CBW Residents’ Newsletter Autumn 2023
What Right to Manage SHOULD look like is residents having the power to decide how their money is spent and how the development is run. This can only be achieved through regular and fair consultation,
meetings between residents and the managing agent, and FAIR ELECTIONS so that the CBWRA
committee are accountable to residents and if residents are not happy with the Chair /committee they
can elect others in their place.
As things stand we have very limited freedom of speech on the CBW app (try criticising the committee or Berkeley Homes and see what happens) , few/no meetings with CBWRA or R & R and self-evidently unfair elections for Chair and no elections at all for committee, Secretary or Treasurer. As a consequence engagement with residents is at an all time low – just 146 leaseholders (approximately 14% of the 1,150 leaseholders at CBW) voted at the Special General Meeting on 12th September 2023 and most of those voted by proxy, with just 44 leaseholders (about 4% of all leaseholders) attending the meeting (online). This is hardly surprising given that CBWRA refused to publish the motions for the meeting on the CBW app not did they publish the proposed new constitution there – in my view this was a deliberate attempt to supress discussion/debate on key issues meaning that even amongst those who did vote, a large proportion abstained, as they did not have enough information to cast an informed vote.
The text below was written before the SGM on 12th Sep and asked residents to support 5 motions which I submitted to the SGM:
As you may be aware, preparation for a Right to Manage application is underway at Chelsea Bridge Wharf albeit that it is led by people (Larissa Villar Hauser and Louis Sebastian Kendall) who are part of a committee which told residents for two years that RTM was not possible, and closed my CBW app account for stating that Right to Manage was possible and that the CBWRA committee were misinforming residents that it was not. This committee also misinformed residents in January 2022 that a Right to Manage process had been started when it had not (it was in fact a pointless attempt to invoke a 10 year old contract with Fairhold Artemis for retendering of the management contract and was always doomed to failure as it relied on the voluntary participation of Berkeley Homes). This process wasted a whole year and up to £9K of residents’ money when we could have been pursuing Right to Manage.
CBWRA have given no explanation or apology for misinforming residents about Right to Manage for two
years, including the publication of a ‘newsletter’ in May 2022 accusing those who supported RTM of misleading residents .
Despite the bizarre and unexplained change of position by CBWRA, and the lack of resident consultation
on choice of agent, and the lack of updates about RTM, this is progress! A successful Right to Manage
application would mean that CBWRA (in the form of a Right to Manage company) could take over the role of the freeholder (Berkeley Homes and others) in terms of choosing an agent, supervising them and having the right to ‘hire or fire’ the managing agent. This can and hopefully will lead to a better managed development and reduced service charges. But if CBWRA take power from the freeholder and do not pass it to residents then we will not be any better off. If we get Right to Manage and residents are still being excluded from decision-making and the big decision are made by CBWRA, the freeholders and Urang in a closed room then we will only have won half the battle. Therefore:
At the ‘special general meeting’ on 12th September 7pm (online meeting only) please:
Vote FOR these motions proposed by me and seconded by other leaseholders:
These motions concern freedom of speech, fair elections, and the importance of residents control of how our service charge money is spent, both before and after Right to Manage
CBWRA should ensure there are quarterly HYBRID meetings with URANG if/when they are appointed as managing agents with ALL residents, including non-leaseholders, welcome to attend
That Joint candidacies for Chair of the CBWRA committee are not compatible with fair elections. They should not be permitted and if the constitution has been amended to allow them then it must be changed back to not allowing them
That there be an independent (non committee) investigation into the Garton Jones (estate agents) involvement in the Chair elections in 2023 and other violations of good practice and fairness in the 2023 elections (the joint candidacy of Louis Sebastian Kendall and Larissa Villar Hauser which is in clear contravention of the constitution at that time which states that a CHAIRPERSON shall be elected, the denial of CBW app access to one candidate and the repeated attacks on that person on the app by committee members and others which were allegedly in violation of the CBW app rules of use and that one candidate withdrew their candidacy after, in their view, experiencing intimidation at a CBWRA committee meeting and afterwards in the CBW piazza)
The CBW app advertising slot for estate agents /letting/sales must be put out to competitive tender. It is the view of the proposers that residents are potentially losing thousands of pounds of revenue a year.
No resident’s CBW app account should be closed without a formal and transparent process, which is in writing, and in which the evidence of breaking the rules of use is presented to the resident concerned, they have a chance to respond and that they are given two warnings before account closure.
Click here For a full explanation of these motions and why they are important
At the ‘special general meeting’ please vote against these motions:
· vote AGAINST ratification of committee (because they are not consulting residents, the consultations they do carry out are biased/ leading and the proposed quarterly ‘forums’ are too infrequent and exclude non-leaseholders. Also there is not freedom of speech on the app, and the CBWRA committee misinformed residents about RTM and have not explained or apologised for that). Also that there should be ELECTIONS not ‘ratification’
· VOTE AGAINST the ratification of the constitution because we are only being given 10 days to see it before the meeting (it will only come around on 30 AUG AFTER the deadline for submission of motions for the SGM – this is to prevent any resident from proposing a motion to change the constitution).
· VOTE AGAINST CBWRA fees rise because CBWRA have never given any meaningful justification for the 140% increase in fees which they carried out in Feb this year. They claimed it was partly for legal fees to do with RTM but they have also said Urang (the proposed new managing agent) are covering all fees or will recover them through the service charge. CBWRA have been far from transparent about how they spend our money and clearly have wasted up to £9,000 of membership fees on the pointless attempted ‘retendering of the management contract’ in 2022, which they claimed would deliver to a new managing agent by June 2022 but in fact achieved nothing at all. £6,000 was spent on a ‘service charge audit’ which CBWRA refused to share with residents for many months and then decided not to pursue in any way shape or form. CBWRA have also made some very bad decisions in relation to spending of service charge money (including £30,000 for security guards for ten weeks from the end of 2022) and £13,000 was wasted when CBWRA ordered the wrong colour of reliner paint for the fountains. According to Rendall and Rittner, CBWRA insisted that a budget of £8,000 be created for ‘seasonal community events’. No explanation of what this money is for has been provided, to the best of my knowledge. CCTV was installed in block foyers in April 2023 without any resident consultation. According to Rendall and Rittner this was on the personal authority of the former Chair and the CBWRA committee say they were unaware of it. Do you want this to continue after Right to Manage? Or should residents be consulted on how our money is spent, whether it be RA subscription fees, or service charges?
I encourage residents to consider withholding all payment to CBWRA until they adopt normal standards of governance in respect of fair elections, free speech and resident consultation. #NOSAYNOPAY
Will any of this be an obstacle to Right to Manage? No, not at all, it just means that CBWRA will have to respect residents and adopt normal standards of governance before they can get our support, financial and otherwise. Right to Manage should mean passing power from the freeholder to ALL residents, not just passing it to a tiny group of residents who are unelected / unfairly unelected and who do not have a strong record on informing, consulting or involving residents.
We need Right to Manage AND a fair and democratic residents’ association. Until we get both, the fight goes on. Please contact me: residents@chelseabridgewharf.org.uk for further information or with a view to supporting.
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