Westway Development Trust: (5/6) "London property developer in nightclub swindle"

This research document will make little sense if you haven't read Brian Deer's Notting Hell from The Sunday Times of June 17 2001. In July 2002 the trust renamed itself Westway Development Trust. A Westway Development Trust index of materials is also available

<<<go to the start<<<

(I) WHEN CHALLENGED BY COUNCIL OFFICERS, THE TRUST DISSEMBLED

A great volume of correspondence has passed between the council and the trust following licensing staff being alerted to the unwarranted claims in 1998. Given a final chance to make representations, the trust's director wrote to the council's head of projects and partnerships on 6 March 2000 [S27] continuing to justify rate relief, claiming, among other things:

"The charge we make to the Mean Fiddler contributes very materially to our ability to assist local RBKC charities and residents in financial need with grant aid through our grant aid schemes, which include core and small grants to local organisations and education and sports training grants to young people. Last financial year, we made over 70 grants to RBKC charities, including 14 for subsidised Sunday use of Subterania and we made over 40 grants to young RBKC residents for education and sports training.

"The arrangement we have with the Mean Fiddler reflects the Trust's ability to make the facility available and affordable to local charities and on that account we do sacrifice some income while at the same time generating sufficient money to assist with our grant giving. If the business rate is to be applied our concern is that we may lose the ability to make Subterania available and affordable to local charities because, inevitably, the current situation gives us a lot of leverage over the Mean Fiddler and, I am sure, underpins the very real and flexible co-operation they have shown over many years."

The "very real and flexible co-operation" appears to be that the trust pays Mr Power money and Mr Power lets them use his club. Roger Matland's last point in this letter hints at the charity's final fallback position, which is essentially that Mr Power is acting vicariously for the charity in providing socially-needed entertainment for the local community in furtherance of the trust's objectives, notwithstanding that he has made a lot of money doing so. Even if this were true - which it isn't - it would, of course, not entitle anybody to the exemptions falsely claimed. This will be dealt with later. Roger Matland says:

"The historical reality is that these premises have always been used as a licensed music and dancing venue since 1975 but the Trust itself did not have the expertise to run them save on a loss making basis and that is why the alliance with the Mean Fiddler was created some twelve years ago. The purpose and use of the premises have not changed over that period."

Prior to this exchange, council officers asked the trust for a copy of the "arrangement" between it and Mean Fiddler, but this quite proper request was refused. On 7 October 1998, environmental services wrote [S30]:

"I note that there is what you describe as a management arrangement between the Trust and the Mean Fiddler Organisation. Please could you let me have a copy."

Matland replied for the trust on 16th October [S31]:

"The Trust regards formal documents between itself and third parties as confidential."

There is, of course, nothing confidential in the lease, other than, perhaps, the scheme to dodge payments to the council.

(J) THE MOTIVE FOR THIS CONDUCT IS, AT PRESENT, UNCONFIRMED

Given that the relationship between the trust and Mr Power is governed in this matter, at least on paper, by contracts, one would have to ask why a charitable development trust should go to such extraordinary - quite extraordinary - lengths to deprive the local community of the benefit of fair rates and licensing income from Mean Fiddler, now a significant entertainment group with very far-reaching commercial interests.

After a taped interview between Brian Deer and Judge Gordon on 18th October 2000 and a similarly taped interview the following day with Roger Matland and his deputy, the trust has since refused to speak to Deer. Roger Matland has written insisting any questions be put and answered in writing. Gordon and Owen hung up the telephone, as did Martin Sinclair Taylor. Two previous chairs of the trust refused comment. Other trustees do not return calls. The Conservative leader of the council and its chief executive have declined requests to meet and discuss these issues.

One might have expected the trust's chair and trustees to be grateful to be alerted to any shortcomings in the charity's conduct. However, from the very outset, before even any misconduct of any description was alleged, all trust personnel, including Judge Gordon and Roger Matland, have acted in a hostile, defensive and less than open-handed manner. Serious and unwarranted complaints have been made to The Sunday Times about Brian Deer's conduct in an apparent attempt to remove him from his inquiries. A flurry of complaints have attempted to discourage publication of a report on the trust. At least a dozen letters have been received by The Sunday Times.

On 28th February 2001, Brian Deer wrote to Sinclair Taylor & Martin, which by then was handling all dealings between The Sunday Times and the trust, stating among other things:

"Please advise your clients that I have put vital allegations to them. In any instance where I may have failed to cover points adequately, this has been due to their conduct in refusing to discuss them. I am still prepared, in the next week or so, to go beyond my professional duty to hear anything further they may wish to ask or say. And I will do my utmost to ensure that any report is fair. If there is anything I have done that I should not have done, or anything I should have done but have failed to do, please tell me what it is and why."

Although the trust was formed in 1971, the trustees of the North Kensington Amenity Trust were incorporated on 24th June 1998 by certificate from the Charity Commission, having previously acted as ordinary trustees. A body corporate is liable for, and may be charged as a body for, offences committed by a salaried director or other principal officer.

Section 2 of the 1978 Theft Act [S28], Evasion of liability by deception, stipulates:

"Where a person by any deception -

(a) dishonestly secures the remission of the whole or part of any existing liability to make a payment, whether his own or another's...

(c) dishonestly obtains any exemption from or abatement of liability to make a payment;he shall be guilty of an offence."

The Charity Commission pamphlet Hallmarks of a Well-Run Charity [S29] states that the commission expects a charity to be "open in the conduct of its affairs, except where there is a need to respect confidentiality". The commission tells trustees:

"Except where there is a genuine need to respect confidentiality, a charity should be ready to explain and justify the policies and practices it has chosen to adopt. Charities are favoured by the state and public because their aims are for the benefit of the public."