Notes from Meeting of Chelsea Bridge Wharf Leaseholders and Urang on 15th September 2025 6.30-8pm at Pestana Hotel London SW11 Executive Summary Urang’s notes from the meeting on 15th September are highly selective… Continue reading
Voting has opened in the elections for directors of the Chelsea Bridge Wharf Right to Manage Company. The role of the directors is (or should be) to supervise and direct the managing agent (Urang) in… Continue reading
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… Continue reading
CBWRA made a unilateral decision to close the CBW app a few weeks ago, supposedly because it was ‘unsustainable’ at a cost of £5k per annum (which is roughly what they have left… Continue reading
Also in this post: An update on electricity refunds and a note on the challenges for Chelsea Bridge Wharf residents in 2024. In October 2023, this blog reported the letter from Rendall and… Continue reading
Those who were supposed to be ensuring a fair electoral process actively undermined it by initiating Garton-Jones’ biased email to 400 + leaseholders, while voting was live.
CBWRA announced today that they are ‘recommending” Urang as the managing agent to handle the Right to Manage application for Chelsea Bridge Wharf. Except that it is not really recommending – the decision has been made. Residents are offered the opportunity to meet with Urang online on 30th May – but none of the other companies have been invited! Residents have been provided with some incredibly weak and superficial ‘analysis’ document, supposedly the basis on which Urang are recommended but detailed examination is only provided for Urang and not the other bidders. So this is not a consultation, it is in true CBWRA style, a decision made without resident consultation and then they insult our intelligence by asking for feedback after the decision. If such a consultation were carried out in any private or public organization it would be dismissed as heavily biased, or in plain language, a token consultation on a done deal. This is pretty pathetic given that millions of pounds of service charge are involved here (I believe Rendall and Rittners’ overall revenue, i.e. the total service charge collected, is in the region of £3 million a year at Chelsea Bridge Wharf) and that 2.5 years have been wasted by CBWRA telling us that Right to manage is not possible. So this is the biggest decision that a residents’ association can make and rather than doing it in an open and inclusive way, the decision has pretty much made already by a small cabal of mostly unelected people. ‘Consultation’ is happening AFTER their decision has been made.
The reforms which CBWRA maintained for 2 years were just around the corner are unlikely to materialise Throughout 2021 while on the CBWRA committee, attempts to discuss Right to Manage in committee meetings… Continue reading
An estate agent distributing Chair election voting links? While voting is live? And openly supporting one candidate? Yep, perfectly normal… nothing to see here… CBWRA requested Garton-Jones Estate Agents to ‘intervene’ in Chair… Continue reading
Thanks to all who attended these meetings and to Canonbury Estate Management for providing expert advice. The standout points are
i) The advice given by Stephen Thompson/Roger Southam/Charlie Garton-Jones/CBWRA that Right to Manage for the whole development is not possible because of the supreme court judgement of First Port v Settlers Court is categorically WRONG. David Breare of Canonbury added that in his view, any competent advisor/consultant would come to the same conclusion (i.e. it’s not a grey area),
This confirms Canonbury’s written advice of June 2022 https://chelseabridgewharf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/canonbury-summary-advice-1.6.22-correspondence-1522672.pdf
Residents should recall that this judgement of First Port v Settler’s Court was (according to Mr Thompson) the reasons why Right to Manage was not pursued at the start of 2022 and why the management contract retendering was chosen (this failed in Sep. 2022, in my view wasting up to £15,000 of residents’ money).
ii) The current position of CBWRA (after 2 years of saying that Right to Manage is not possible) is that they will investigate RTM on a block by block basis. Canonbury were equally clear that this will not work because all blocks are linked by an underground car park, and therefore cannot be considered as separate for the purposes of RTM (they are not vertically separated).
