“It must take extremely resilient and able officers and councillors to deal with these types and their PR spinners and I fear LBH do not have such depth.”They have the depth; they are of the same ilk, on surface appearances to date.Greed and corruption are not the sole province of developers; in this instance the Council [whether - as I said earlier - civil servants, or elected members, or both, remains to be seen] seem to be guilty of just as much.As an example of the tension between staff and councillors, the whole High Street shopping precinct blight was challenged by councillors protesting the system of pricing for the small businesses on leases of the shops. The system of free for first 6 months, followed by high rents thereafter only encouraged ‘fly-by-nighters’, whereas the genuine small businesses struggled.The only response to councillor suggestions that proportionate rates be charged from the beginning, to encourage local business, was that the corporate property department had a duty to maximise the Council’s receipts. So it does of course – but taking the long view should enter into that, and would have resulted in greater, or at least steadier income long term.Something seriously amiss is going on within that corporate property department, aided [however tacitly] by the legal department. I recently placed a FoI request for all relevant documentation relating to the extension of the Council’s County Parade title, knowing that serious illegality attended the new registration [for which the Land Registry itself was largely responsible – it could just conceivably be that the Council were unaware of the shenanigans behind the scenes].A few days ago, Mr Windsor Farquharson of the customer services department responded with a DENIAL that any such application for an extension of their title had been made, and that Ballymore were the owners of the property.This is a flat lie – or at the least [given the reliance solely on a “desktop exercise”] utterly disingenuous. The corporate property department is the one responsible for the “Hounslow Borough Council Voluntary Registration Project”, and a Mr Briggs of the Land Registry Fylde office dealt with this extension of the County Parade title, and all other elements of the project. It is purest folly to deny any knowledge of the subject in light of the publicly available facts.It is the fact that every top level member of the corporate property and in-house legal department has been made aware of this and yet kept stony silence on the subject, that gives rise to disquiet as to their involvement.As to councillors, only Theo Dennison made any communication with me, recommending that I copy in Steve Curran to an email to Mary Harpley. Checking up on the names, I see that my email to them was still saved in my ‘Drafts’ folder instead of being sent, so I have now belatedly sent that off and will see whether our elected councillors can exercise any control and/or oversight of the relevant departments.Ruth Cadbury has also promised to write requesting compliance with the requested disclosure, which is essential if legal action is to be avoided - and any potential involvement of the Serious Fraud Office.It may yet turn out that it is the Council’s own “unscrupulous and greedy” contribution to the scenario that turns out to be a major factor in the current “regeneration” scheme [acknowledgements to Hazel’s points] ending up in scandal.
Nigel Moore ● 3830d