of positive change at CBW. But if residents continue to be excluded from decision making, and if Chairs, committee members and directors of the RTM company are not democratically elected or accountable then I am afraid Right to Manage will not make us any better off in terms of controlling how our service charge money is spent.
Mike O’Driscoll 4.2.23