Police investigation into fraudulent emails not concluded but Kensal Rise planning application goes ahead

Curioser and curioser - Kensal Rise library occupied by tenants despite no change of use granted

Despite calls for the Kensal Rise Library planning application to be postponed until the police investigation into fraudulent emails has been concluded, the new application (by the same developer) will be heard at Brent Planning Committee next week.

For those without long memories, here is how the issue was reported by the Kilburn Times at the time of the last application, just 8 months ago LINK :

Council chiefs have called in the police over claims that emails supporting plans to develop an axed library branch were faked.

The action has been taken after an investigation by Brent Council into the allegations surrounding Kensal Rise Library concluded the case should be referred to detectives.

The council’s IT officers scrutinised the emails including IP addresses which are exclusive to each computer.

Cllr Roxanne Mashari, Brent Council’s lead member for environment and neighbourhoods, is responsible for libraries.

She said: “The council compiled a report after their own investigation and we have handed this over to police.

“Abuse of Brent’s planning system will not be tolerated.

“This has now escalated into a police matter and we await the outcome of the police investigation.”

In September, a council report added strength to claims by campaigners Friends of Kensal Rise Library (FKRL) that false statements were made against its fight to retain the Bathurst Road building for community use.

The report stated that when email notifications were sent to everyone who made a statement about the plans on the council’s website 78 were returned as being undelivered with 70 of those belonged to ‘supporters’.

Andrew Gillick, the director of Platinum Revolver Limited which took over the building from owners All Soul’s College in Oxford, hit back with claims that false objections against the application had also been posted on the council’s website.

He had applied for permission to convert the site into six flats, a cottage and a community hub but it was rejected by the council.

Margaret Bailey, chair of FKRL, said:

“We applaud the action of our council and it’s willingness to take seriously this attempt to subvert local democracy and mislead the public.

“Our community is strongly against this development for the library building and these fraudulent emails of support for the development were an attempt to divide and denigrate this community.

“Fraud is illegal and we support a thorough investigation by the police.”

Cllr Mashari added: 

“We must keep our eyes on the end result of securing a community library at Kensal Rise.

“I am ready to work with the community and any stakeholder to ensure that this happens and that it is viable and sustainable.”

The alleged illegality seems to have been forgotten, or swept under the carpet, with both Brent Council Planning officers and FKRL supporting Gillick's new application.

It appears to me that whether one is for or against the revised application, until issues around the previous application by the same developer have been cleared up, it will be tainted and should not be tabled.

What price Brent Council's commitment to preventing the subverting of local democracy? Sarah Marquis, with no previous experience as a councillor, but with experience as a lawyer, chairs the Planning Committee.

What does she think?

All Souls shouldn't complete Kensal Rise sale before investigation complete

Guest Post from Meg Howarth

A crucial question now is whether All Souls College (ASC) will proceed to complete its ‘binding agreement to sell’ the historic Kensal Rise Library (KRL) site to Andrew Gillick’s Kensal Properties Ltd (Platinum Revolver in another guise?). Completion of sale was conditional on vacant possession, so once ASC was told the police investigation was off, it appears to have wasted no time in sending in its heavies to demolish the pop-up - thus securing the necessary vacant possession and enabling the sale contract with Mr Gillick to be completed. 

The embarrassment to ASC that will be caused by any re-opening of the fraudulent email inquiry is incalculable, particularly if completion has taken place over the last two days. Already on the defensive because of the adverse publicity surrounding events last Friday, ASC has tried to blame the council for its barbarity, citing a seven-months-old enforcement letter 27 June 2013 to justify its action. LINK

And here’s the text of an even-earlier letter - May 2012 - this time from ASC’s bursar to a horrified newspaper reader who’d contacted the college on hearing of Brent’s own now-notorious dawn raid on the KRL site:

Yes, the College became aware of what happened yesterday and we find it distressing.  We had told the Council that we would have been happy for them to have kept the Library open, possibly through cooperation with the Friends of Kensal Rise Library, who had developed an interesting business plan.

This was not to be however.

The law by which we originally donated the land dictates that the site now reverts to the College’s freehold.  This is not something we ever wanted to see happen, but because it is the law, is something we cannot change either’.

Does this once-prestigious institution, noted for its famous Codrington library, really want to go down in history as the wealthiest of Oxford’s colleges that couldn’t wait to gain vacant possession in a civilised fashion before sealing a deal with its chosen developer who’s not yet been cleared of involvement in the fraudulent email affair? 

‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread’ inevitably springs to mind.

Library Planning fraud investigation still awaited as developer consults in a pub

Guest blog from a Kensal Rise Library campaigner in a personal capacity

Many people are asking when the police investigation in to the fake email support for Andrew Gillck’s change-of-use planning application for Kensal Rise Library be completed. It is, after all, three months since the council was first handed evidence of online fraud - an attempt to inflate local backing for Mr Gillick’s proposals. Brent later claimed that it had passed this material to the police.

Not exactly, alas. The council had simply forwarded its findings to the civilian-run national fraud and internet-crime reporting centre, Action Fraud. True, this is the first step in reporting electronic fraud and one which Brent was obliged to follow. Why the council didn’t tell residents that Action Fraud is a holding-centre only, not itself an investigatory body, and that it would take time before the actual police inquiry got underway is another matter.

So it transpires that it’s only in the last couple of weeks that Brent’s findings have actually reached the City of London Police’s National Fraud and Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), where they will be reviewed. How long it’ll take the NFIB to decide if there’s a criminal case to answer is unknown, likewise whether Brent is proactively monitoring developments or simply waiting on events. 

A report last month by Mark Smulian in the Local Government Chronicle quotes a Brent Council spokesman: ‘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

As an astute observer has commented, however: ‘It should be remembered that in addition to the fake email debacle, real fraud did occur - someone generated letters & emails of support using real addresses without their owners’ permission. It is these cases that I would imagine are the most criminally damaging’. The case of Kensal Rise businesswoman Kirsty Slattery is but one example reported in the Brent and Kilburn Times  LINK

What is clear is that Mr Gillick is currently revising his plans for the historic Mark Twain/Andrew Carnegie library - his original planning application was unanimously rejected by Brent’s planning committee in September. Sensitive to accusations of previously having failed to consult them and so hoping to win over local residents to his latest scheme, the developer recently held a public ‘exhibition’ of his new proposals in a Kensal Rise pub.

To date, though, it seems he hasn’t yet submitted a new planning application to the council, nor should any be considered by the planning department until the outcome of the NFIB’s investigation is known. Unfortunately, the council’s line is to repeat, mantra-like, that it ‘has a responsibility and obligation to consider any valid planning application that is put forward from any individual(s). It must consider each on its merits in accordance with its statutory obligations’ (Christine Gilbert, acting chief executive). 

Against the ongoing police inquiry and the possibility of prosecution for planning fraud, it would be absurd for Brent to pursue business as usual with respect to any further application from Mr Gillick for any Brent development - an apparent fake email in support of the Barham Library Complex appears directly linked to the Platinum Revolver/Kensal Properties Ltd developer - or anyone else for Kensal Rise Library. Meantime, it’s good to hear that the council has strengthened its ‘procedures...to require those who wish to make comments on–line to register and provide us with their contact details’, particularly as, according to a computer expert, ‘It’s [wan’t] very clever of Brent to collect comments via a system that [was] this easy to spoof’.