In early 2023 we broke the news that Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) had done a secret deal with the international property developer Ballymore for the sale of one of North Kensington’s last remaining community assets, Canalside House. Ostensibly, very little has changed, but we can update our readers on what hasn’t happened, non-developments that expose the council’s attitude towards its poorer communities, of interest to those who care about North Kensington’s future prospects.Continue reading →
Liberal fascism is trending in Britain, marked by a crackdown on dissenting voices. The Labour Party is keeping pace with the times; Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership has turned Labour into the liberal wing of a Uni-party that runs Britain in the interests of the global financial system and at the expense of the rest of us. Kensington Labour Party has succumbed, surrendering its power to a system of myopic control managed by zealots, liars, and racists. How did Kensington’s red flag fade to pinkish blue so quickly?
The Pivot: Labour’s Racism Report
Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour became associated with antisemitism in the public consciousness thanks to a determinedsmear campaignsome of the country’s most powerful institutions waged against the anti-racist Islington MP. Aleaked reportdetails the workings of a racist, sexist, right-wing clique operating at the highest levels of Labour’s governance during the Corbyn era, collaborating to prevent the party from forming a government under the veteran socialist. Upon replacing Corbyn, Keir Starmer recruited the independent barrister Martin Forde KC to investigate the leak, asking Forde to identify the changes required within Labour to eradicate discrimination.
Having considered 1,100 submissions from party members, Forde confirmed both “overt and underlying racism and sexism” at the highest levels of the party, noting “the particular disdain which colleagues reserve for ethnic minority MPs, councillors and CLP members”. The barrister described “a hierarchy of racism or of discrimination with other forms of racism (other than antisemitism) and discrimination being ignored. For a party which seeks to be a standard bearer of progressive politics, equality and workers’ rights, this is an untenable situation.”
Forde criticised Labour’s refusal, under Starmer, to engage withJewish Voice for Labour’s proposals for antisemitism education, reporting that Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) had been barred from engaging with that organisation despite their obvious expertise.
Labour’s website summarises the Forde Report’s key recommendation: “The report urges the Party to treat all forms of discrimination among staff, elected officials and the wider membership with the same seriousness as incidents of antisemitism.”
David Evans, General Secretary of the party since 2020, responded to Forde by offering “a commitment to you and all other members that such a situation will not arise again and that we will tackle racist and discriminatory attitudes wherever they arise in whatever section of the party.”
Following the report, Labour created a Diversity & Inclusion Board chaired by a trans person. In 2021, the party established codes of conduct on Islamophobia, Afrophobia and anti-Black racism. Meetings were slated for early 2023 to establish aworking groupto consider the Forde Report. But in May this year Fordelamentedthe lack of action, saying his work will be rendered pointless unless the recommendations are implemented. The barrister said Labour was still prioritising antisemitism and the Me Too movement at the expense of other forms of discrimination.
Kensington Takeover
Labour and the media have largely ignored Forde’s recommendations and the problems of discrimination have become far worse than the “hierarchy of racism” the barrister described. Under Starmer, Labour has turned its back on vulnerable communities and deployed a strategy of deliberately provoking fear among Jewish communities to create moral justifications for party officials to siphon off decision-making powers from the party’s membership. In Kensington, the effect has been both surreal and chilling.
Local Candidates Removed
As wereportedlate last year, unelected party officials hijacked the selection process for Labour’s Kensington candidacy. First, members of the National Executive Committeebarredthe probable winner, former MP Emma Dent Coad, from standing on spurious grounds including having once made ajokeabout Prince Harry. Labour’s London Region bosses then intervened,eliminatingthe new favourite to win, another grassroots candidate, Kasim Ali. London Region bureaucrats then took fullcontrolof the selection process, declaring branch results without publishing vote counts.
These events passed without protest from the CLP’s members, who have not raised concerns about the process at any subsequent meetings. The usurping of party democracy in Kensington came after the publication of the Forde Report and Evans’s “commitment” to anti-racism, yet a method senior Labour officials employed to rig the Kensington selection was the manufacture of anantisemitism crisis. Out of nowhere, an email was circulated to CLP members featuring clumsy antisemitic language. The party’s London Region Director, Pearleen Sangha capitalised on the email, declaring that CLP members had been suspended and stating that there would be a “serious investigation” into antisemitism in Kensington CLP.
To remove Kasim Ali from the running, Sangha took sole control of the vote at Ali’s home branch. She summarily removed up to 20 British Somalis (the same ethnic background as Ali) from the meeting, preventing them from casting their votes. Is this a party serious about Islamophobia, Afrophobia and anti-Black racism? To date, there have been no complaints made about this incident of prima facie racial profiling at CLP meetings and we understand the CLP has not submitted a complaint to the Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC).
We wrote to London Region multiple times offering them opportunities to retract Sangha’s claims of suspensions and an investigation into antisemitism, but they stuck by her story each time. Kensington CLP officials immediately confirmed to us that there were no suspensions and no investigation, reconfirming this prior to the change in the CLP’s leadership in February. The current CLP Secretary, Monica Press, confirmed to us that there have been no suspensions or investigations relating to alleged antisemitism during her tenure.
Despite it being an established fact that Labour officials created an antisemitism hoax in Kensington, and despite what appears to be, at the very least, a case of targeted discrimination against Black, African, Muslim British-Somalis, there have been no consequences for the officials responsible or for the party as a whole. And Labour members in Kensington, apparently decent and liberal-minded, have remained mute as officials have disenfranchised their comrades. Some are dissonantly focused on the campaign to unseat Conservative MP Felicity Buchan while others fear that speaking up would mean expulsion from the party.
Affiliations Cancelled
More of the same is incoming. When Diane Abbott used clumsy language to point out the indisputable fact that anti-Black racism is far more prevalent throughout our society than antisemitism, anti-Irish, anti-traveller or anti-red head discrimination, Starmer immediately labelled her words “antisemitic.” Like Jeremy Corbyn, Abbott is no longer a Labour MP, and any semblance of left-wing presence in parliament is now in doubt in a country in which millions of people hold socialist values.
In Kensington, as with constituencies around the country, central control has increased with members’ power decreasing in direct proportion. Under Starmer Labour has amended its rules so CLP members no longer have a democratic choice over which comradely organisations they can affiliate to. We have seen an email from a London Region official to Kensington CLP stating that the CLP’s affiliate organisations must be pre-approved by the NEC, not according to a robust set of criteria, but solely based on “the opinion of the NEC”.
In emails seen by us, parliamentary candidate Joe Powell outlined the affiliation rule change to CLP officials, listing the grassroots organisations that were to be disaffiliated at the CLP’s February AGM including Palestine Solidarity Campaign; Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; Stop the War Coalition; Republic; Jewish Voice for Labour; Somalis for Labour; Sikhs for Labour; All African Women’s Group and Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace & Justice Project. A London Region official also wrote to CLP officers warning that affiliating to any of the above organisations would breach party rules.
All requests for affiliations are now considered by just two senior regional party officials, but one of them pre-empted any such requests by telling Kensington CLP to focus their resources on campaigning for their parliamentary candidate, as opposed to building a broader labour movement.
Kensington members elected officers amenable to the Starmer project, marking a significant turnaround from 2021 when the chair Monica Press resigned from her councillor position citing factional bullying by a small group of left-wing councillors who were then dominant in the CLP. But the votes cast at the February AGM did not mark a renewal of democracy and the authoritarians continued to consolidate their grip.
Meetings Suspended
Labour officials have transformed Kensington from a CLP dominated by a small group of allegedly factional but elected left-wingers to one apparently under the control of unelected party bureaucrats. In July, without consulting its membership, the CLP’s executive committee announced the suspension of all branch meetings until February 2024, justified by low turnout at meetings and a need to focus on general election campaigning. In early 2024, the constituency will change its boundaries and become Kensington & Bayswater. The Executive will then decide whether to reinstate branch meetings or to continue their suspension until after the general election.
The CLP Executive also announced it has replaced All Member Meetings with bi-monthly ‘policy forums’, further reducing the ability of local members to engage in the party’s processes and influence policy. The NEC and London Region are expected to retain a close watch over proceedings.
The NEC is pursuinga rule changeto reduce CLP executive committees to just six positions. Presuming their proposal is successful, this will be another significant change for Kensington which currently has 15 committee members. Roles such as Environmental Officer, Political Education Officer, Disability Officer and BAME Officer are expected to be among those to be abolished.
Local Labour activists and politicians continue to campaign on some importantissues, some no doubt struggling to identify a means of organising that could replace the party’s apparatus. But these campaigns come in the context of a party that supports the World Economic Forum’s vision for our future: “You will own nothing, but you will be happy.”
Don’t Worry Be Happy
Looking from the outside at the chaos of first Emma Dent Coad and then Kasim Ali being removed from the running to be Labour’s Kensington parliamentary candidate, it seems likely that party officials were motivated by a fear that either politician might have been responsive to local demands around the economy, justice for Grenfell and an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, and a major component of the Starmer project is to separate decision making from popular demands. At no point has the local membership resisted the takeover by the national party, and by the time Starmer is in number ten, it will be too late for grassroots members to have any influence on Labour’s policies.
The Starmer team’s disfiguring of Labour’s internal democratic apparatus is matched by its draconian worldview. The party is marching in ideological lockstep with sweeping state repression of our rights toprotestandfree speech(Keir Starmer had professionalinvolvementwith the initial harassment and persecution of Julian Assange.) Starmer declared unconditional loyalty toNATOandIsrael, aligning Labour’s foreign policy with the Tories’ and reversing the progress made under Corbyn.
Labour’s asphyxiated reactionary policy approach coincides with the Conservative party collapsing from within and a time when the country requires investment after 13 years of austerity. Some Kensington CLP members might believe the crackdown on party democracy is an election-winning strategy masterminded by Jeffery Epstein’sclose friendLord Mandelson. Others will see it for what it really is, part of the freezing out of workers’ concerns from parliamentary politics fortified by intense repression of free speech todemonise and proscribedissent.
Sir Keir Starmer was more culpable than any other politician for Labour’s 2019 election catastrophe. As Shadow Brexit Secretary, he defied party leaders and pursued a disastrous policy of cancelling the democratic Leave vote. Starmer’s sabotage went unpunished because Labour was desperate to preserve a façade of unity in the face of relentless lies and attacks from the media, and political and militaryestablishments. Starmer and his team have sought to sever the party’s connection to progressive and working-class causes. Cuckolds to war criminals like Tony Blair and the corrupt media class, Labour has moved decisively and ruthlessly to kill off pro-peace, pro-worker, anti-racist interests within its ranks. In Kensington, there has been no rage against the dying of the light.
In Kensington Town Hall last Wednesday night, a Labour councillor’s motion, “Assistance to Children in Poverty,” was slapped down by the permanent Conservative majority that dominates the council. A perfect allegory for the hopelessly dysfunctional politics of Kensington & Chelsea.
(the Labour councillors’ original motion)
Councillor Mohammed Bakhtiar’s motion was modest; he acknowledged the appalling rates of child poverty in the borough and the additional challenges created by the Covid restrictions. He called on the council to establish systems and allocate additional funds to address a crisis in which food poverty and job insecurity have compounded the difficulties faced by thousands of families.
The Labour councillor’s motion noted that a quarter (4,500 according to the last census) of the borough’s children live in poverty, with most of them residing in working households. A report by WPU Economics for the Kensington & Chelsea Foundation in 2021 showed that almost half (45.3%) of the borough’s children attend independent schools, far higher than both the London (10.1%) and England (9.7%) averages. This means that, of the Kensington children not in private education, close to half are living in poverty. The WPU report also notes:
• Black students in the borough have a gap in average Attainment 8 scores (a measure of progression in attainment) that is four and a half times larger than in England overall.
• White British pupils eligible for Free School Meals in the borough are the largest educationally disadvantaged group in terms of GCSE performance and higher education.
WPU Economics identified a wide range of factors that contribute to the borough’s educational inequalities:
• RBKC had higher temporary and permanent exclusion rates in primary and secondary state schools than both London and England as a whole. (This has been worsened by the academisation process, including the unaccountable leadership installed at Holland Park School)
• Exclusions for Black and Mixed ethnicity students are twice as high as their White or Asian peers. For students with Special Education Needs provision, they are three times as high as those without.
• Inadequate housing impacts education and 13% of RBKC households are overcrowded; 29.8 out of every 1,000 households are in temporary accommodation in the borough, compared to 17 in London 4.1 in England overall.
• A combination of a lack of space to learn at home and language and cultural barriers has meant that many children struggled to access quality education during the period of Covid restrictions.[i]
If we break the statistics down geographically, they become even more stark. Census figures for Golborne ward in North Kensington revealed that 68% of children were living in overcrowded homes. On Henry Dickens Court in another northern ward, Notting Dale, child poverty was at 58% while in Queens Gate, South Kensington, it was 2.8%.
Before Covid, communities in the north of the borough already faced a deteriorating situation; men in Golborne’s life expectancy had dropped to 72, while in a southern ward, Hans Town, they live 22 years longer. With a higher number of people from Black and minority ethnic communities residing in North Kensington, the area was disproportionately impacted by Covid. Office for National Statistics data showed Black males being over 400% more likely to die from Covid than white males. Parents of children living in poverty and overcrowded accommodation were also more likely to have a job deemed key to the economy, so many had to continue going to work while the laptop class worked from home, saving money and extending economic inequality.
The obscene inequalities affect the south of the borough too, with cuts to services worsening the poverty already entrenched in Earls Court and Chelsea World’s End.
Demand for tuition
While the borough’s third sector has worked valiantly to provide opportunities for children to catch up with lost learning following the counter-productive school closures, the demand has been difficult to meet in a funding environment in which charitable donations are declining.
An education coordinator at local charity told us: “The cost-of-living has bitten down on families, and we’re still in the long shadow of Covid, so demand for our classes has sky rocketed. We’ve doubled our registrations for educational support in the last year.
“All children were negatively affected by Covid because most learning progress happens in the classroom. But children from economically disadvantaged families were hit the hardest, and it’s not because the children aren’t capable or they have the wrong attitude. Factors like a lack of financial resources in the family, unsettled home circumstances and having parents who don’t have a high level of UK education are decisive.
“Children from families with money have been negatively affected too, results are down across the board. But being able to afford private tuition and IT equipment stops them falling behind. Teachers at schools are now over-stretched so can’t give time and attention to those who need it most. So an attempt at equity in education is not unfair in any way. Investing in high-impact support will help all children because it would free up time in the classroom for all pupils.
“Education is the most important thing to invest in in any community. It lifts people out of poverty, breaks negative cycles in families and empowers individuals to improve their circumstances. There’s a net positive effect on every aspect of the local community, social and economic. Crime goes down, cohesion increases.”
It was in this dire economic and social milieu, and under the council’s giant crest with its motto ‘What a good thing it is to dwell together in unity’ that Labour councillors sought to make some inroads into addressing the educational inequality they see worsening every day in their wards.
The Conservatives’ response was moved by Cllr Will Pascall of Chelsea and Cllr David Lindsay, former Mayor of Kensington:
(Tories’ amended motion)
The Tory councillors deleted from the specific actions proposed by the Labour councillors, namely identifying children in particular need of educational support and allocating funds to help them. The urgency in the Labour motion was replaced with a reaffirmation of the status quo and a specific focus on celebrating children at “grant-maintained schools” – the children already least in need of support catching up after Covid because they aren’t hampered by overcrowding, over-worked parents, poverty, and stress.
Because of the rules of the game at the Town Hall, Labour, the minority party, could not oppose the majority party’s amendments; they could only voice their opposition in a debate, and policy remained unchanged. As it has since the 1960s when an in-depth study found that Kensington’s Tory councillors saw it as their duty to limit public spending strictly to the provision of statutory services and to encourage “self-help” among the poor.
This was a boilerplate move from the Tories. Nothing has changed in the 50 years of the borough’s existence. No event, even the “most serious crime committed on British soil this century”[ii] can shake the Conservatives’ complacency. Posh white people with property portfolios who pay other people to raise their children and clean their homes push “self-reliance” on impoverished young people while restoring the council’s bank reserves and keeping their voting base, who have no material problems, on high alert over Labour’s menacing attitude towards the Tories’ one local campaign issue: bin collections.
The specific councillors who submitted the Tories’ response are typical Kensington toffs. Cllr Lindsay is an old Etonian, while Cllr Pascall apparently sent his children there.
The council does not look like an administrative entity capable of responding to the needs of disparate groups in a time of widening inequality when senior councillors treat politics like a sport. The Labour councillors who spoke against the Conservatives’ amendments to the timely “Assistance to Children in Poverty” motion also have to reckon with Sir Keir Starmer’s determination to keep those same children in poverty as he appeases the donor base that he serves, many of whom live in Kensington.
What a good thing it is to dwell together in unity.
[i] All statistics in these bullet points are taken from Poverty and Prosperity in Kensington + Chelsea Understanding inequalities in a Borough of Extremes; A WPI Economics Report for The Kensington + Chelsea Foundation; November 2021
[ii] Peter Apps, quote from Show Me The Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen; Oneworld Publications
RBKC Deputy Leader Kim Taylor-Smith. Image from rbkc.gov.uk
With a government inspector now considering Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC)’s New Local Plan proposals, more details have emerged showing the extent of the local authority’s deception over the historic community building, Canalside House. Despite the building not being on the site of the huge Kensal-Canalside development, the council has adjusted maps and refused to engage with local groups in a bid to force the sale and demolition of one of North Kensington’s last remaining community assets.
“Do not need to demolish”
Since we revealed in February that RBKC had cut a secret deal with Ballymore for the sale and demolition of Canalside House, resident organisations have received no new information from the council’s Deputy Leader Kim Taylor-Smith who is also Lead Member for Grenfell Housing and Social Investment. In the absence of proactive council leadership, residents have organised meetings with the developer, Ballymore, and analysed RBKC’s New Local Plan to better understand their predicament.
The situation faced by Canalside’s third sector groups has gone full circle back to September 2018 when Cllr Taylor-Smith told them that “part or all of the building will require demolition” to “maximise the density of the Kensal Gas Works development.”Continue reading →
International property developer Ballymore has met with community groups from Canalside House to address anxieties over what will come next if the historic building is demolished as part of the transformation of the Kensal Gas Works site. While Ballymore has shown willingness to explore ways to maintain and enhance the vital work done at Canalside House, the building’s owner, Kensington & Chelsea Council, has remained conspicuously silent.
Recap
In February, we revealed that Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) had struck a secret deal with Ballymore to sell one of North Kensington’s last remaining community hubs, Canalside House. Decided without democratic oversight, consultation with the affected communities or engagement with tenant organisations, the deal, if completed, will fulfil a long-held wish of the council to rid itself of a centre that was built in 1929. Canalside House has been an integral part of North Kensington, hosting a diverse range of events, charities, community groups and businesses, including being the starting point for Innocent Smoothies, a company now worth over £2 billion but still located directly opposite Canalside House on Ladbroke Grove.
The international property developer set to profit handsomely from the transformation of the Gas Works site in North Kensington / Kensal Green has abandoned its offer to meet with the resident organisations of Canalside House. The historic community building on Ladbroke Grove has been pulled into plans for the ‘Kensal Canalside Opportunity Area’ despite sitting outside the site, and will be demolished by Ballymore once they complete the purchase. Instead of meeting with the Canalside organisations together, Ballymore is now offering individual drop-ins. For their part, Kensington & Chelsea council is pretending these public drop-ins are “consultations” – reprising the tactics and vocabulary of the discredited, disgraced Rock Feilding-Mellen, former deputy leader of the council. Let’s not fall for it again.
Offer
There is reason to suspect that Ballymore is ignorant about the work done at Canalside House and keen to avoid gaining knowledge of the problems that will be caused by the demolition of one of North Kensington’s last remaining community assets. To date the developer has offered only vague platitudes regarding their intentions towards the resident organisations – “our proposals incorporate all the community-focused activities of Canalside house” – that have increased suspicion in a local community that has endured it all before, including six years of public relations spin from its council.
At a public meeting in March, Ballymore’s PR representatives from Comm Comm (Community Communications) offered to meet Canalside House residents at Canalside House so that they could express their concerns about Ballymore’s plans. But Ballymore has now jettisoned this proposal and the collective of charities, community groups, care agencies, housing co-ops and small businesses are expected to content themselves with attending Ballymore’s public exhibition and drop-in hub on Kensal Road. Comm Comm told Urban Dandy “We have already met some people from the buildings at our consultation hub and hope to meet others over the coming weeks.”
Using “buildings” instead of “building” suggests Ballymore considers Canalside House and neighbouring Canalside Activity Centre to be one and the same. Ballymore can then claim that whatever green space and sports activities are included on the new development represent the “community-focused activities” of Canalside House.
2016
In 2016, at the height of Feilding-Mellen’s aggressive asset strip, the organisations of Canalside House were invited to ‘consultations’ at the Town Hall. To their surprise, no other resident organisations were present, and they were informed they would be moved to a converted industrial site on Latimer Road. Half the size of Canalside, the hot desking space offered zero privacy and no storage. I pointed out to the council’s Head of Property, Social Investment & Property (not a typo, real job title) that it was not a consultation and asked if there would be a consultation. He was emphatic that there would not be, telling the residents “take it or leave it.” The same person remains in the role today.
Are Ballymore aware that they are aping the divide-and-rule approach of the most hated politicians in North Kensington?
Hiding
Comm Comm also told us: “We understand that all tenants of the buildings have been contacted by their landlords to be updated.”
Most, but not all, Canalside House tenants, have received letters from the council that offer little to no reassurance, but plenty of carefully-worded vagueness. The same message sent to Urban Dandy by the council’s PR department in response to our reporting on the planned sale has been sent to Canalside House residents, sometimes signed by Fielding-Mellen’s replacement Kim Taylor-Smith; sometimes by the Head of Property, Social Investment & Property. Minor edits have been made to provide a friendlier tone to some organisations, but it is mainly copied and pasted from the PR statement.
Ballymore is hiding behind the ragged notion that Canalside House’s resident organisations are happy to passively receive updates this way, from the same institution that has repeatedly sought to deprive them of their building, thereby jeopardising their ability to deliver vital services in one of the most economically depressed areas of the country.
Kensington & Chelsea council tells Canalside House residents: “We would only sell the building if Ballymore were able to meet our proposed terms, including the reprovision of community space.”
But this is disingenuous, and not just because of the council’s managed decline of the building and past attempts to sell it. Multiple sources from multiple meetings with Ballymore have said that the developer told them that Taylor-Smith and the council insisted that Ballymore take Canalside House off their hands, hinting that the deal is contingent on the purchase of the building.
Play off
Ballymore and Kensington & Chelsea are attempting to play us off against each other; hiding behind each other’s statements when it is convenient and claiming ignorance of their partner’s intentions when that suits their interests. If they succeed and Canalside House is demolished, we won’t be able to say we didn’t see it coming.
Numerous property developers are set to profit from the huge development of the Kensal Gas Works site. Sadly for North Kensington, one of these property developers has a side hustle as Deputy Leader of Kensington & Chelsea Council. Kim Taylor-Smith is attempting to fulfil the plan of his predecessor, Rock Feilding-Mellen, in selling Canalside House for demolition. Taylor-Smith denies that he has struck a secret deal to sell the historic building, but as you will read below, the council and the developer have yet to get their story straight.
Taylor-Smith
In February we exposed Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC)’s secret deal to sell one of North Kensington’s last surviving community assets, Canalside House. Councillor Taylor-Smith was unimpressed by our reporting, labelling it “misinformed” while admitting that secret talks had been held with Ballymore.
RBKC’s deputy leader, who is also Lead Member for Grenfell Housing and Social Investment, told Byline Times last month, “We would only sell the building if Ballymore were able to meet the proposed terms, including on reprovision of community space, and if they are also able to get planning permission from the council.”
Taken at face value, Councillor Taylor-Smith was suggesting that RBKC might reject Ballymore. However, we now know that it was the council who approached Ballymore about Canalside House, not the other way around. See the section below on Ballymore for evidence. Canalside House does not sit on the site of the Kensal Canalside Gas Works development, and therefore could be maintained and upgraded as a community asset, as Taylor-Smith has repeatedly promised since the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017.
Under the watch of Councillor Taylor-Smith, Canalside House has been in managed decline. See our previous articles for details of his duplicitous dealings over the building.
Via a council press officer, the deputy council leader told Urban Dandy: “We recently wrote to all Canalside House tenants to provide them with the most up to date information about the future of the building and will continue to communicate directly with them and keep them informed of any developments.”
We have checked with several Canalside organisations, who all confirmed that they have received no such communication from the council.
One organisation showed us an email from Taylor-Smith himself, sent in response to our article, in which he claims “We’ve been open with you, the tenants in Canalside House about these discussion and I wanted to reassure you that no agreement has been reached with Ballymore.”
But RBKC’s dealings with Ballymore were kept entirely secret and were not subject to any democratic oversight at the Town Hall. Without us having reported on the deal, it is improbable that anybody in North Kensington, including the building’s residents, would know that Canalside House had been allocated to property developers to be added to the area for development.
RBKC’s response
Councillor Taylor-Smith’s response to our questions included a denial that a deal has been made with Ballymore, as well as a claim that the council had written to all Canalside organisations and a vow that RBKC will continue to communicate with all residents directly.
On Ballymore, Taylor-Smith conceded that the developer is putting its proposals together and these will include the land occupied by Canalside House since 1929.
In what could be interpreted as a contradiction of his denial of a secret deal, Taylor-Smith also told Urban Dandy “Should a time come when Canalside tenants may have to move out of the building, we would work closely with them to find them suitable alternative accommodation in the local area, with a view to them moving back on to the site once it is finished should they wish to do so.”
Public meeting
A chaotic public meeting hosted by Ballymore at Moberly Sports Centre a fortnight ago was surely a sign of things to come. With thousands of people across North Kensington and Kensal Green to be impacted by the Gas Works development, Ballymore’s Project Manager was ill-prepared for the wide range of questions from attendees.
Ballymore might be hoping that public confusion will enable their plans to proceed without too much input from the communities set to be impacted. Comm Comm UK, Ballymore’s communications consultancy for the project suggested to us that a meeting specifically about Canalside House could be held, at Canalside House. We haven’t heard from them since.
Questioned about Canalside House, Ballymore’s representative at Moberly confirmed that it was RBKC that had instigated the deal. He also said that the council had told Ballymore that they were looking into the possibility of moving the Canalside organisations into the Gramophone Works on Kensal Road. The building was purchased for £18 million by Resolution Property in 2015 and is marketed as a “contemporary workplace in the heart of creative West London” and “industrial style workspace.”
For the care agencies, youth groups and housing co-ops of Canalside House, echoing around an open plan building that provides zero privacy for clients would be impossible. It seems highly unlikely that RBKC would dip into its famous reserves to pay the rent at the Gramophone Works for the displaced Canalside organisations. It does however seem likely that RBKC told Ballymore that the Gramophone Works is being considered as a way of allaying any concerns the developer might have about bulldozing a cherished community building.
RBKC’s vague reassurances about the fate of the community groups might be sufficient for Ballymore but Taylor-Smith’s characteristic chicanery is not convincing anybody locally and the deputy leader seems to have exhausted any lingering goodwill he had cultivated since 2017.
Ballymore’s response
Via Comm Comm, Ballymore told Urban Dandy that the purchase and demolition of Canalside House represents “an opportunity to work with RBKC to increase the already significant community, work, leisure and activity space we are planning within Kensal Canalside.”
They did not mention the specific groups or activities currently at Canalside House, but they stated “our proposals incorporate all the community-focused activities of Canalside house as part of what the wider development will offer, and including this additional land will allow it to be opened up as another area of public space for the community to use.”
This vague claim was repeated by Ballymore’s representative at the Moberly meeting.
The developer’s response to us also confirmed that the council is offering reassurances to Ballymore that the community might find difficult to stomach: “We understand RBKC is working closely with the remaining charities based at Canalside House to find them a new home in a more modern building with better facilities nearby.”
According to multiple sources who are based at Canalside House, this is categorically untrue.
by Tom Charles @tomhcharles
Canalside House, centre left, seen from the Gramophone Works. Image from thegramophoneworks.com
Former Mayor of Kensington & Chelsea, the councillor Gerard Hargreaves, has been questioned by the Charity Commission as part of its probe into apparent corruption at al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in North Kensington. Councillor Hargreaves, who represents Chelsea Riverside ward, is accused of proposing that a long-standing debt of thousands of pounds owed to al-Manaar by a fellow trustee be written off. And Hargreaves is understood to be among a faction of trustees suspected of trying to force through the removal of the mosque’s CEO.
Cllr Hargreaves, left, with al-Manaar CEO Abdurahman Sayed
Charity Commission
We have seen the 15 questions sent by the Charity Commission to al-Manaar’s nine trustees, which reveal why the government department consider the concerns raised to be serious enough to meet the threshold for investigation. The alleged abuses at the mosque have dogged the charity for years and are suggestive of abject mismanagement and a culture of bullying.
With the Charity Commission involved, it seems unlikely that all the mosque’s trustees will survive in their positions unless they can offer evidence that they are taking steps to ensure the centre’s governance is fully transparent and compliant with Charity Commission guidelines. The circumstances could be serious enough for the Charity Commission to utilise sweeping powersto impose new systems and personnel on al-Manaar to help it move on from its internal strife and focus on its role as an integral and much-respected community hub and place of healing.
Questions
A source told Urban Dandy that much of the unrest at the mosque has been directly or indirectly connected to Dr Abdulkarim Khalil, a mainstay at al-Manaar from its foundation, when he led fundraising efforts. He has been al-Manaar’s CEO, Chair of Trustees (twice) and remains a trustee.
The debt that Councillor Hargreaves allegedly suggested be written off was rent arrears owed by Dr Khalil for use of al-Manaar’s two-bedroom flat. Trustees had set the rent at the local social housing rate of just under £9,000 a year in 2012.
With NATO having overthrown the government of Libya, Dr Khalil travelled to Tripoli in 2012 to work at what had been the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, essentially the Libyan state charity. This was salaried work, but al Manaar’s trustees apparently viewed it as a sabbatical and for six months kept Dr Khalil in receipt of his mosque salary.
It was during his period of working in Libya that Dr Khalil incurred his debt for non-payment of rent to the charity. Year after year, the figure was questioned as accountants prepared the charity’s annual accounts, until 2018 when trustees decided to write of the debt.
Minutes for the January 6th 2018 trustees meeting sent to Urban Dandy include two matters discussed without Dr Khalil, Chair of Trustees at the time, in the room. One was a request from Dr Khalil that al-Manaar contribute to his travel costs for flights to and from Libya. This request was deemed “inappropriate” by trustees as Dr Khalil was not travelling on al-Manaar business.
However, the second matter produced a better outcome for Dr Khalil as the trustees wrote off £8923 of rent arrears accrued between 2012 and 2015. The decision is justified in the minutes by “uncertainties that surrounded the unfolding situation in his home country (Libya) at the time;” that “while in the flat he attended to Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre matters on a daily basis” and the flat had been “long empty following the departure of the Care Taker.”
The minutes do not suggest that comments were made on the legality of the decision or its impact on other areas of al-Manaar’s work.
A source told us that it was Councillor Hargreaves who proposed writing off the debt, and that at the time, only months after the Grenfell tower fire, there was so much going on at al-Manaar that it was quite easy for such a decision to be taken without scrutiny.
The Charity Commission’s questions to the trustees, issued early this year, include the following:
“Why did you write off £9000? How did that serve the best interests of the charity?”
And the Charity Commission instructs the trustees to:
“Comment upon the Annual Accounts AC 18 and the reference to a party disclosure for £8923 to a trustee Dr Khalil which was written off.”
Trust
Another matter related to Dr Khalil that the Charity Commission questioned the trustees about was any relationship between trustees and Zubaidah Trust, a charity founded by Dr Khalil with virtually nothing to show in successive annual account submissions. “Trustees to comment if the charity has any relationship with Zubaidah Trust.”
The relevance of this Trust is not clear.
It was during the period of Dr Khalil’s work in Libya that al-Manaar appointed Abdurahman Sayed as CEO. Kensington & Chelsea Social Council oversaw the recruitment process, which, it is claimed by our source, took decision-making power away from those who had previously been able to steer the charity in directions of their choosing. As a result of Sayed’s appointment, various disgruntled staff and board members sought to make the CEO’s life uncomfortable and, early this year, managed to oust him from his role, albeit temporarily.
Suspension
According to our source, five trustees, including Councillor Hargreaves, took it upon themselves to suspend Abdurahman Sayed, without consulting the other four trustees or calling a trustees’ meeting, on 13th January. They had been apparently angered by the CEO’s firing of an Imam who Sayed claimed was receiving a full-time salary for working part-time.
Two trustees allegedly told al-Manaar staff “You are not allowed to communicate with Abdurahman” and a supporter of this faction addressed the congregation at the mosque, urging them to turn against the CEO. He was apparently ejected by people who had gone there to worship.
The other faction of the trustees, none of whom were in place at the time of the decision to write-off Dr Khalil’s arrears, urged the CEO to return to work and somebody reported events to the Charity Commission.
Our source told us that Councillor Hargreaves “does not behave like a trustee, he is completely untransparent.” They accuse Hargreaves of not following any procedures, including complaints procedures, and of participating in a culture in which disputes are treated as personal rather than professional issues.
Adding to this impression, our source told us that Hargreaves complained to council leader Elizabeth Campbell about the presence of a Labour councillor, nominated by the local authority, on the board of trustees.
We contacted Councillor Hargreaves requesting a comment on the allegations made against him and on the more general situation at al-Manaar, but he had not replied at the time of writing.
More Questions
In their letter to al-Manaar’s trustees, the Charity Commission asked:
“Who voted to get rid of the CEO?”
And instructed them to confirm:
“Which trustees voted for the suspension of the CEO and which voted against.”
The deadline for the trustees to respond was in late February, by which point Abdurahman Sayed had returned to work, his suspension having being shown to carry no legal weight.
Three trustees remain from the time of the apparent financial corruption in 2018. These are Esmail Jasat, who was Treasurer at the time and is now Chair; Dr Abdulkarim Khalil, the beneficiary of the decision, who was then Chair and remains a trustee; and Councillor Gerard Hargreaves, who was part of the council’s Cabinet at the time of the Grenfell Tower fire. The former Mayor remains a trustee at al Manaar and is Chairman of Kensington & Chelsea Council Council’s Audit and Transparency Committee.
Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) has struck a secret deal with an international property developer to sell the North Kensington community hub, Canalside House. There has been no democratic oversight of the deal, no consultation with the affected communities and the tenant organisations have not been informed. Information on the sale was provided by an unimpeachable source who told us that by this time next year “Canalside House will be gone”.
Deal
RBKC’s deal follows years of uncertainty in which the council has swung between two polarities: imposing a sale against the wishes of the community and vowing to work with tenant organisations to upgrade Canalside House.
The buyer, Ballymore, will demolish the building, which sits next to, but not on, the Kensal Canalside Opportunity Area site. Our source explained that ahead of making the deal public, the council is actively seeking to reduce the number of organisations utilising Canalside House. The terms of the sale will obligate RBKC to provide temporary space for the evicted organisations, so the fewer groups using the building, the less work there will be for the council.
This aspect of the deal is borne out in RBKC’s refusal to rent out the biggest and best offices in the building. Those enquiring about using the large first-floor office, rented until last year by Portobello Business Centre, have been informed they can use that space free of charge on an ad-hoc basis, but no long-term tenancy will be possible.
The large ground floor office, vacated by the Volunteer Centre in 2016 during a previous move by the council to sell, was converted into a cheap hot-desking space but is barely advertised or used. Our source told us that RBKC has categorically ruled out any groups using that space for ongoing service provision to ensure the number of tenant organisations is kept to a minimum.
Following a period in temporary office space provided by RBKC, the deal sees the council hand responsibility for housing the Canalside organisations to Ballymore, a private company with no expertise in providing vital services such as the ones available at Canalside House.
Ballymore’s wish to own everything next to their Gas Works site is further evidenced by their offer for the converted water tower next to Canalside House. The tower’s owner turned down the offer.
image from ballymoregroup.com
History
Built in 1929, Canalside House sits at the top end of Ladbroke Grove. Less than a mile from Grenfell Tower, the centre was a hub of community support during and after the 2017 fire and is one of North Kensington’s last remaining spaces for charities, the voluntary sector, small businesses, and other local enterprises. Tenants include representatives of local African communities, housing cooperatives, care organisations and mental health charities.Continue reading →
“A challenge given to us by the bereaved and survivors from Grenfell Tower. Simply…to be the best Council.” – Councillor Elizabeth Campbell, leader of Kensington & Chelsea Council,Keynote Speech,May 2022
Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) is consulting with North Kensington residents again. We ask what will be different this time around.
RBKC’s amoral bearings…. ‘What a good thing it is to dwell in unity’
RBKC’s current Grenfell Recovery Programme runs until March 2024. Their planning work for the post-2024 period has commenced with a “wide-reaching conversation” about the future with bereaved, survivors and the local community. In theory, the consultation will provide an outline of what “best council” will mean in practice.
A problem with the current consultation process is that in other initiatives with similar wording and ostensibly aiming at the same outcome – change – RBKC has comprehensively failed to create any identifiable change.
“This Council – its policies, its leadership, its senior people and its culture – has changed.” This was the audacious claim of Cllr Campbell and Barry Quirk, RBKC’s then Chief Executive in March 2020.
Yet, it was not clear what specific things they were referring to. No evidence was offered. RBKC internalised their story and believed it to be self-evidently true.
After June 2017, RBKC enthusiastically adopted noble-sounding policies but didn’t implement them in the community. After the fire, the council’s leadership changed. The chief executive quit and the disgraced councillors Paget-Brown and Feilding-Mellen were made to resign by the Communities Secretary Sajid Javid. But the new leaders carry out approximately the same policies for the same political party and Conservative campaign literature in the borough goes out of its way to avoid mentioning Grenfell and North Kensington.
For an area in which many residents disproportionately suffer the impacts of poverty and inequality, the upshot has been no meaningful culture change at the local authority during the years when implementing change and offering real political concessions to North Kensington seemed possible. During those years, backing up their declarations of “change” with real action should have been a moral imperative to RBKC, impossible to resist despite their ideological discomfort with socialist policies. This failure was acknowledged by Callum Wilson, RBKC’s Director of Grenfell Partnerships, in an email to residents about the Beyond 2024 consultation: “I do recognise that many people in the community will ask why this work has not already been done, and we need to acknowledge this openly – but nonetheless I think it is important that is done now, however delayed it may feel.”
It is difficult to draw much confidence from this admission given the record. Five and a half years since Grenfell and RBKC have not offered a major vision, nor have they significantly improved their attention to detail in delivering services.
Expectations
There is a natural expectation that does not fade over time that the scale of change should be commensurate with the scale of the crime and the losses suffered. There should at least be a sincere attempt at commensurate change.
If power continues to be distributed unevenly in Kensington, profound change does not look possible. Consultations have taken hundreds of volunteer hours from the local population but have not addressed worsening social and economic injustices. Increased democracy would do more to arrest the prevailing impotence and apathy than another 50 years of consultations, conversations, and co-designs.
RBKC and the media have talked about the local authority ‘regaining trust’ as a prerequisite to North Kensington’s recovery. They need to drop the ‘re’ and focus on establishing trust for the first time since the borough’s creation in the 60s.
“Devastatingly Frank”
In a conversation with Urban Dandy, Callum Wilson acknowledged that there is a long way to go regarding trust: “We know we are dealing with a degree of apathy heightened by Grenfell, with some people not taking part because they believe change is not going to happen. But we have to keep trying and we have to evidence change.”
On ways for the public to participate without having to sign up to the RBKC format, Wilson said: “Spin-off consultations, run by residents with or without council representatives, are possible. They are more organic. There’s an end-of-year deadline for all consultations. We’re happy to receive input, we’re happy for people to make demands.
“I just want as many people to share their views as possible so we can try and build a Council that works better for all our residents.”
RBKC says that over 600 people have spoken to them so far about what they want to see from their council in the next five years. Some have been “devastatingly frank” Wilson told us.
We will pick up our dialogue with RBKC’s Director of Grenfell Partnerships in the new year when the latest consultation has concluded, and the council can explain how they will “simply…be the best Council.”
Urban Dandy London 