CBWRA apparently OK with Rendall and Rittner’s £400,000 fire safety charges! Also in this post: New games planned to manipulate 2024 chair elections and no elections at all for Directors of the CBWRA Right to Manage company

At the end of January 2023 I reported here that Rendall and Rittner planned to hit Chelsea Bridge Wharf with a budgeted cost of £400,000 for work supposedly related to the Building Safety Act. These costs seem vastly inflated and contain unexplained consultancy fees amongst many potential objections. Incredibly CBWRA ‘co-chair’ states in February committee meeting notes that:

”Louis (Sebastian Kendall) explained that R&R have added an assumed potential cost to the budget in order to cover all costs rather than find themselves in a situation of having to go back to leaseholders for more money at a later time. The numbers seem quite high but aren’t as high as in some other developments. Costs are front loaded and should be lower next year”

Or to translate – ”Rendall and Rittner have charged a lot in case they should accidentally undercharge us and we would not want that would we?”. There is no reference to the actual costs charged by Rendall and Rittner either in total or per flat and an unevidenced claim that Rendall and Rittner is charging less at CBW in relation to BSA than other developments. I have obtained costs from several other developments which are far less than those at CBW and am continuing to compile that data.

For CBWRA to meekly accept Rendall and Rittner adding circa £400K to the service charge budget without any real analysis of the costs and how they might be challenged is truly pathetic in my view.

CBWRA also state (email to leaseholders 3.3.24) that

”the government passed the Buildings Safety Act 2022. The Act is designed to protect leaseholders against the costs of remedying historical building defects and applies to buildings above 11 meters or 5 storeys”

But that is NOT what the Act was designed to do – that is what the government SAYS it is designed to do. In fact of course, as we can clearly see, most of the costs are still being put on leaseholders.

The CBWRA meeting notes are as ever an exercise in mystification and obfuscation – designed to tell readers as little as possible and therefore to prevent any meaningful debate. A complaint about Rendall and Rittner is mentioned but without saying what the complaint was about and stating that they do not intend to progress the complaint to the ombudsman (again no action). I believe this complaint by CBWRA was in relation to Rendall and Rittner Director Richard Daver’s misleading comments about Right to Manage not being possible, at the July 2023 meeting with residents, which I challenged him on at the meeting last week (he refused to apologise) but the notes tell us nothing about this, insulting residents’ intelligence as ever. Ironically most of the people currently on the CBWRA committee were themselves making these same claims about Right to Manage not being possible until around a year ago when the independent advice which I obtained and publicised, forced them to change course.

The notes also claim that CBWRA had dealt with a complaint which I submitted on the 15th January regarding the misconduct of the 2023 Chair elections. The truth is they ignored this complaint for more than a month and then when the publicity started getting too much they reluctantly sent me a meaningless reply a few lines long, which did not address any of the points raised. The ‘investigation’ of this complaint apparently consisted of the committee asking themselves if they thought it was true and deciding that it was not. The people who were the subject of the complaint found themselves not guilty. This means they are free to carry out the same misconduct in the 2024 Chair elections but with some additional manipulations according to their electoral timetable (which they have reluctantly been forced to publish).

Additional games to be played with 2024 Chair elections:

The CBWRA committee meeting notes from February 2024 outline the timetable for the 2024 Chair elections, which CBWRA is clearly very reluctant to hold and had to be dragged to kicking and screaming:

1. They are two months late
2. Only leaseholders who are paid up members of CBWRA will be eligible to vote. The categories of residents who are allowed to vote has grown smaller at every election – in 2021 it included all leaseholders and tenants who had lived at CBW for 6 months or more; in 2023 all leaseholders could vote but in 2024 only leaseholders who are CBWRA members and who have paid their subscriptions will not be allowed to vote. This means that even fewer people than last time (300 approx out of 1150 properties) will vote
3. The only meeting between residents and candidates for Chair will be 4 days after voting has opened! And even this date is referred to as ‘tentative’ i.e. maybe moved even further after voting has started or not held at all. In my view this is a clear attempt at electoral manipulation – the hope seems to be that most people will vote before they have a chance to meet the candidates and therefore will be more likely to vote for the name which is most familiar (i.e. the current incumbents)
4. The deadline for manifestos to be submitted is the 2nd April – the same day that voting opens so clearly the intention is to circulate manifestos on the day that voting starts so that potential voters will not have an adequate chance to consider them before voting.

Imagine if political parties did this at local or national elections – i.e. you could not see their manifesto until voting opened, potential political opponents are banned from the media and you do not get the chance to meet the candidates or ask the questions until after voting has started. I think any reasonable person would call this electoral manipulation. I would call it further evidence of a banana republic model (i.e. systematically weakening or eliminating checks and balances on the power of the Chair and committee and making it almost impossible for fair elections to happen) which in my view was developed by the former Chair, Stephen Thompson, and continued by his successors who are very much ‘continuity Thompson’ in my opinion.

All of the above is in addition to the games played in the 2023 elections which will no doubt be repeated in 2024. Namely:

• One candidate (Mike O’Driscoll) was banned from the CBW app for drawing attention to CBWRA’s misinformation about Right to Manage, and was subjected to a daily onslaught of character assassination and defamation by the former Chair and other committee members to which he was unable to respond . Despite numerous requests, CBWRA are still unable to provide any evidence of a valid reason for the closure of Mike O’Driscoll’s app account. This is censorship.
• Two candidates (Louis-Sebastian Kendall and Larisa Villar Hauser) stood jointly, thus pooling their votes, in a massive and clear violation of the CBWRA constitution.
• Chris Garston of Garton-Jones estate agents contacted around 500 leaseholders by email , while voting was live, sending them a voting link, and a strong recommendation to vote for Louis-Sebastian Kendall and Larisa Villar Hauser and only linking to their manifesto, not those of the other candidate (Mike O’Driscoll).
• One candidate withdrew from the ballot after (in his view) being intimidated by the former CBWRA Chair at a CBWRA committee meeting and following the meeting, in the CBW piazza. I believe this incident resulted in a complaint to the Police.
• CBWRA ask Rendall and Rittner to change the way they collect CBWRA membership fees because ”MOD was likely to run as chair” and the CBWRA committee ”needs funds to assist their cause”.
• It is not clear what percentage of leaseholders were contacted directly by CBWRA with the ‘official’ email which contained links to manifesto of all candidates
• It is not clear what percentage of leaseholders were not contacted at all, by any means
• The recording of the meeting between candidates for Chair and residents, just prior to voting ( a meeting which went very well for me and not quite so well for the former Chair or his proteges was ‘lost’ – according to the CBWRA secretary this was because of a ‘poor wifi connection’. (I am not sure why a phone requires wi-fi to record but I guess I don’t understand CBWRA technology).

I can only assume that Larissa Villar Hauser and Louis Sebastian Kendall are terrified of a fair and free elections and given their performance, their total lack of ideas or polices and given their evident contempt for consulting with residents I can understand why.

CBWRA proposed timetable for 2024 Chair elections:

Call for manifestos – 19 March

·       Deadline for applications – 2 April

·       Voting opens – 2 April

·       Meet and greet – 6 April (tentative)

·       Voting closes – 12 April, 9pm

·       Result announced – 15 April

·       Chair takeover (if a new Chair is appointed) – 1 May

CBWRA have also stated there will be no elections for the Directors of the Right to Manage company which will have full control over a £5 million service charge budget if Right to Manage goes through. Unelected, unaccountable, unsackable. They recruit each other without any resident input or consultation.