In brief, IPH has been operating under Fusion but managed by the community-run Friends of Isleworth Public Hall for many years. The Hall, I should add, is not owned by LBH as such, the Council is simply the Trustee and holds it on behalf of the community.Last year LBH decided unilaterally without any prior consultation that the Hall would be put out to tender, the reason being it was apparently losing money although the local authority refused to share the precise details of how much it was said to be losing either with the Friends or with potential bidders, despite the fact that the latter had been asked to draw up a financial plan for the future management of the Hall to be submitted with their bids (in spite of the fact that this essential financial information was withheld from the Friends and from bidders, Labour in their Isleworth leaflet were somehow able to announce that the amount in question was £85k per annum).The documentation accompanying the tendering process was couched in terms which made it clear that a private company was what the local authority had in mind. For instance bidders were asked for their company registration number, amongst other things.However as is its wont LBH through its customary ineptitude managed to frighten off anybody who may possibly have seen the Hall for its income potential and were thus left with two bids, one from a local C of E school and one from the community organised around the Friends. The Labour ward councillors were working heavily behind the scenes to try to ensure that the school won through, through various means such as letters to local newspapers send through third parties and all the usual moody that Isleworth people have become used to from these people.For whatever reason the school pulled out, but not before Councillor Curran had managed to sneak onto the Forward Plan notice of his intention to (again unilaterally) grant the school a 125-year lease over part of the land occupied by the Hall.Having tried, and failed, to prise the Hall from the Friends, the Labour councillors and candidates, faced with the fact of it now looking like it will go to the Friends by default, proudly announced in their leaflet that thanks to them the Hall had been "saved for the community". This kind of outrageous and completely unprincipled behaviour is something we have become used to over many years from the Labour Party in Isleworth ward. I can't believe a man of Theo's integrity would have enjoyed having to defend this kind of trashy conduct but such, I guess, is the price of a party allegiance.Or do you believe that The Isleworth Society, as well as the ICG, are just scaremongering?
Phil Andrews ● 4310d