CBWRA AGM 2024 – people asked to vote on committee ‘ratification’ without any advance list of committee members – the committee includes one resident who has been the subject of 4 complaints to the Police by 3 residents

Summary: CBWRA members are being asked to vote for the ”ratification” of a group of people without any idea of what they have done, what they stand for or even who they are. The CBWRA committee includes someone who has been the subject of 4 police complaints from three residents and against whom the CBWRA Chairs, Larisa Villar Hauser and Louis Sebastian Kendall have taken no action as far as I am aware other than to suspend him for 2 weeks while they carried out their own meaningless ‘investigation’ held behind closed doors which ”cleared” this person, even through the Police investigation was still going on. The CBWRA notes in relation to this gave no real account of the ”investigation” and do not even name the committee member concerned. Unless I published it here most residents would have no way of knowing of these incidents.

Most CBWRA committee members do no attend committee meetings (as shown in their own committee meeting notes) and at least one current member of the CBWRA committee is not a leaseholder at Chelsea Bridge Wharf,

Please vote against ratification of the CBWRA committee at the AGM today (12th June, 7pm, online – and support the other motions:

CBWRA should challenge the Building Safety Act costs which Rendall and Rittner have budgeted for Chelsea Bridge Wharf (circa £400K) and require detailed justification and explanation of assumptions by Rendall and Rittner and proceed to first tier tribunal action if necessary.

CBWRA should publish full accounts for the last 3 financial years, clearly showing income and expenditure

CBWRA should publish minutes to be taken at leaseholder forum meetings and circulate these to leaseholders in a timely manner

Please contact me if you are a CBWRA member and have not received the link to the meeting. If you cannot attend the AGM you can nominate me (Mike O’Driscoll) to act as your proxy to vote on ratification of the committee and the other motions at the AGM. if you cannot attend you can nominate me (Mike O’Driscoll) to act as your proxy to vote on ratification of the committee and the other motions at the AGM. See list of AGM motions and rationales here and please get in touch if you have any questions.

Additional games which the Co-Chairs are playing (as with Chair elections) are to try to get as many people to vote as possible before hearing the motions presented. Hence they offer people the option to vote online ahead of the meeting EVEN IF THEY ARE GOING TO ATTEND. This is in direct contradiction of the constitution since such votes are neither in person nor proxy votes. They also seem to require that residents notify CBWRA if they wish to attend the AGM and there is no such requirement in the constitution.

You can vote ahead on the motions but not on the ratification of the committee – if you can vote ahead on motions, online, why can you not vote ahead online on committee ‘ratification’? I guess the idea is that people vote on the motions, think they are ”done” and forget all about the vote on the committee. Total chaos and quite deliberate in my opinion. What sad desperate people CBWRA are and what little confidence they must have in their own ability to win an honest vote on anything,

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This process is an insult to residents’ intelligence and gives power to CBWRA without any accountability which is exactly what they want. I therefore urge you to vote against ratification of the committee and for CBWAR to hold normal election for committee like most other residents’ association do. As well as not having elections for committee, the elections for CBWRA Chair are a farce (91% of leaseholders) could not to did not take part) and there are no elections at all for Directors of the Right to Manage company,

The CBWRA AGM today (12th June) will include a vote on the ratification of the CBWRA committee. ‘Ratification’ means that the ‘Co-Chairs’ can be on the committee and then you can vote for or against the whole group. i.e. a meaningless rubber stamp which prevents fair elections to the committee and means that people you have never heard of (or in some cases people who are not even leaseholders at Chelsea Bridge Wharf) are voting on important decisions that involve your service charge money and the way in which this development is run,

Every year the abuses of anything recognisable as normal residents’ association processes get worse and worse. This year there is not even a motion circulated for residents to vote on regarding ratification, Presumably they will just be asked at the AGM to vote to ‘ratify the committee’ but without having had any chance to consider in advance who is on the committee.

This raises an interesting issue for those who voted by proxy to support ratification. Do they even know who they are ‘ratifying’. Do they even care? I would argue that they should do.

It would seem that one of the people (STILL) on the CBWRA committee is the prespun who has been the subject of 4 police complaints from three residents and against whom the CBWRA co-Chairs have taken no action other than to suspend from the CBWRA committee for 2 weeks while they cared out their own meaningless ‘investigation’ which (predictably) cleared this person, even through the Police investigation was still going on.

Until a few months ago, the CBWRA committee also contained someone who posted rabidly anti-Semitic tweets which called for military acting against the UK. The co-chairs did not intend to take any action in relation to this person, accepting at face value her ludicrous story that the tweets were carried out by someone impersonating her. This person resigned as a result of my publishing the tweets – otherwise i am quite sure said person would still be on the committee (despite not even being a leaseholder at Chelsea Bridge Wharf). It is clear that the ludicrous ‘code of conduct’ in the CBWRA constitution does not really apply to committee members, At lease one current member of the CBWRA committee is not a leaseholder at Chelsea Bridge Wharf.

CBWRA committee meeting notes shows that the average number of committee members attending committee meetings (including the co-chairs) is about 5 (out of a total of ? 16). The notes show the names of those attending and those who have given their ‘apologies’ but if they do not attend and do not give apologies then their name is not even shown a rather unusual method by most business standards.

In short most people have no idea who many of the committee members even are or what they do (if anything) and they have no chance to vote for or against them on an individual basis. As there are now only around 150 CBWRA members (i.e. about 13% of the 1150 leaseholders approx), with the vast majority (87%) of leaseholders choosing not to be members of CBWRA, most of those are people who will probably not questions the co-chairs under any circumstances then it seems this dysfunctional charade can continue for the present. There is zero democracy, zero accountability for the committee or the ”co-chairs” who were ”elected” in an election where 91% of leaseholders did not or could not participate.

The Co-Chairs have incorrectly claimed that there was a limit of 3 motions per person at the AGM in 2023 (which is not true) and that the same would apply at 2024 but are unable to explain or justify this false claim.

Please vote against ratification of the CBWRA committee at the AGM today (12th June, 7pm, online – please contact me if you are a CBWRA member and have not received the ink). if you cannot attend you can nominate me (Mike O’Driscoll) to act as your proxy to vote on ratification of the committee and the other motions at the AGM. See list of AGM motions and rationales here and please get in touch if you have any questions.