CBWRA 2025 Chair Elections – another Banana Republic Farce? No elections at all for Directors of the RTM company and the contract with Urang remains secret

CBWRA have invited expressions of interest for the 2025 chair elections. Here is my reply. What do you, dear resident, think? Or do you feel too intimidated to express a view?

Dear CBWRA Chairs (Larisa Villar Hauser and Louis Sebastian Kendall)

Thanks for the notes and (limited) information on CBWRA Chair elections.

Just to note, it is likely I will stand for Chair. I wonder if there is any chance that we could have a fair and meaningful election for a change, rather than the endless manipulation and well-documented censorship, lies, and bullying that have characterised previous elections?

In particular:

i) Manifestos should be circulated well ahead of voting, as is the case in any normal election in any context (not the day before voting opens). This is clearly an attempt to prevent meaningful discussion or campaigning by candidates.

ii) Residents should be able to meet candidates together and ask them questions in a normal fashion, well ahead of the election—not halfway through it when many people have already voted. At the last election meeting, your bizarre suggestion was that the candidates should be in separate rooms, and the CBWRA secretary actually said at that meeting, “Why do we need a debate?”. i.e. you are scared of a genuine debate and given your track record this is not surprising.

iii) No candidates should be banned from the CBW app. You have closed my account because I exposed your former claim that RTM was not possible as being complete nonsense. You have never apologized for misinforming residents about RTM. wasting huge sums on supposed alternatives to RTM or for closing my CBW app account on false pretences.

iv) People with a proven record of trying to prevent fair elections (by libelling candidates, allegedly physically intimidating them, or engaging in alleged assaults on other residents, or who have a documented history of online bullying) should not be anywhere near the electoral process. Yet you have actually put such a person in charge of the Chair elections in previous years and no doubt intend to do so again in 2025. One can only assume that you approve of this person’s methods and after all it is very unlikely you would have been elected without them.

v) If voting is limited to CBWRA members then this should be widely publicised NOW so that those who want to be able to vote can take out or renew membership. This change was brought in without notice a few weeks ahead of the last election with the clear intention of excluding as many voters as possible, As a result 91% of leaseholders did not vote in the 2024 chair election. 

vi) Joint candidates for Chair should not be allowed. This was a violation of the constitution, which amounts to electoral manipulation. Once elected, you changed the constitution to allow joint candidates, but this is still wrong in principle and is not found in any other Chair elections.

vii) Garton Jones should be clearly instructed not to interfere in the CBWRA elections, as the have one on previous occasions, with the clear complicity of the current chairs. 

viii) Can you explain what the relationship between the CBWRA and the RTM company will be if RTM is achieved? It seems apparent that the CBWRA would have very little meaningful role or power in that event, which I imagine is why you are standing down as Chairs, but apparently have no intention of doing so as Directors of the RTM company.

ix) Election for the Directors of the  RTM company are of much greater significance than those for Chair of CBWRA but you have arbitrarily decided that there will not be any such elections and you will continue to appoint directors on a crony basis, 

x) You have once again added several months to your term as Chairs, in violation of the constitution 

Unless the above are addressed then the chair elections will once again be meaningless and whoever wins will have no legitimacy or respect in the eyes of residents and cannot possibly claim to represent their interests. This will be particularly disturbing  if Right to manage is achieved  since the unelected directors of the CBW RTM company will then have almost complete control over a £6m service charge budget and will be wholly unaccountable to leaseholders who did not vote them in and cannot vote them out, regardless of their performance or behaviour. 

Best Wishes

Mike O’Driscoll