More details emerge on Brent Council's investigation into Kensal Rise Library emails

Guest blog by Meg Howarth

New information has come to light about the data Brent Council handed to the police in the case of the Kensal Rise Library alleged fraudulent email affair. In a response to a query about the five ISP addresses used to post the fake comments in support of Andrew Gillick's original planning application, a senior council officer has revealed that 'the Council did provide the Police with all the IP addresses and details of how Council officers had linked these to Mr Gillick or his company via open source research'.

This is the full text of the response:

Dear Ms Howarth

I write further to your previous emails resting with your email dated 16 January 2015 and I apologise for the delay in responding to you.

In response to your query,  Council officers did not obtain the ISP subscriber details. The Council does not have the power to force the ISP Providers to disclose the subscriber details. However, the Council did provide the Police with all the IP addresses and details of how Council officers had linked these to Mr Gillick or his company via open source research.

As for the Police and the CPS, you will need to raise those queries with them.

As I stated previously in my e-mail dated 23 December 2014, if you have any queries regarding the decision of the CPS not to pursue this matter, they should be addressed to the partnership Brent Borough Chief Inspector, Andy Jones.

Yours sincerely

As stated on a previous blog (No prosecution in the Kensal Rise Library case - December  23rd 2014) 'it seems that the key to ultimately tracking back an IP address to a user is to engage with the ISP and get it (or force it via a judge) to release the data showing which client was issued with what IP address at a particular time of day'.  The question is, therefore: did Brent police seek the ISP subscriber details before handing over its dossier to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)? If not, why not? 

It was on 19 December 2014, in the run-up to the Xmas holidays, that the CPS advised Brent's Audit and Investigation Unit that 'there is insufficient evidence to proceed against Andrew Gillick'. In a New Year's Day interview with the Brent and Kilburn Times, a CPS spokesman elaborated: 'Having carefully considered all the material supplied we have decided there was insufficient evidence to support a realistic prospect of conviction in this case. The evidence did not prove this to the required standard and we therefore advised the police that no further action should be taken'.

So if Brent police didn't seek the ISP subscriber details, did the CPS do so instead? If it didn't, how could it conclude that the 'required standard' of evidence for a prosecution in the fraudulent email affair was unproven? A reply from Brent's partnership borough chief inspector and the CPS is awaited. 

Kensal Rise Library fails to meet reserve price at auction

Kensal Rise Library put up for sale by owner Andrew Gillick, failed to meet the reserve price of £1.25m at auction today.

Two bidders stuck at £1.2m and when the reserve price was not reached were invited to meet up with Gillick's representative by Allsops the auctioneer.

Allsops were aware of controversies surrounding the sale and background documentation available for inspection, which was said to be about three inches thick, included the fact that 'caretakers' were on site.

Among those who attended the auction were Meg Howarth, Margaret Bailey of Friends of Kensal Rise Library and  Nathalie Raffray, a reporter from the Kilburn Times.

The auction was livestreamed to the public.

There is an update on the Save Kensal Rise Library website HERE

Late addition. Here is Brent Legal's view of the auction as sent to Friends of Kensal Rise in December 15th:

 

Disputing the facts in the Kensal Rise Library case

There have now been 175 comments on the recent blog on the twists and turns of the Kensal Rise Library saga.  It has become increasingly hard to follow the discussion so I asked Meg Howarth to write a Guest Blog on the disputed facts of the matter and what she thinks are the repercussion stemming from this.  I will be happy to publish a similar Guest blog, preferably from a named person, who wishes to counter some of the factual evidence or interpretation.

As once again comments got heated I plead with people making comments to keep personal issues out of it and stick to the evidence and principles involved.

Thanks you

Martin Francis

GUEST BLOG BY MEG HOWARTH

Former Kensal Rise Library (KRL) is listed for auction in two days' time - Wednesday, 17 December. This blog is an attempt to respond to questions, misunderstandings and concerns which are again being raised about the Option Agreement (OA) document to purchase KRL:

- the OA allegedly came in to force on 26 November 2012 between KRL's then-owner, ASC, and property developer, Andrew Gilick; no-one other than the seller (ASC), the buyer (Andrew Gillick) and their lawyers has ever seen the original document. An OA is not a sale contract - it does what it says on the tin: it's an 'option' to buy;

- a contract for the sale of KRL was made only when Andrew Gillick exercised the option to buy contained in the OA; this appears to have been in January 2013, and was conditional on 'vacant possession' of KRL;

- vacant possession was secured by the seller, ASC, only this year, on 31 January 2014, with the demolition of the pop-up library early on the morning of 31 January; 

- the sale of KRL was completed on or immediately after that date;

- any statement that KRL was sold to Andrew Gillick before KRL was listed as an Asset of Community Value (ACV) on 11 December 2012 is untrue; 

- under ACV regulations, an OA carries the same weight as a sale, ie if an OA is made before a listing, then ACV regulations do not apply. This means that a listed 'asset' is exempt from the moratorium restrictions on its sale. 

Unresolved concerns about the Option Agreement (OA) are its date and whether it was signed off. The Information Commissioner ordered the release of the OA on 4 March 2014 after a successful appeal against then-owner All Souls College (ASC) refusal to publish the document. This was to be redacted for date, names and price only. I was sent a hard-copy redacted copy of the OA on 31 March 2014. There are two problems:

- there are no redactions for the date or the signing off of the document. Any redacted copy of the original OA  should, in my opinion and that of others, have shown clearly where those redactions have been made, just as  redactions for names and price are clear elsewhere in the document. This LINK  is to a scan of the document I was sent It has been posted on  previous WM blogs;

- if the OA was never signed off, then it has no legal status

A request for a meeting with Brent's CE Christine Gilbert has been made to try to resolve these matters. With KRL slated for auction in two days time, it's important that these doubts about the legality of the original sale be resolved. Only a viewing of the original Option Agreement can do this.

Footnote: 

There is no doubt in my mind that the OA was drawn up to bypass the application of the ACV moratorium regulations on ASC's sale of the library. Ironically - or not, depending on legal opinion - paras 6.1/6.2 of the OA state:

6.1 The Seller may not create any encumbrance over the Property at any time during the Option Period without the consent of the Buyer. 

6.2 An encumbrance includes, without limitation, any easement, restrictive covenant, lease or other right of occupation, use or enjoyment of the whole or part of the Property but for the avoidance of doubt any listing of the premises as an asset of community value under the Localism Act 2011 is excluded. 

LATE ADDITION - Letter from Farrers re signing of Option Agreement

Late addition. Brent Council Legal view on auction as sent to Friends of Kensal Rise Library on December 15th:

Has email planning fraud probe been downgraded?

Guest blog by Meg Howarth
 

It seems that the investigation in to the fake online email support around Andrew Gillick’s original planning application for Kensal Rise Library is now in the hands of Brent police. To date, it had been understood that the Kensington and Chelsea force - the developer’s office is sited in the borough - was dealing with the matter after it was passed evidence and information about the misuse of addresses by the City Police National Fraud and Investigation Bureau (NFIB) - Wembley Matters, 27 February.

Today, however, west London journalist Hannah Bewley is reporting that the local force is now in charge of the inquiry in to whether the allegation of fraud can be substantiated. This is allegedly because Brent Council is technically the ‘victim’ in this sordid affair - it was to the council planning department that the emails were sent. 

As the council spokesman quoted in the Local Government Chronicle on 6 November 2013 stated: ‘It is clear that a number of the emails came from bogus email addresses but, unfortunately, it is not so clear that this necessarily constitutes a criminal offence’ LINK

Evidence of misuse of addresses was first brought to the council’s attention in September of last year, and today’s update suggests a police decision is likely to take some time yet: ‘Due to the complex nature of the evidence, the [Brent police] review may take a while for a decision to be arrived at’. It is six months since the matter was reported to the council, How much longer must local residents wait? 

To some local residents the handing over of the inquiry to Brent police appears like a downgrading of the affair. If Brent Council is the victim, why was the matter ever sent over to the Kensington and Chelsea force? Was this incompetence by the NFIB or a misunderstanding?

Meantime, Andrew Gillick submitted a revised change-of-use planning application for the Kensal Rise Library site on 7 March...

All Souls College ordered to disclose Kensal Rise 'binding agreement'

Guest blog by Meg Howarth

Protest outside All Souls College, Oxford

All Souls College, Oxford, has been ordered by the Information Commissioner to provide a copy of its Option Agreement - also known as the ‘binding agreement’ - for the sale of historic Kensal Rise Library (KRL) to developer Andrew Gillick. Only the date of completion, price and names/personal details of those involved in the transaction can be withheld.

The Commissioner made his decision on 4 March, in response to a Freedom of Information request by a supporter of the campaign to save the Mark Twain library from conversion to yet more unaffordable housing. The college authorities have 35 days in which to comply with the request. Failure to do so could result in the Commissioner writing to the High Court where lack of compliance may be treated as contempt of court. 

The grounds for the decision are that ‘The Commissioner considers that there is a legitimate public interest in disclosure of information surrounding the transaction, to which there is significant opposition, to promote openness, accountability and increase public understanding’.

Wealthy All Souls was until recently the owner of the site following the closure of the historic library by Brent Council in 2012. Its sale to Andrew Gillick was conditional on vacant possession. This was achieved when the college sent in its heavies to remove the pop-up library - built partly on the site, part on the public highway - at 6am on 31 February this year. Completion of sale occurred on or soon after that date. 

All Souls’ cowardly dawn-raid echoed Brent’s own barbarism of 29 May 2012 when council contractors entered the library building at 3am, stripping it of its books and Mark Twain commemorative plaque. The aim in both instances was the same - to pre-empt local opposition to the respective actions. The anti-democratic leading the greedy... 

Indeed, the college’s principal argument against disclosure of the Option Agreement was that public knowledge of the date(s) for vacant possession and completion-of-sale - together with the price - ‘would result in increased protest and activism to try to prevent completions’. It argued that should the sale of the property not be completed - for whatever reason - disclosure ‘would also make it more difficult for the college to find an alternative purchaser for the property’. It justified its line of reasoning as follows:

‘the college relies on its income from its property assets to conduct its research activities...prejudicing the college’s ability to generate such income from the sale of property would make it less able to conduct research of a similar standard and scale [something] which would not be in the public interest’. 

Proof, if any is needed, that irony is not yet dead, is the title of such a piece of research by one of All Souls’ senior fellows. It was listed on the college’s website in July 2012 as nearing completion and was published by the university later that year - Restatement of the English Law of Unjust Enrichment! 

You couldn’t make it up. Not only did All Souls pay nothing towards the building of the library - that was financed from a mixture of public taxation and a handsome donation by Andrew Carnegie. But the land on which KRL was built was more likely an act of tax-avoidance, aimed to bypass the land tax in operation at the time, rather than the philanthropic act its donation to the-then borough of Willesden, now Brent, is reputed to have been. Folklore over realpolitik...?

The real philanthropy would, of course, have been for the college elders to have returned KRL to the borough of Brent. Too late for that now. Andrew Gillick is the new owner. His original change-of-use scheme was unanimously rejected by Brent’s planning committee last September. It is currently enmeshed in a Kensington and Chelsea police-led inquiry into fraudulent online support - the headquarters of Mr Gillick’s property firms Platinum Revolver and Kensal Properties is sited in the royal borough (see Wembley Matters, 27 February 2014). The developer is intending to submit a revised change-of-use planning application for the site. 

Footnote: While disclosure of the Option Agreement for the sale of Kensal Rise Library is awaited, it’s worth remembering that the only third party to date to have seen the document is Brent’s legal counsel. He was forbidden to make a copy. Whether he shared the significant information it contained with council officers and/or elected members is unknown but a waiting-game certainly seems to have been played regarding the securing of vacant possession by 31 January.

Democracy, eh - and elections are coming...