Right to Manage Notice served on Freeholders at Chelsea Bridge Wharf. Now we must deal with the banana republic of CBWRA.
The freeholders at CBW have been served with a Right to Manage notice which is very good news, albeit two years later than it need have been. There is a long way to go but this is significant progress so well done to all the residents at CBW who have been fighting for Right to Manage for many years (despite CBWRA saying it was not possible) and to Urang the managing agents handling the RTM application, who I introduced to CBW. No doubt CBWRA have also done some work on this but as they operate as something like a secret society it is hard to say what they have done other than to employ Urang.
I posted here a few week ago that 50% of freeholders at Chelsea Bridge Wharf were signed up for Right to Manage which was based on hard data I had seen. On 27.1.24 CBWRA (Larisa Villar Hauser and Louis Sebastian Kendall) sent me what I consider to be a bullying email stating that this was misinformation and that I should take the post down, without any discussion You can read their email and my reply of 31.1.24 here. I did not receive any reply.
Clearly I was right that 50% of leaseholders had been signed up for RTM or CBWRA would not have been in a position to serve the RTM notice on freeholders two weeks later. So the misinformation was not from me but for CBWRA, as usual. I will have more to say about this at a later time but it does show again how CBWRA use the term ‘misinformation’ in an Orwellian way to basically mean anything which they do not want to be known in public and that they seem happy to make false allegations of misinformation as a fig leaf to cover arbitrary censorship and bullying (as in the closure of my CBW app account). People who behave this way are not fit to be in charge of a residents’ association in my view, let alone to be on charge of a Right to Manage company which would control a £5 million + budget and have very significant power over residents at Chelsea Bridge Wharf, without any accountability.
It is good news that the notices have been served but I believe it should not have taken a year to get to this stage especially as all of the people who signed up for RTM in 2012 are being included automatically in the current application (provided they are still a leaseholder) so several hundred people were ‘signed up’ for this application without any work at all.
Over the last year, residents have been deprived of clear information about RTM or a timeline for actually achieving RTM and we still do not have that.
The CBWRA committee has completely torn up the constitution by indefinite postponement of the Chair elections and its seems clear and as I posted previously, that this was purely so that they could serve the RTM notice first, which they hope will be to their electoral advantage. They claim this decision was backed up by a committee vote (a meeting at which only 5 committee members and no residents were present) but this is nonsense – the constitution is the core rules and can only be changed at an AGM – that is the whole point of a constitution – it is supposed to stop a few people seizing power and playing fast and loose with the rules, which is exactly what the CBWRA committee are doing in my view, over and over.
I am glad that RTM is progressing but this makes it even more important that we have an appropriately governed residents’ association/Right to Manage company rather than what many feel looks like a banana republic where a group of people have taken over the residents’ association and do not feel the need to hold elections or be accountable to residents in any way. CBWRA have stated that they will not hold elections for Directors of the Right to Manage company which will have effective control of £5 million + of your service charge money, if Right to Manage is successful. They are not elected as Directors and so cannot be removed, regardless of their performance or whether they are listening to you. This will defeat the entire purpose of Right to Manage which is to take power from the freeholder and to give it to residents. So yes this is good news but there is a long way to go and if we end up with 4 or 5 unelected and unaccountable directors controlling this development then we will not be better off.
Given the state of the resident association finances (which appear to have declined from £27K to around £5k in two years) residents may have limited confidence in the current CBWRA committee and directors (unelected) to oversee a £5 million budget in any meaningful way. I certainly have little or none, having seen the way these people behave, while I was on the committee for 10 months.
Now would also be a good time for Larisa Villar Hauser and Louis Sebastian Kendall and the other committee members to apologise to residents for misinforming them for so long that Right to Manage was not possible and wasting over 2 years when we could have ben working for RTM. They should also apologise to me and other residents who have been excluded vilified and bullied (not to mention having my app account closed) for simply stating that RTM was possible and who also tried to hold CBWRA to some sort of basic standard of governance which are still lacking. They should apologise for the newsletter which they circulated in May 2022 which basically called me a liar for saying that Right to Manage was possible. They might also apologise for having wasted a year and up to £9,000 of residents’;’ association funds on the failed ’management contract retendering’ and for falsely claiming in January 2021 that they had started a Right to Manage process when they had certainly not done anything of the kind. Indeed there are many many instances of actual misinformation by CBWRA to residents over several years.
It is not acceptable that someone who has been the subject of 4 police complaints, and has behaved outrageously to residents online and offline on numerous occasions, should remain on the CBWRA committee or as a Director of the Right to Manage company. CBWRA should also apologise for the misconduct of the 2023 Chair elections and undertake to hold fair elections as soon as possible and explain in advance how that will be achieved.
CBWRA must answer these questions if residents are to have any confidence in them:
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.
Why do we still not have a clear timelines or targets for completion of the RTM process
Why are there no elections for Directors of the Right to Manage Company?
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 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 or February 2024 (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?