Westway
Development Trust: (6/6) "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<<<
(K)
THE CHARITY'S BEST ANSWER TO DATE
As a
result of Brian Deer's inquiries, on 9
November 2000, Roger Matland wrote to the
council's new chief executive, Derek
Myers [S32]. Roger Matland says
this letter "endeavours to provide
my response" to any inquiry the
council might hold.
Roger
Matland indicates that the charity is
fully aware of the nature of the
allegations:
"In
short, I was accused of claiming
charitable relief on behalf of a wholly
commercial organisation."
The
essence of his defence is in two parts.
Firstly, he implies that the council's
most senior officers and councillors knew
what the charity was doing - and
therefore, by implication, authorised it:
"You
may not be aware but from 1971 until 22nd
April 1998 the Chief Executive and Town
Clerk and the Director of Finance of the
Royal Borough were respectively the
Honorary Secretary and Honorary Treasurer
of the Trust and papers were sent to the
Town Hall and minutes of our meetings
were taken and processed by the Committee
Section. To my certain knowledge,
whichever officer actually took minutes
would report outcomes to the Chief
Executive and Town Clerk within a day or
so of the meetings. This not only seemed
reasonable and proper, but for example in
Mr Webber's day it often led to helpful
suggestions and advice from him to me
sometimes before and sometimes after the
Management Committee meetings. Quite
apart from the Royal Borough having seven
nominees on the Committee it is clear
that officers also knew the full detail
of Trust affairs until 22nd April
1998."
A
similar tack is taken by Sinclair Taylor
& Martin in a letter dated 2nd
February 2001 to Alastair Brett, legal
manager of Times Newspapers Ltd:
"You
should be aware that seven of the
Trustees of the Trust are representatives
of the local authority and therefore
fully aware of the circumstances of the
mixed use and that until relatively
recently all the minutes and papers of
the Trust were sent to the chief officers
of the Council."
In
short, the charity seeks to promote the
belief that councillors and the council's
most senior officers in some sense gave
cover to the scheme which lifted
liabilities of more than £100,000 due to
the council from a night-club owner. If
this is true, the situation could appear
to amount to a conspiracy extending into
the highest reaches of the council and
its political leadership to give the
innocent Mr Power a free ride. But:
(a)
It is barely conceivable that the chief
executive and the director of finance
approved of, or turned a blind eye to, an
arrangement that might appear to them to
be a fraud on their own authority.
(b)
When committees were formally notified by
officers of the material being wrung out
of the charity by the licensing section
in 1998, the charitable exemptions were
stopped. Were councillors on those
committees already "fully aware of
the circumstances of the mixed use"
as Sinclair Taylor & Martin submits?
Brian Deer doubts it.
(c)
The council has no power to vary the law
and, for the major part of business
rates, is a collection agency for central
government.
(d)
Despite a vast volume of tortuous
paperwork generated by Roger Matland, and
exhaustive inquiries by councillors, no
document other than the lease has been
produced in which either the rates deal
with Mr Power is set out, or the actual
useage of the club recorded by the trust.
It seems unlikely that any "minutes
or papers" could have included such
information, as Roger Matland and
Sinclair Taylor suggest.
(e)
In his interview with Brian Deer, Judge
Gordon stated that Subterania's rates had
never been discussed at any time since
1993 by the charity's management
committee. Therefore, there could be no
minutes of such information during this
period.
In
his letter to the chief executive, Roger
Matland's second argument is, in essence,
that Subterania continues to fulfil one
of the charity's objectives and that,
despite some possible procedural muddle,
Roger Matland's heart was, in some sense,
in the right place:
"I
reiterate that I saw the activities and
use of Subterania as fitting in with our
charitable objective of
recreation/leisure purposes coupled with
the access by local groups to what are
quite sophisticated facilities. Taken in
isolation I can now see that the forms on
their own could give cause for concern
because I applied for charitable relief
on what the world, at first glance, would
see as a commercial concern, but I
genuinely believe, and indeed argued,
that not withstanding the commercial
aspects there was an historic and current
use of the premises which had remained
the same throughout the existence of the
premises - namely a venue for music and
dancing. Subterania is also accessible to
local groups and I still don't know of
any other commercial venue that does or
would allow such access. I am perfectly
prepared to be told that my opinion was
wrong, but not that it was
fraudulent."
Presumably,
he has told this to the judge. But
Matland's intent to deceive is quite
clear in the forms he signed. Why did he
deceive, if Subterania was furthering the
charity's objectives? And he deceived
rather methodically. For instance, after
officers were denied a copy of the
"confidential" lease, on 1st
October 1996, Graham Taylor, the
council's chief community liaison
officer, acting on instructions from the
council's corporate management committee,
squarely asked the charity [S33]:
"If
the Council decided to withdraw or reduce
the relief on 12 Acklam Road, eg would
NKAT or the Management Company end up
paying the bill?"
Faced
with this straight question, the
£60,000-a-year, graduate-educated
charity director, replied in the terms to
which we are now accustomed [S33]:
"On
the question of who pays, the Music and
Dancing and Alcohol licenses have always
been in the Trust's name and liability
lies with the Trust as well on the basis
that this is only a management agreement
and in the event of termination we want
it to be clearly in our control for
obvious reasons. I am also Co-licensee
with the owner of the management company
so again we retain control."
The
simple answer to the council's question,
of course, was that Mr Power would pay
the bill - according to the terms of the
lease described above. But Mr Matland,
for reasons best known to himself, did
not wish to disclose this.
Not
only were the charity's deceptions far
from honest mistakes, Roger Matland also
misled the chief executive when he
suggested that it is the charity's
position that Subterania is somehow part
of NKAT's mission - it's "general
community activities and charitable
objectives" as he described it on
the 1997 form. As stated above, in NKAT's
annual reports and accounts for 1994 [S7]
the income from Bay 63 was itemised as
rent. There were also details of the loan
repayments on the property. Since then,
however, even these oblique references to
the premises have disappeared - until now
there is no reference to anything
whatsoever that could be identified as
the night-club. In the 1997 to 2000
reports [ S34 and S35 as
specimens], Subterania, Bay 63, 12 Acklam
Road or whatever, has simply gone. Were
Subterania part of the charity's
activities, or operating in furtherance
of its objectives, the trust would be
legally obliged (Charities (Accounts and
Reports) Regulations 1995 laid under the
1993 Charities Act) to declare this in
its annual submission to the Charity
Commission and to the public. It would,
presumably, be proud to do so.
The
truth is, the charity had no lawful
function to claim charitable reliefs on
behalf of Mr Power - and knew it.
(L)
THIS DOCUMENT
This
report was prepared for the legal
department of Times Newspapers Ltd, in
the context of a statement made by the
Conservative leader of Kensington &
Chelsea council, Merrick Cockell, in a
letter dated 31st October 2000 to Judge
Gordon [S36], who had alerted him
to the allegations made at the interview
with Brian Deer. Mr Cockell wrote:
"I
will be in contact again either following
publication of any newspaper article or
if Mr Deer provides us with his detailed
accusations in advance."
This
communication between two of the most
senior Conservatives in Kensington &
Chelsea implies that if Brian Deer did
nothing, they would do nothing either.
Despite the council's Conservative group
now having access to all the details of
this matter, and having refused to speak
with Deer, in the following seven months
it has indeed appeared that they did
nothing.
Brian
Deer. June 2001 [revised to take account
of the organisation's name change to Westway
Development Trust, July
2002]
Among
many letters of complaint received from
the Westway Development Trust, or North
Kensington Amenity Trust in 2000, three
are reproduced here - including one
from Judge Gerald Gordon and anther from
Roger Matland commenting on the
Subterania issue. The Westway Development
Trust has a website at westway.org
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