Barham Park Trustees, consisting only of Brent Labour Cabinet members, approved the removal of the covenant protecting the park from development on the payment of £200,000 by developer and fairground owner George Irvin.
Cllr Mili Patel sought an assurance that agreement of the Charities Commission for the action would be sought 'in order to safeguard ourselves'. Chair of Trustees, Cllr Muhammed Butt, confirmed that this would be the case.
Cllr Butt confirmed that exempt papers (confidential papers not available for public perusal) had been considered.
He went on to say that representations from a local resident had been received and he had looked through them and concluded that they would add no value to what the Trustees were considering.
In fact they were detailed papers that picked apart the process and reasons for the covenant removal.
More generally Trustees were told of plans to expand the Trust's activities and continue the 'redevelopment journey'.
19 comments:
The Barham Trust Meeting by an observer:
The Editor’s report is quite accurate, this is what I got out of viewing the meeting.
The Officers read out parts of the Report they had written.
Questions from Trust members regarding the agenda item included
Cllr. Donnelly Jackson showed her total lack of knowledge and understanding of the Covenant issue, had she not even listened to the Officer statement? She obviously hadn’t read the papers and she didn’t comprehend the main issue of the meeting.
Cllr. Patel exposed the elephant in the room, in that the Cllr Butt requires that the Park has to be self-funding. Which we all realise is impossible, especially when the Trust waste money so often on surveyors etc.
Cllr. Butt commented that a letter had been received from a resident prior to the meeting; he stated that it hadn’t added any value to the discussion, so was disregarded (one can only think he didn’t like what it said). He then went off into one of his unintelligible rants, luckily it only lasted for about a minute before he ran out of breath. He then closed the meeting after his pets didn’t disagree with the proposal in the Report.
Democracy in action. Lucky old George?
The London Borough of Butt and his m8s
The depressing thing is that I could have written that report BEFORE the meeting!
The dictatorial way in which Cllr. Butt runs the Barham Park Trust, the lack of any local resident representation on the Committee, the refusal to allow others to speak and ignoring well argued written reasons against removing the covenant are all good reasons for asking the Charity Commission not to allow the Trust to complete its agreement with George Irvin.
Martin - can you upload the governing documents of the Barham Park Trust please?
As Brent Council is a trustee, they must "avoid putting [Brent Council] in a position where [their] duty to [the Barham Park Trust] conflicts with [Brent Council's] personal interests."
Therefore, Brent Council cannot make decisions that simply fill their coffers if it contradicts their duty to the beneficiaries of the Trust.
The documents presented by the resident were lengthy and involved complex issues. I doubt if Cllr Butt or officers gave them proper consideration and wonder whether other Trustees saw tham at all. Perhaps they could confirm.
Time to complain to the charity commission and see if they can intervene:
https://forms.charitycommission.gov.uk/Raising-Concerns/
We can only deduce from this is George Irving's Fair will be a permanent fixture in the park, soon the Library, Studio's, and Gurkha's Place will be for the shop and replaced with a hotel and supermarket.
In 2024 Labour Councillors acting as Trustees of the Barham Park Charity wasted over £20,000 on consultants to prepare plans to redevelop the community buildings in Barham Park. This is on top of tens of thousands of pounds wasted on surveys and numerous plans which were never implemented. In their incompetence they failed to check that they could not do anything until the expiry of the last lease 7 years later in September 2031. The £20,000 was more money down the drain.
If the same Labour Councillors collected the rent due to the Charity there would be an annual surplus. If they made bids for Grant funding - as we have been telling them for over 10 years - there would also be enough money to repair and upgrade the buildings in the Park.
The Barham Park Charity has been badly run by Labour Councillors and Brent Council Officers for years. As a result Barham Park is NOT safe in their hands.
Unfortunately the full Governing Document (dating from 1937) is not available of the Charities Commission website as far as I can see: https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/charity-search/-/charity-details/302931/governing-document
The draft minutes of this morning's Barham Park Trust Committee meeting are already on the Council's website. Here is the relevant section from the Covenant item:
'Minutes:
RESOLVED having acknowledged the written representation received from a local resident prior to the Trust Committee meeting and noted the exempt information contained within the appendices of the report to:
(1) Approve the modification of the restrictive covenants at 776 and 778 Harrow Road, as detailed in paragraphs 3.8-3.11 of the report and delegate authority to the Director of Property and Assets to execute a deed with Zenaster Properties Ltd for the agreed sum of £200,000, subject to (2) below.
(2) Approve seeking Charity Commission consideration of the Qualified Surveyor’s Report (included as an exempt appendix to the report) and authorisation under Section 105 of the Charities Act to modify or discharge the covenants.'
Removing the covenant still needs authorisation from the Charity Commission. Anyone who feels that there is a valid case for that authorisation NOT to be given can set out their reasons to the Charity Commission (and the sooner, the better).
XPH has provided the link to the Charity Commission "raising concerns" form in the comment (at 12:04 today) above.
Are there any local legal people that would help residents to fight against this???
What happened to the two Friends of Barham Park Groups that were set up recently??? They were clearly not serious in protecting the park.
Why can't NCIL or CIL money be used on the park???
PLEASE EVERYONE VOTE OUT LABOUR AT THR NEXT LOCAL ELECTIONS BEFORE THEY DESTROY EVERYTHING THAT'S GREAT IN WEMBLEY 😞
Philip - you say "Removing the covenant still needs authorisation from the Charity Commission. Anyone who feels that there is a valid case for that authorisation NOT to be given can set out their reasons to the Charity Commission (and the sooner, the better)." - would you or a legal person be able to offer a template letter of objection that we could send to the charity commission? I wouldn't know where to start. Thank you!
There are and they have been and will continue. For example, the written presentation of today, that was pushed aside by the Chair as "they would add no value to what the Trustees were considering" Interesting terminology!
Because they don't want to probably. They could also apply for grants, but again don't want to!!!
The reasons would need to be personal, if all the letter said the same they'd ignore them.
If there was a template we could alter the letter slightly to suit our own thoughts - not all of us have enough spare time to research what the charity commission need to know re suitable reasoning to stop this.
Brent Council and Irvin have had years of expensive legal advice re how to get the covenant removed whereas we hard working council tax payers can't afford that luxury.
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