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.