Guest post in a personal capacity by Philip Grant
George Irvin’s Fun Fair at Roe Green Park, 21 April 2023.
Last week, Martin revealed that Brent councillors had been offered free tickets for George Irvin’s Fun Fair at Roe Green Park, on 21 and 22 April. This raised some concerns, because George Irvin is also involved in a planning application affecting Barham Park, which may come before some of those councillors for a decision within the next few months.
In the circumstances, I thought it best to make sure that Brent’s Monitoring Officer was aware about the situation, and that she knew that there would be public interest in how she responded to it. The open letter which I sent her on 25 April is set out in full below. I know that some readers may find my letter hard to follow in places, because it refers to parts of the Brent Members’ Code of Conduct, but I hope that many of you will take the trouble to read it.
I believe it is important that decisions made by the Council, its committees and their members, are not only fair and impartial, but that we, as citizens of the borough, can feel confident that they are fairly and properly made. That must mean that there should be no suspicion that the people making the decisions may have been influenced by a gift received from, or any personal friendship with, a person who could benefit from that decision.
One of the comments made under last week’s blog was: ‘why can’t residents be on the Barham Park Trust Committee to ensure our park is protected?’ That is a very good question! Why should that committee have just ‘5 members of the Cabinet appointed by the Cabinet’? You will see that the final recommendation I made to Brent’s Corporate Director of Governance is that there should be an independent review of the committee’s membership.
This is my open letter:
To: Debra Norman From: Philip Grant
Corporate Director of Governance and
Monitoring Officer, Brent Council.
25 April 2023
THIS IS AN OPEN LETTER
Dear Ms Norman,
Gift to Brent Councillors by George Irvin, and
its implications
for ‘sound and transparent decision making’.
I know that in both of your roles, as Brent Council’s Governance Director and as its Monitoring Officer, you wish to ensure that Council members abide by the Brent Members’ Code of Conduct, Planning Code of Practice and Licensing Code of Practice.
It has become public knowledge (see: https://wembleymatters.blogspot.com/2023/04/developer-george-irvin-offers-brent.html ) that the principal owner of the George Irvin’s Funfairs business recently offered a gift of free use of his funfair at Roe Green Park on 21 and 22 April 2023 to Brent councillors, ‘along with family and friends’. I’m attaching a true copy of the blind-copied email of 14 April, containing this offer, in case you have not seen it.
As there is at least one application to the Council, from George Irvin or a company he effectively controls, which councillors are likely to have to decide within the next few months, I believe that the Council needs to be pro-active in dealing with the implications of this gift.
I will set out my views on this (as a retired public servant, formerly in a role where integrity and fairness were at the heart of my responsibilities), and offer some suggestions / recommendations. I will number these, and put them in bold type, and would ask that you consider these, please, and respond to me on them.
The email to Brent councillors, from the Senior Manager at Irvin Leisure, does not contain the “usual” offer (to use George Irvin’s description from his response to the blog article) of ‘£10 of tokens to all the councillors that can be given to anyone including charities’.
Instead, it says: ‘we would like to invite you along with family and friends to our Funfair free of charge as I will arrange tickets for you all.’ In order to obtain those tickets, councillors are told: ‘Do confirm to George direct if you wish to attend’, and are given George Irvin’s personal email and mobile phone contact details.
What is being offered is clearly ‘a gift or hospitality’, in their capacity as a member, likely to be covered by para. 31(c) of the Brent Members’ Code of Conduct, subject to the value threshold.
1. I would strongly suggest that, in order to ensure that all councillors comply with para. 31(c), you write to all members of the Council and require them to notify you if they accepted free tickets for George Irvin’s funfair at Roe Green Park this month. If they did, they should advise you, as Monitoring Officer, of how many free visits they made to the funfair, and how many family members and/or friends also used free tickets to the funfair on 21 or 22 April. As required by para. 31(c), they should also advise you of what they believe was the value of the gift they received.
I’ve suggested that you require all members who took advantage of George Irvin’s gift to notify you, as they could easily underestimate the value of the gift, especially if they had family or friends with them. As shown on the poster which formed part of the email, entrance to the funfair was £2 per person. Tokens for rides were 10 tokens for £10, but as the very small print underneath states: ‘number of tokens per ride varies’.
Roe Green Park is my local park, and as I was walking through it on 21 April, looking through the fencing around the funfair, signs were showing 3, 4 or 5 tokens per attraction (some of the big “thrill” rides may have been even more), or the same amount in £s if paying contactless. This was a typical example:
2. I would suggest that a reasonable approximate value, per person per visit to the funfair, to be applied when calculating the value of the free funfair gift from George Irvin or his company, should be treated as at least £25 (unless a councillor can provide details of which rides etc. he/she and their family and friends went on, and the number of tokens for each). As the rides were being provided ‘free of charge’, they are more likely to have been taken advantage of than if those enjoying them had to pay £4 or £5 for each ride, for each person.
The planning application I referred to above is 22/4128, seeking to demolish two houses in Barham Park (actual address 776-778 Harrow Road, Wembley), and replace them with four 3-storey houses. The applicant is Zenastar Properties Ltd, owned by members of the Irvin family. Although George Irvin is not shown as a director of that company, the architects drawing up the plans submitted in support of the application had no doubt that the client they were acting for was George Irvin, as shown by this example:
There may be other planning, or licensing, applications to Brent Council by companies which George Irvin is either a director of, or where other members of his family are directors but he still has a controlling interest. In view of this, it is important that all councillors who accepted the offer of funfair tickets, free of charge, are identified, and that the ‘gift or hospitality’ they received from George Irvin or Irvin Leisure is recorded in their Register of Interests on the Council’s website at the earliest opportunity.
3. I would recommend that you advise any councillor who has received such a gift that they have a ‘personal interest in any matter being considered by the Council’ under para. 32 of the Brent Members’ Code of Conduct. And that, as a result, they should not take part in considering and deciding any planning or licensing application, or any other matter involving George Irvin or any company over which he may exert some control, including planning application 22/4128.
The second part of the sentence in the 14 April email to councillors (‘Do confirm to George direct if you wish to attend as many other Councillors will be attending’) gives the impression that George Irvin or Irvin Leisure may already have made the offer of free tickets personally to ‘other Councillors’, and that they have already accepted that offer.
If correct, that implies that Mr Irvin or his companies may already have had a business or personal relationship with some Council members. I was already aware of a rumour, mentioned in a comment on an online article about the offer, that George Irvin had ‘attended the wedding of at least one senior councillor's offspring.’ This gives rise to the possibility that George Irvin could be considered a ‘friend’ of one or more, possibly senior, Brent councillors, which would make him a ‘connected person’ of the councillor(s) under para. 30 of the Brent Members’ Code of Conduct.
4. I would strongly suggest that in writing to all councillors (under 1. above), you require them to disclose to you any other contacts or meetings, business or personal relationships, they have had with George Irvin, or members of his family. If any such relationships are disclosed, you should consider whether these amount to George Irvin being a ‘friend’, or ‘person with whom [the councillor] has a close association’. If that is the case, you should advise the councillor that Mr Irvin must be treated as a connected person, they should not take part in considering or deciding any matter involving George Irvin, or any company over which he may exert some control.
This may become particularly important if planning application 22/4128, or any subsequent application in respect of 776-778 Harrow Road, were to be approved. Mr Irvin, or Zenastar Properties Ltd, could potentially make a large profit if they were able to replace the existing two (former park keepers’) homes with four new homes. But to be able to build four homes on the site, they would need to remove the covenant which restricts the site to two homes, and possibly to acquire a small extra piece of the Barham Park land.
Any change to, or removal of, the covenant, or any sale of land, would require a decision of the Barham Park Trust Committee.
5. I would strongly suggest that any member of that Committee who has either accepted the offer of free rides at the Roe Green Park funfair, or any other George Irvin or Irvin Leisure funfair, or has had any relationship with Mr Irvin or any of his companies, other than a purely business one in their role as a councillor or Cabinet member, should be barred from involvement in any decision of the Committee relating to that covenant and/or any sale of land in Barham Park. Even if the relationship might not meet the para. 30 threshold, in the circumstances of this matter ‘a member of the public knowing the facts would reasonably regard it as so significant that it is likely to prejudice [the member’s] judgement of the public interest’, under para. 34 of the Brent Members’ Code of Conduct.
As you are aware, the Barham Park Trust Committee is currently treated as a sub-committee of Brent’s Cabinet, and ‘comprises 5 members of the Cabinet appointed by the Cabinet.’ This Committee is ‘responsible for the trustee functions in relation to the Barham Park Trust.’ But the Trustee is the London Borough of Brent, which holds Barham Park ‘on trust to preserve the same for the recreation of the public.’
One of those who commented on the blog article which made public the offer, of free funfair rides to councillors, wrote: ‘why can’t residents be on the Barham Park Trust Commitee to ensure our park is protected?’ That is a good question. Is there any good reason why the Committee should be the sole preserve of self-appointed members of Brent’s Cabinet?
6. I would recommend that the question of the membership of, and voting rights at meetings of, the Barham Park Trust Committee is the subject of an independent review, possibly under the auspices of one of Brent’s Scrutiny committees. The independent review should be allowed to make recommendations, which would initially be considered by the relevant Scrutiny Committee, and that Committee could place its final recommendations, if any, before a meeting of Brent’s Full Council.
Finally, in the interests of transparency, I should say that I was one of many objectors to a previous planning application in respect of 776-778 Harrow Road. As a result of this, I received a letter on 18 April 2023 from Brent’s Planning and Development Services, headed ‘PLANNING APPLICATION - THIS MAY AFFECT YOU.’ It advised me of application 22/4128, and said that if I wished to make comments on it, I should do so by 9 May. I have not yet had time to consider the application documents properly, so have not yet decided on any comment I might make.
I look forward to receiving you full response to the six suggestions / recommendations I have made, once you have had chance to consider and follow-up on them.
Yours sincerely,
Philip Grant.
5 comments:
FOR INFORMATION 1:
This is the full text of an email I received from Ms Norman (Brent Council's Monitoring Officer) on 26 April, in response to my open letter:
'Dear Mr Grant
Thank you for your email below.
The communication to all councillors from Irvin Leisure Ent. Ltd, to which you refer, had already been drawn to my attention and I have been discussing the implications of it with relevant officers.
Councillors will this week be reminded of their obligations under the Members Code of Conduct and related Codes of Practice.
Best wishes
Debra'
FOR INFORMATION 2:
This is the full text of my response this afternoon to Ms Norman's email of 26 April (see comment above):
'Dear Ms Norman,
Thank you for your email yesterday evening, in reply to my open letter of 25 April.
I note that you were already aware of the email offer to councillors from Irvin Leisure, and that you have considered its implications with colleagues.
However, I believe that the particular circumstances of this matter require a more pro-active response than simply reminding councillors of their obligations under the Members' Code of Conduct and the related Codes of Practice.
There are a number of members who only joined the Council last May. Requiring all members to notify you if they accepted free tickets for the funfair at Roe Green Park, as suggested at point 1 of my letter, would give you the opportunity to educate those councillors, and re-educate longer serving members who may have forgotten, on how they should deal with gifts and hospitality received, through a practical example.
The details I provided about the cost of rides, and my suggestion at point 2, would help in that process, over the valuation of a gift. Getting all councillors who took advantage of Irvin Leisure's April 2023 offer to inform you would also provide an opportunity to remind the members involved about the 'series of gifts' rule.
George Irvin is quite open about the fact that he regularly sends gifts of £10 of funfair tokens to councillors in boroughs where his fairs are staged. As para. 31(c) relates to 'a series of gifts and hospitality from the same person that add up to an estimated value of at least £50 in a municipal year', it is quite possible that some members may previously have received gifts of tokens for fairs at Barham Park, Roe Green Park or parks in neighbouring boroughs, since the start of the current municipal year in May 2022.
As I tried to make clear in my open letter to you, my main concern is to ensure that Council decisions are not only made according to the rules, but that they are plainly seen to have been so made. This is particularly true now, over possible decisions relating to Barham Park, in which there is a lot of public interest.
In order to maintain public confidence, all gifts received from George Irvin or companies with which he is involved, and which reach or exceed the para. 31(c) threshold, should be promptly shown in the Register of Interests for every councillor who has received them.
Those councillors should be excluded from taking part in the Planning Committee or Barham Park Trust Committee decision-making process on any matter involving Mr Irvin or his and his family's companies.
I'm sure you can agree that these are proper aims of good governance, and I hope you will ensure that they are implemented. Thank you. Best wishes,
Philip Grant.'
For the avoidance of doubt I received the email referred to by Philip and published in Wembley Matters.
I did not take up the offer of free tickets either for my self, my family or my friends.
In the past George Irwin donated tokens for rides in the funfairs held in Barham Park to Barham Community Library of which I am a Trustee. These were distributed to users of our Barham Community Library(parents for their children) and for some of our younger volunteers. In my experience George Irwin has always acted responsibly in relation of his Funfairs in the local area and has been supportive of local Groups (our Community Library as set out above) but others including the local Residents Association.
He has offered to donate ride tokens for similar use again this year as and when the Irwin Funfair comes to Barham Park. Should the offer be taken up the tokens will not be used by me or my family and will be distributed to our Library users as in the past. I will also declare the receipt of the 'ride tokens' with the Council to ensure full transparency.
The donation to our Library of any free ride tokens for our users will not influence my position on the latest (or any subsequent) planning application as I have already given George Irwin my views on the issue (as I have in the past) - that he should abide by the intent of the Covenant agreed between him and the Barham Park Charity (managed by Brent Council) and accept that he has bought two houses on the site on the basis that there would be no further expansion. I have further advised him of local concern about the planning application and suggested that in view of this he now withdraws it.
Barham Park is a Public Open Space managed by the Council. Brent Council has a long standing policy of protecting Parks and Public Spaces at all cost. This is why the restrictive Covenant was put in place when the two existing houses were sold. In my view both the Barham Park Charity and the Brent Parks Department should oppose the current planning application to demolish the two 2 storey existing houses and replace them with four 3 storey houses. This in my view represents overdevelopment and over intensification of residential use inside Barham Park.
Firstly I would like to thank Philip Grant on his letter to Ms Norman which clearly laid put what was required to be done to remind the Councillors of their responsibilities and for them to honestly declare the gifts from Mr Irwin’s company.
Very surprised and disappointed at the response from Ms Norman. Her letter reads as if she has dismissed the concerns and issues raised by Mr Grant.
Ms Norman All Points in the open letter are valid and should be given the due consideration required and action taken.
Ms Norman be brave and stand up for what is right and here’s hoping that you will do the necessary as required and not just remind the councillors of their responsibilities.
FOR INFORMATION - UPDATE:
There was a further exchange of correspondence, which should be recorded here, for the record.
On 15 May, Debra Norman wrote:
'Dear Mr Grant
I have taken proactive action in this matter.
As I mentioned in an earlier email, all members have been sent updated advice about gifts and hospitality including the need to register these where they are of a value of £50 or more and the effect this may have on their participation in decision making. I am aware that there have been discussion about this issue within political groups. This matter will be explored by officers with those members who will sit on the relevant committee meeting before the meeting takes place.
So far one councillor, Councillor Begum, has registered acceptance of the offer of tickets as a gift, valued at £25. This will appear in her published register of interests in due course.
The question of whether and how non-cabinet members and the public are involved in the committee and at its meetings is of course a matter for Cabinet.
I have drawn your comments on the Barham Park Trust Committee and your recommendation for there to be an independent review to consider its membership and voting rights, to the attention of the Leader. He will no doubt consider that recommendation with his Cabinet colleagues and ask for a review to be undertaken if that is considered necessary.'
Today I replied, with copies to the Chief Executive and Chairs of Brent's two Scrutiny Committees:
'Dear Ms Norman,
Thank you for your email of 15 May. I apologise for the delay in responding, as I put it to one side to await the outcome of the Council's Annual Meeting, but then overlooked it.
Thank you for taking proactive action over the offer of free fun fair tickets. I believe that at least three councillors have now declared this gift in their Register of Interests.
One of these, Cllr. Rita Begum, is a member of the Planning Committee, which has Mr Irvin's application in respect of 776 & 778 Harrow Road, inside Barham Park, on its agenda for Monday 12 June. I trust that you have given advice that she should not participate in considering and deciding application 22/4128.
I note that you had drawn my suggestions on the Barham Park Trust Committee to the attention of the Council Leader. I'm sure that his performance at the Annual Meeting on 17 May, when another proposal over that Committee was raised, will dispel any illusions you, or the Chief Executive, may have had about how seriously he would have considered my recommendations!
Good governance requires checks and balances, so that no individual or small group has so much power that they can do what they want without effective scrutiny.
I would again recommend, to you and the Chief Executive, that whichever of Brent's Scrutiny Committees is the most appropriate should conduct an independent review of the Barham Park Trust Committee, to consider its membership and voting rights, and make recommendations if felt appropriate.
I am copying this email to the Scrutiny Committee Chairs, for their information, and will paste below the reasoning from my email to you of 9 May as to why there is no need for the Barham Park Trust Committee just to be made up of members of Brent's Cabinet, chosen by the Cabinet.
Best wishes,
Philip Grant.
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