Forum Topic

Who's paying for all that building work at Mrs Keen's Brentford home?

It's unlikely that anyone has been living at Mrs Keen's Brook Road South home for the last 6 months.A lot of building work has been going on, with unlit skips parked in the Road outside in Lateward Road (November 08), and no lights on in the house for ages, and no windows open during the warm weather...and a general air of abandonment.All those building changes in a Conservation Area too!!What business is it of mine you may ask!! Well, you and I may have been paying for all the work being done!!It's interesting that the building work has seemingly now been halted.  The loft developement and ground floor areas have been boarded up. Is it because of embarrassment during this period of expenses disclosure? "We Labourites don't want Brentfordians to revolt"!!!Did you see in THE TIMES newspaper some 4 weeks ago the listing of Mrs Ann Keen MP's activities...she having paid a major Bank a large amount of money for financial advice.  The bill was over £9000!! Does Mrs Ann Keen have so much money and property sloshing around that that sum of money was justified. The bill was, in the usual way, submitted to the Fees Office for payment by you and I!! Will any profit accruing by Mrs Keen as a result of this £9000 advice..be put in HER POCKET..or given back to us?  That pile of new dosh.. that greater profit...that could be OURS!!No explanation is likely to be forthcoming..from her office, or her staff.  I'm sure she has a busy job being a Minister..but where does she find the time to raid the Public Purse so keenly?

Jim Lawes ● 6200d77 Comments

Under the Council's adopted scheme of delegation (which differs from Council to Council) there are certain instances when applications have to be decided differently to normal ones.  For example if you're a Council employee, even working in a dept that has nothing to do with planning, if you submit an application then usually it would would have to go to a committee for decision rather than under delegated powers.I agree that as such it would make more 'sense' if a politically active applicant, be it a Councillor or an MP, had their application determined solely by Council officers rather an committee made up in part/whole of Councillors who represent different political parties.  However, at the same time if an application by an MP is determined by officers under delegated powers, i.e. behind closed doors rather than at a public committee meeting, a perception might be formed by anyone who didn't like the decision that the MP/Councillor had exerted some kind of pressure on the Officers.  It's all about perception really and the Council covering its own back, so always better if decisions which could come under scrutiny for political reasons are done so at public meetings.  I'm not saying Hounslow got it wrong here, after almost 4 years has passed since I left I can't recall exactly what the scheme of delegation said about planning applications submitted by an MP, but it just surprised me.I'm a little bemused what Ann Keen is referring to when she talks about sizes etc, under the permitted development legislation you can't build a roof extension to a dwellinghouse within a Conservation Area without requiring planning permission.  I suspect the builder, after getting permission, built the rear dormer larger than approved (in my obvious experience of this I tended to find the 'fault' was usually with the builder rather than the owner of the property) and then it consequently had to be reduced in size as the Council's adopted guidelines on such extensions require those within Conservation Areas to be set in from the sides, eaves and ridge by a great distance than those properties outside Conservation Areas.

Adam Beamish ● 5895d

If you are interested in the loft conversion, you might like the following exchange from the interview with John Lyon :JL:  The work was largely completed in October 2009. But that did not include completion of thework on your loft extension, an important part of the original purpose of the refurbishment,and delivery of the bi-fold doors. The work is now almost completed.Mrs Keen: Yes. We were able to move back there in that month. There was still work to do but we couldsleep there. The heating was on. The original builder had not obtained planning permission for the dormer, which had to be removed. We have lowered the ceiling of the floor below and we will settle for a loft window.The bi-fold doors have now been installed, and the stairs have now passed building regulations. It is almost completed.and later :JL When were the planning difficulties with the loft conversion first identified?Mr Keen Our friend knew someone who did planning and he told us that what had been done did notmeet planning requirements. We now know that the original builder had discussions with the local authority about thedormer, and that he was told that there were restrictions on its size because the house is in aconservation area. But I don’t believe it went to the planning committee.----------------------------------------------------------Surely the two MP's know how local councils administer planning applications ?Surely they know that one submits plans of the development that are either approved or not ?Surely they looked at the plans to see if what they wanted was the thing being submitted for planning permission ?Did the builder just decide to install a dormer as a private whim ?

Tim Henderson ● 5895d

The publication of the report of the Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards allows us to establish the chronology of events. According to the evidence, the Keens were able to live in Brook Road South when Jim was around in October 2008 and in fact were able to live in the garage/summerhouse/annexe until the week of 23rd November 2008."The building work in Brentford started in about July 2008.Yes. We began in May/June with tasks such as emptying the loft.""para 37. ....When the House returned in October 2008 they spent two nights a week there, instead oftheir previous four, and they spent five nights a week in London. This pattern continueduntil the week of 23 November 2008. According to the schedule, Mr and Mrs Keen did notspend any nights at all thereafter in their Brentford home.""39. Mr and Mrs Keen said that the summerhouse was located close to but separate fromthe house at the rear. The space allowed them to have “a normal office with telephone, PCetc but also … a fridge, TV and bed/settee”. It allowed for easy access to the house for toiletand kitchen facilities. They commented, “Because of access to the main house we had no realdifficulties until the end of October/November when the builder misled us into believing thatmore major construction work was suddenly needed. November became very difficult and bythe beginning of December we were forced to stop his work and needed to board up the rearof the property making access impossible”."Throughout most of that time you were able to live in the Brentford home, or at least in theannex at the back, gaining access to the house to use the kitchen and bathroom.Mrs Keen : Yes. It is a modern brick built annex, converted from a garage, with an office and sofabed, withelectricity but no plumbing. For that you have to go into the main house. But it is only a fewsteps away from the French windows."The evidence also states that the Keens were able to move back into the house in October 2009 - but it does not actaully say when they did so. However , in the interview with Sir John Lyon on 19th January, the question was asked :"Have you now returned to your previous pattern of overnight stays - four nights a week in Brentford?Mrs Keen: Yes."

Tim Henderson ● 5896d

I may well be wrong (and hopefully the Keens will be able to explain the sums at this weeks meetings - or maybe an apologist will have to answer for them) but I suspect that the larger sum each month is the Waterloo apartment mortgage (c. £1700 per month) and the smaller sum is the life insurance policy that the mortgage company insisted on (c£850 per month).Of course the Tories don't think that life insurance policy premiums are really "expenses necessarily incurred" in performing parliamentary duties. As that Iain Dale man said "Imagine you are an MP and your spouse is also an MP. Imagine you get a life insurance policy worth a potential £430,000, which costs £867 per month. Each. Is your first thought...a) to get a direct debit from your own bank account like any normal personb) to bill the taxpayerAlan Keen and his wife Ann took option B. The real scandal is that the House of Commons Fees Office approved this transaction. Mr & Mrs Keen will no doubt defend themselves robustly, but whatever their defence is, I suspect it won't wash with their respective electorates."http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2008/05/house-of-commons-fees-office-needs.htmlThis originally came out in the May 2008 release of informationhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3999122.ece"The health minister Ann Keen is this weekend revealed to have insured her 70-year-old husband’s life for £430,000 – and to have claimed the premiums on parliamentary expenses.Keen took out a joint HSBC “first death” policy with her husband Alan, also a Labour MP, which meant if one of them died the other would get the payout.The £867 monthly premiums were submitted as part of their parliamentary expenses. The couple are already entitled to generous payouts if one of them dies under the Commons pension scheme.Details of the policy have been released after a three-year freedom of information battle by The Sunday Times. Michael Martin, the Speaker, was forced to publish the expenses of 14 MPs after spending more than £200,000 of taxpayers’ money trying to block their release. "

Tim Henderson ● 6146d

So once one is elected one no longer has to account for oneself? Is that your argument. I can see a flaw.I, for one, do not like being called a liar* by someone with a past track record both self-confessed and court-established as a nazi thug, and who lashes out against anyone who does not buy his new reformed persona. In addition to this, he has accused me on 15 June of making anonymous posts (at a time when I was actually busy at work) on his blog when, so far as I know, the only posting I ever made there was on 2 June when at that time, mistakenly I now think, I was inclined to believe his claims.So, to save me the bother of digging out his election addrsses, which I'll bet don't answer my question, perhaps you can tell me what he has lived on fo the last 20 years apart from councillor allowances? Air? Has he ever done a day's paid work in the real world in his life?*pompous, pontificating etc., are matters of opinion and/or judgment, but liar is a slur and requires evidence. The only issue, so far as I am aware, of which I can be found to have been in error was a reference to a meeting he had around a tsble with his BNP friend Nick Griffin and the sometime NF leader Andrew Brons. I had presumed from the context where I read this that this occurred after 1991. As soon as Phil Andrews challenged me on that I asked when the meeting was, and got no reply but instead a challenge of a distinctly pompous nature to withdraw or face the consequences, for consequences there will be! I told him to grow up. He later lashes into me again with a string of invective. The one thing he cannot stomach is the possibility of anyone observing that his activities have all the hallmarks of entryism, by which community or other groups are "taken over" by someone or a group of people who progressively all the machinery.

Dan Filson ● 6161d

"Another house in The Butts"?The NHS is the largest employer in the Country..and the cost of it is billions and billions as you all know. Is it £80,000.000.000 each year?  Money is known to be leaking out all over the place. As Minister, Mrs Keen must oversee all this!Is Mrs Keen the one to stem such financial wastage..that you and I pay for?  How can she look into the eye of a nurse or sick patient.....knowing that she ..with others..are milking the system.Of course, she'll support the GMB union whatever it's endeavours...even supporting the spanish customs of certain hardcore long service members at Heathrow.She might not have been breaking any rules..but if the chap in charge at the Westminster Fees Office has no qualifications, apparently, in accountancy or bookkeeping, why hasn't Mrs Keen helped stem the waste of Public Money..rather than tucking greedily into it for the last 12 years?So it goes like this! You send in an untidy batch of invoices (like Mrs Beckett said on Question Time) and hey..a fat cheque comes back..or was it cash...non taxable too! So, you do it again and again!Forum posters have been quizzing about the Keens'expenses  for over 5 years...famously Paul Fisher at the last General Election Count at the Civic Centre.  We all heard Mr Alan King answer Paul,"I'll explain it all soon" Since then they must have banked another £2 million.oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo "A residence in The Butts as well?"  Not sure about that Audrey.  Anyone know?  I believe that they previously lived in Feltham.

Jim Lawes ● 6196d