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."
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