“This is direct television from Alexandra Palace”

The Transmitter Hall

2011-12-05T19:41:00.001Z

ON 2nd November 2011, a small party was held to mark the exact afternoon of the 75th anniversary of the birth of television at Alexandra Palace. Before a cake was cut in Studio A upstairs, celebrations began in a room downstairs.

In recent years, that large, ground-floor room has been referred to as the ‘old boxing club’. It would have been big enough to accommodate a boxing ring to which the description refers.

But in that room, 75 years ago, something more constructive and important than men punching each other, happened …

For that room would have been humming with the sound of electronics. Because that was where the Marconi transmitter was housed. The transmitter had the job of encoding (or modulating) the signal, from the studio above, onto a sine wave (carrier). From there, it was sent upwards to the high antenna (mast) above – still there, still used – and broadcast (or radiated) as radio waves.

The Palace authorities have recently agreed that this room shall, once again, be known as The Transmitter Hall. A small amount of progress, but progress nonetheless.

The Alexandra Palace Trust Board occasionally meets there; one Councillor-Board member said she prefers that room to the grandiose Londesborough Room; it seems possible that in future, all Board meetings will be in The Transmitter Hall.

Television at 75

2011-09-08T18:41:00.001+01:00

THiS November (2nd) marks the 75th anniversary of the advent of regular public broadcasting from Alexandra Palace.

Former Senior Curator of Television at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford – John Trenouth – has written a piece for the Royal Television Society:

Television at 75

Click above to load the PDF (c. 500 kb) or to Download, Control-click (Mac), Right-click (Windows)

The PMI Report (1991)

2011-07-04T00:49:00.136+01:00

20 YEARS ago and following a secret inquiry they had commissioned, Haringey Council received a report into the massive re-building cost over-runs at Alexandra Palace.

The loss of control over spending on re-building had followed the devastating fire of 1980, soon after Haringey assumed control.

[one click on above title will load PDF file; or download file to local drive: Mac: Control-Click, Windows: Right-Click ]

As can be seen, it is stamped 'STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL'.

One might suppose that this was a private matter, rather than involving a Charitable Trust and millions of pounds of tax payer's money. This reflects the 100% control by politicians.

Like other mistakes at our Charitable Trust, this one was kept kept under wraps for as long as possible. It was Haringey's uncontrolled spending on re-building that laid the foundations for the Alexandra Palace bogus debt that the council has generated.

Supposedly, it now stands at more than £40,000,000. And despite the fact that the local council is the Trustee; that it was taxpayers' money it was spending; and not least, that the re-building was a council-controlled project – Haringey nonetheless tried to disclaim responsibility for the cost overruns and sought indemnification from our Charity's funds (!?) It could define chutzpah.

The Independent newspaper published this article mentioning the PMI report.

The Report is now in the public domain as a 92-page Pdf file, together with comments by Dr. Peter Smith, a Haringey Council employee and the subject of some comment in the Report. To read the 1991 report by Project Management International Plc, click on the title at the top.

Probably the most telling – and timeless – phrase in the report is

The fundamental issue that arises from an examination of the Project documentation is the classic conflict of interest that arises when a client and a design team are one and the same.

The Conclusion says inter alia,

It is clear from those items [project documentation] that we have highlighted in this report that the disastrous outcome of the development was inevitable. The manner in which the project was set up, the inexperience of the Development Team, the lack of Project leadership in an economic sense, the poor performance of the Design and Construction Teams were all significant factors in contributing to the enormous cost overruns.

We have concluded that the prime responsibility for this situation lies with the Alexandra Palace Development Team, the Management Team and the Committee must also share some responsibility for allowing this situation to develop when all the warning signs were being flagged for some considerable time.

We have pointed out that the lack of continuity within the Committee was an important factor in the effectiveness of the decision-making process and allowed the project to continue without proper accountability of the key participants.
We have also tried to point out lessons that can be derived from these events. These can be summarised in the requirement of establishing an independent client monitoring facility which would retain continuity through the duration of a lengthy development (10 years) and make recommendations with no vested interest in the design and construction process.
...

“Securing the future” The conflict of interest observed in 1991 never abated. The London Borough of Haringey retains full control as the Trustee of our Charity. The 1991 PMI Report marked the first great milestone (tax tombstone?) in the local council's history of stewardship of our Charity

1980 Haringey Council pays £1 for our Palace and becomes Trustee; Haringey receives from the GLC a dowry of £8,500,000 for repairs; Palace is fully insured. Building burns down – except for the historic east wing
1981 Insurance settlement of £18,500,000 is paid to the local council for re-building. In the next few years, these receipts would generate large interest payments for Haringey. All of it will be spent ... and much more (check current values of these sums with converter on right).
1982 A Public Enquiry is held at the Palace (February to May). The outcome was not released until August 1983
1983 (and following) Haringey loses control of spending. The £32,000,000 reconstruction grows to about £67,000,000. Much of the overspend is 'loaned' to our Trust
1988 Haringey Council commissions Project Management International (PMI) to investigate how & why Haringey Council overspends on re-building, including on unauthorised contracts
1989 (July) Mr I. Harris is appointed official Trust Solicitor and secures his future. The lucrative account is kept through switches of firm; currently with Howard Kennedy
1991 The landmark PMI Report (above, link in title). Parts of it were leaked to the press at the time; after FoI request, it is now officially in the public domain
1991 Powerhouse consortium wins contract to manage Palace. After 12 months it withdraws, citing: uncertainties about ownership of asset; difficulties in dealing with the Council, Trust & General Manager; servicing the alleged debt of £2m p.a.
1993 Alexandra Palace Ski Centre Ltd. v Haringey London Borough Council – Trustees are encouraged to defend a weak, losing case in the High and Appeal Court, to the point of failure. Was the main motivation, removal of a viable business and popular facility (and their lease) in order to clear the way for an attempt to sell the Palace and secure the future?
1994 The Anne Cardash/Axon Holdings Affair – the council holds secret negotiations with certain investors whose plans included a casino; the council believes the redevelopment deal could be worth £25m and will secure the future
1995 £100,000 bid to Millennium Commission falters, despite £58,000 paid to Shandwick Consultants, which sends David Mellor MP to help prepare bid
1996 To secure the future, the Trustees select a developer for our Charity's premises – who quickly turns out to be a bankrupt. See The Independent
1996 In a damning indictment, the Letter of the Treasury Solicitor refuses most Trustee claims for indemnification – despite the local council claiming it was not liable for the full alleged debt (?!). Haringey picks up a £50m bill
1999 District Auditor Report – an investigation into Objections about items of account that are "contrary to law"
2000 The Millennium Bid – £95,000 worth of unauthorised and unbudgeted expenditure by the local council on the “millennium bid”. The Auditors and Treasury Solicitor are concerned about this – confirm that this cost should not be the responsibility of our Charity and accordingly is excluded
2003 Debate in Parliament on AP; one MP claims that £100m of public funds have gone into AP. How much has gone to lawyers, managers and consultants?
2004 The Trustee's get an Order of Parliament that allows them to sell the entire building on a 125 year lease. Total sale was dubbed an "holistic" approach and was seen as the final solution to secure the future
2005 A wealthy former slum landlord, with a passion for a casino and a reputation honed on the asset-stripping of Oxford United Football Club, begins to circle our palace, jaws snapping
2006 after an exhaustive process, the Trustees select The Developer-of-Last-Resort and proceed to negotiate the sale of our Palace on a 125-year lease for a rumoured £1.5m, to secure the future
2007 In the High Court Charity Commission's permission for sale is quashed. Due to their conduct over sale of the Palace, costs are awarded against the Trustees – Justice Sullivan says the Trustees are the authors of their own misfortune
2007 Eight weeks after the court case and only following intervention by the District Auditor, the council committee known as the "Trust Board" serves an eviction notice on their Development Partner
2008 The local council's Preferred Partner (Firoka) withdraws from purchase of Palace, later begins to sue our Charity for £6,200,000. The council launches The Walklate investigation (first of three)
2009 The council launches a second Walklate enquiry – see The Walklate Reports, left (or upper left); this one quantiifies the loss due to the Licence to Firoka (£1.5m to £2m) and assesses possible liability of the disgraced former General Manager. On 20 July, council formally refuses to discharge any part of the bogus debt (£40,000,000) that council claims our Charity owes to the Trustee (the Council) (!?)
2010 Walklate 3 – a third investigation by Martin Walklate into the Licence-to-Firoka. This time, a Complaint against the Trust Board Chairman at the time of the Licence
2011 Former Alexandra Palace Trust Board Chairman, Cllr. Charles Adje – also a former Council Leader – is suspended for four months due to misconduct over sale of Palace

Current: municipal plans are developing to sell up to two-thirds of the Palace to a music operator to secure the future – can anyone see where this is going?

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

It is possible that one day, someone in authority (unlikely the Charity Commission) may begin to notice a pattern emerging.
The above list of events – known to the public – is surely unequalled as a record of incompetence in the London Borough for 30 years. Is there anywhere else that matches this list for consistency of waste, failure or poor advice? Has there been a greater want of strategy, imagination, leadership and conceptual thinking?

AP UN Heritage Proposal

2011-06-19T17:25:00.006+01:00

This link will take you to a downloadable PDF file, the latest version the proposal,

That the APPTB, with support from London Borough of Haringey, should apply for UNESCO World Heritage Site recognition for the South-East wing of Alexandra Palace. To include the BBC television studios, control rooms, dressing & transmitter rooms, telecine area, tower offices & transmission tower

The endorsements*:

The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage TICCIH, Secretary: Stuart Smith OBE
UN World Heritage site, the 1924 Varberg Radio Station, Sweden CEO: Dr. Lars Johansson
IET – Institution of Engineering and Technology, formerly the Institution of Electrical Engineers (contact: Alan Berry)
The Mayor of London (Boris Johnson)
The MP for Hornsey & Wood Green, Government Minister Lynne Featherstone
The MP for Tottenham and ex-Minister for Heritage, David Lammy
Former BBC Chairman, Gavyn Davies
Former BBC Chairman, Lord Michael Grade
Former BBC Director General, Greg Dyke
Broadcaster and author, Lord Melvyn Bragg
Culture, Media & Sport spokesman, Lord Tim-Clement Jones
Media Historian, Iain Logie Baird
AP Television Group Chair: John Thompson
British Heritage Television group Chair: Martin Allen
AP Television Society Chair: Simon Vaughan
Hornsey Historical Society Chair: Keith Fawkes

Please click on the link (top) for more information. Contact information contained in the pdf.

* [last updated 5 December 2011]

Transcript of Haringey Council Standards Committee Determination Panel Hearing 2011 March 30-31

2011-04-01T12:00:00.003+01:00

THE link (above, title) will produce a saveable, searchable, PDF file of >600kb and 100 pages and is a Transcript of the Hearing of Haringey Council Standards Committee Determination Panel Hearing 2011 March 30-31.

Councillor Charles Adje, Chairman of the Alexandra Palace Trust Board, was Found to have Breached the Member's Code of Conduct. He brought the council into disrepute, by failing to share a crucial piece of professional advice with his fellow Trustees:

This Briefing Note strongly advised against any [further] inducement to a developer, Firoka, and argued that no action need be taken in response to threats of withdrawal by Firoka. This document was suppressed and the then General Manager was pressured into producing a document – containing wholly contrary advice – that did go before the Trust Board.

This led to the extraordinarily generous Licence-to-Firoka, including huge subsidy from the taxpayer and a direct loss to our charity of between £1,500,000 and £2,000,000 (probably more).

Ex-Trustee Adje was suspended as councillor for four months by the Standards Hearing and he is required to undergo training on his return to Haringey Council. (Can any amount of training substitute for integrity and character?)

The transcript has only become available in late June 2011.

Haringey Council's attempt to sell our Charity's asset to Firoka: the final chapter?

2011-03-25T11:30:00.001Z

Haringey Council : Standards Committee

Determination Hearing into Complaint about a Member

Civic Centre – probably committee rooms 1& 2

10:00 AM 30th & 31st March 2011

Hearing into Complaint SC002/0910:

• former leader of Haringey Council for two years

• former chairman of Alexandra Palace Board of Trustees

• former Executive Cabinet Member for Finance

• current Councillor (and Trustee, like all Haringey Councillors)

• Key officer advice against licence (briefing note to chairman), withheld from other Trustees

• Promotion of premature licence to property developer (Firoka, i.e. Firoz Kassam);

• Premature occupation of our Charity's premises;

• Huge public subsidy to a private company;

• High Court ruling of 5 October 2007, quashed Charity Commission Order & stalled sale;

• Firoka later evicted by council in early 2008;

• Loss to our Charitable Trust estimated at £1.5m to £2m;

• Conflicts of interest abound

Haringey Council Standards Committee will be convening a Hearing on 30 March at the Civic Centre after an investigation lasting nearly 12 months, following Complaint against a Member while acting as a Trustee on the Alexandra Palace Trust Board. The Complaint follows two council investigations ("the Walklate Reports") into the 'development' of the Licence-to-Firoka.

Firoka were given premature permission to run Alexandra Palace and were eventually evicted by the council, well after the High Court quashed the Charity Commission's Order, and stalled the 125 year Lease.

During the Firoka occupation, under the Licence, not only did all our charity's trading profits go to Firoka, but on top and as financial inducement to the property developer, the council contributed a huge subsidy to the private company by way of seconded staff and a long list expenses – all met by Haringey taxpayers.

Losses to our charity as a result of the Licence were calculated in the "Walklate 2" investigation to amount to between £1.5m and £2m.

The Hearing is likely to be open to the public but a decision will be taken about that on the morning of the first day. The report ("Walklate 3") by independent investigator, Martin Walklate, is likely to be made public.

• Ally Pally fireworks cancelled

2010-07-09T09:14:00.007+01:00

THE November Fireworks display at Alexandra Palace is probably the biggest in north London. I enjoy it as do tens of thousands of others. The Ally Pally Trust Board meeting last week took the decision to suspend it, in order to save c.£100,000. This was the right and necessary decision, however the suspension does raise other aspects.

The trust is instead to write begging letters to see if funds for fireworks can come from somewhere else (other than trust funds/council tax). If some commercial sponsor is happy to see their cash go up in smoke in the name of publicity, then good luck to them. But it would be wrong for our Charity to seek funds from any kind of public purse when restraint in tax spending is the order of the day and front-line services are endangered.

To justify the difficult decision, reference was made to the fact that to continue the fireworks would cause a loss to the Charity.

It was pleasing to hear this status recognized.

Every north Londoner reading this is, in law, a beneficiary of the Alexandra Palace Charitable Trust (NB: not necessarily a resident of Haringey Borough).

Haringey Council-Trustee has run our Charity – as a semi-autonomous municipal department – since 1980. In truth, our Trust has not been in a financial position to host the fireworks for some years. Any cost overruns have been and would be added to the overall deficit held by the council.

The deficit – much of it bogus – is now more than £40,000,000: this is money that the Trustee (Haringey Council) claim that our Trust owes to Haringey Council (the Trustee). This is accountancy, but not as we know it. A full Council meeting last year decided not to discharge this 'debt' (?!).

The Board chaired by Pat Egan has acted in the interests of our Charity, but some of his Board colleagues have sought to score political points and somehow blame the Coalition government for this particular 'cut'. How little some of them know about the 30-year history of council-control and management of our heritage. When the newbies speak, believing our charity is a party-political extension of the council debating chamber, they demonstrate how unfit politicians are to be running a major Charitable Trust.

Conflict-of-interest underlies everything that the Trust Board does, but for once, the Trust Board has made a big decision exclusively in the interests of the Charity.

A nod to the charitable status may represent a genuine change of heart by the council. It may just be coincidence that, when a decision is made that is high-profile and likely to be unpopular with the public, it is linked to the word Charity.

But the decision also illustrates how the board/council is able to pick and choose when to invoke the 'charitable' status, depending on circumstances.

Charitable legal status is an inconvenient truth for Haringey. In the past, little mention was made of it. When the council tried to sell the whole building to their "preferred development partner" (the rapacious developer Firoka) for £1.5m., this status was largely ignored. The sale of our Charity’s main asset (Ally Pally) for purely commercial purposes, was most likely unlawful.

Charity was little mentioned in a classic example of conflict-of-interest, when the council first applied to itself for a gambling licence in our charity's premises, and then awarded itself a gambling premises licence at Alexandra Palace in April 2008.

Two years earlier the Trust Solicitor tried to square this circle in an attempt to get gambling into our Charity. He wrote to the Charity Commission: "Casino use does fall within the objects of the Charity as a recreational activity” (on this basis, another licensed activity, lap dancing, should also qualify. (Lap dancing could also be seen as recreational, if not wholly charitable). The background was, that the council had secretly promised permission for a casino to Firoka in the Lease and the lawyer's representation was an attempt to justify that clause. The Charity Commission went along with it but were later pole axed in the High Court over their farcical consultation.

As long as our Charity is controlled by conflicted local councillors, it will be impossible for the Trust Board to make good decisions consistently or even most of the time. The best way to deal with conflicts-of-interest is not to have them in the first place. The only viable, sustainable future for Ally Pally has to be governance by expert, undivided, independent Trustees.

Alexandra Palace Charitable Trust Board: drifting rudderless, on a tide of consultants

2010-03-26T08:41:00.003Z

THE chronically dysfunctional Alexandra Palace Trust Board is in danger of squandering the goodwill it generated at the time of the Stakeholder workshop last October.

Then, the momentum was towards some form of long-overdue independence for governance (many aspects of existing governance arrangements were thoroughly criticised in the two Walklate Reports).

But in the next five months there has been little except drift. We hear the same lame mantra repeated "nothing is ruled in or out." Well, it is high time that the ultimate, independent board option was ruled in and continuing malign council-control ruled out!

Part of the drift can be explained by the fact the members of our Trust's Board – all politicians – are in election-mode. This by itself is an indictment of Charity Trustees and no way to run a railroad, let alone a major Charity of historical importance. The Chairman of the Statutory Advisory committee (David Liebeck) is angry at the time being wasted and recently remarked that it's long overdue that the politicians walked down the hill, away from AP and back to the Civic Centre!

And the time lost is not just since the Stakeholder Workshop. After the humiliating slap-down in 2007 by the High Court, it took two and half years before the policy of "holistic" sale for property development was finally formally abandoned.

That 15 year-old policy of flog-it-off, was the only strategy the Board ever came up with which enjoyed *continuity*. It was the only major strategy pursued with will and vigour.

But it also represented despair, a bankruptcy of ideas; was vandalism, an abrogation of responsibility and was an unmitigated disaster, burning millions of our money. And every last aspect of that sale attempt was consulted upon, heavily.

The recent drift also reflects abiding themes of this Board which are (a) a general inability to make coherent, effective decisions and (b) when a significant or strategic decision is made, it is often wrong spectacularly. Most notably, the decision to sell our Charity's asset (the Palace) to a former slum landlord.

Habitual delegation of responsibility

THE Board normally delegates its powers and functions to others; the Board would say that is practical and necessary. But it is also due to political fractures, a short-term outlook, a lack of ability, the infrequency of meetings and general inattention.

Powers and functions devolve to consultants or to council employees. In practice, this has meant our London landmark (which could be a prime tourist attraction) is run as a local municipal department. This has led to trouble, with palace management in the past operating in the shadows as a quasi-autonomous fiefdom, mainly for the benefit of its managers, their cronies and legions of consultants. The public, who pay for this charade, is often treated with contempt.

Due to lack of time and lack of on-board expertise, this Charity Trust Board is probably more dependent on external advisers and consultants than any other comparable Board. The many hangers-on often have an agenda separate from the officially stated one, and they are keen to maintain the status quo. The Board has been poorly advised in the past and there needs to be a clear-out of the hangers-on.

Alexandra Palace has been a gold-mine for lawyers and other consultants. During the sale-to-Firoka, much of the official flannel – and attempts to defend against criticism – was delegated to an expensive PR company (Lexington Communications, supposedly expert in crisis management).

The Board avoids addressing it own fundamental flaws and spends too much time considering half-baked ideas. In order to avoid responsibility and taking decisions, the board delegated studies about its own governance to an outside accounting firm. This is another indictment and demonstrates paralysis. Down the years, consultants have grown rich while the building deteriorates. And still the over-consulting goes on.

The Board's eagerness to delegate and its reluctance to take responsibility has been costly, confusing and corrosive.

Mixing up trading with governance

THE Board is slipping back into its well-known, old bad habits. It now intends to delegate not only much of its strategic role to its wholly-owned trading company, but even the Charitable Functions. And this with the blessing of the Charity Commission, itself heavily criticised by Justice Sir Jeremy Sullivan for its unlawful role in the attempt to sell our heritage.

The proper role for the trading company is managing trading operations and generating funds for our Charity. Mixing this up with governance is a recipe for more trouble.

Board members often make sense on an individual basis. But in the presence of Haringey Council bureaucrats, they tend to fall prey to the Jedi Mind Trick: "the palace is best kept under full council control". Trustee: "yes, the palace is best under council control". Jedi Master: "the council always knows best" Trustee: "yes, the council knows best!"

Most observers recognise that the fundamental conflict of interest between the roles of councillor and trustee is irreconcilable. For a while, everyone was repeating that governance needed reform. But nothing changes. This is a cast-iron guarantee of continuing strife.

The current Roadshow in the Borough's libraries is no substitute for reform of governance. Unless that nettle is grasped with both hands by the Board/Council, an opportunity will have been missed and we can expect more drift.

Some of the individual members of the trust board are well-meaning and well-intentioned. Collectively, they lack expertise, competence, professional qualifications and Charitable Trust experience. Most of all, they lack vision and leadership. It has been this way for 30 years and the results are plain to see: little except neglect and decay.

The public and beneficiaries deserve more for their money.

Official: Haringey Council stops flogging Alexandra Palace on eBay

2010-01-22T06:37:00.003Z

THE COUNCIL has decided not to sell Alexandra Palace. I, and I'm sure many others, will welcome this decision. But it's worth pausing to reflect on its meaning. This volte face is not just a signal to would-be property-developers and it's not only something that's been called for, for a long time.

The writing has been on the wall for Haringey Council's sale policy since October 2007, when the High Court quashed the last sell-off attempt.

The council-controlled Board isn't exactly nimble in adjusting to changed circumstances. That it took the Trust Board two and a quarter years to come to this decision, is further evidence of the unsuitability of the current governance regime. After 15-odd years of the Flog-it policy, the climb-down shows how misguided was the previous politicians' policy. The Board has been dull, unwieldy and cumbersome. Anyone would think the local authority were running our Charity as a council department. Oh, hang on, they are!

The fitting failure for the "Flog-it" formula, followed the fiasco of Firoka's final flight. But that was in August 2008 – nearly 18 months ago.

The time taken to acknowledge reality also illustrates key features of the Council-Board: inertia, bureaucracy, unapologetic, unresponsiveness and an unreadyness to be seen to be wrong. During the Firoka-era and its aftermath, approximately one third of Trust Board time was spent hiding its most recent horrors; another third was spent rectifying older wrong decisions that had surfaced – and only one third of their time was focused on formulating fresh muck-ups.

The Trust (in truth, the council majority group) alludes to their inviolable responsibility for spending precious public money carefully. Such duty and dedication might be praiseworthy and even credible, were it not for the evidence: under 100%-pure council-control, the Trust has been a furnace taxpayer's-cash for 30 years and stoked by politicians. Is the view of the council that its their sacred right to burn our money?

How much has the previous, long-held Flog-it policy cost us? I would have thought the waste of our taxes runs into many millions and not just in direct costs.

By way of direct sale costs, there have been surveyors, a PR company, hoards of legal advisers (with questionable 'advice') and various sundry consultant hangers-on. The ill-judged Licence-to-Firoka alone cost a minimum of £1.5m and probably nearer £3m (council tax-payers actually subsidised a private company to this tune). If only the millions burned up in 'sale' expenses could have been spent more wisely and usefully. Independent trustees could surely do no worse than the council – and in all probability, do a great deal better!

All along, there has been the contentious vicious-circle of the self-reinforcing council-subsidy.

But perhaps the greatest cost of all of the Flog-it policy has been the opportunity cost and the chances for a better future – squandered for 15 and more years. It was a self-imposed planning blight.

The woeful neglect of our Charity's main asset (the building) has meant not only that the Trustee has been in Breach of Trust, but that the eventual bill for repairs will be bigger thanks to council carelessness. Normally, Trustees have an onerous responsibility. In a perversion of real Charity governance, Haringey indemnifies Trustees (i.e. itself) so that no individual Trustee bears personal liability for poor collective decisions. Individual responsibility disappears and we end up with a diffuse and largely meaningless collective accountability. Apparently no one is responsible for the millions in cash burnt up so far.

Towards the end of the Firoka episode, the council was practically begging one of Britain's richest men to buy our heritage for a rumoured £1.5m. Even though the reckless sale was eventually thwarted, the council still managed to press a huge subsidy into the hands of the company he controlled. It always surprised me that a Labour council would – in effect – try to give the crown jewels of our Borough to a former slum-landlord and developer-of-last-resort.

Haringey's 'preferred partner' (Firoka) – most carefully selected after exhaustive advertising and tendering – now sues the Trust/council (that's us, folks) for £6.2 million. The council record of disaster over our Charity's asset is long, deep and consistent. It began in the 1980s when they lost all control over rebuilding costs after the 1980 fire. The long-term Flog-it policy wasted yet more. If Haringey remain in charge, it is likely there will be further poor decisions.

It has been proved time and again that municipal control of our Charity represents chronic, systemic, failure. There may now be some attempts to interest developers in bits of the palace – attempts that are likely to fail. The council seems not to understand that no one wants to touch the place while the bureaucrats and politicians remain in control and the future is uncertain.

The notion of a multi-story car-park at the back has apparently been dropped by the Trustees. This half-baked scheme was an example of the piecemeal approach from a dilatory Board lacking a credible, coherent and continuous plan for our great building. The key issue facing the Board is root-and-branch governance reform and this ought to come before all else.

A positive interpretation for the abandonment of the flog-it policy, is that the council sees that as a necessary step to having independent trustees. One can only hope that if and when the council finally brings itself to 'admit one' independent Trustee, that it will not be under conditions that are either impossible, that no one would wish to take up or that any genuine independent trustee would soon tire of.

Meaningful governance – that could lead to AP being everything it could be – has to be more than being expected to read half-inch thick council officer reports and turning up for board meetings. Will the inertia continue or can the current chairman break the mould? There seems to be some reason to hope. Our palace is currently pointed in the right direction, but progress is slow.

Possibly no significant decisions on AP will be made before the next council election in May. Which in itself is yet another reason why the governance model (of transitory local politicians) is chronically flawed. New board members – who will be rotating politicians – will blame the old ones and so may continue the lack of continuity.

The best decisions the council could make now are: (1) to discharge the £40,000,000 of largely bogus 'debt' (2) to agree an annual grant for park maintenance [circa £750,000] (3) to phase-out council cash/control and (4) to phase-in a hand-over to a *largely* independent board of trustees, comprised of expert and experienced, committed and competent, enthusiastic men and women.

AP: where we stand today: the consultation about the future of our Trust, Alexandra Palace

2009-11-26T17:50:00.004Z

LAST month, I attended the Stakeholder Workshop at Alexandra Palace with about 40 other interested people. At last this was a genuine attempt at consultation. Although things are moving slowly, after a long time in the wilderness, the Palace may finally be pointed in the right direction.

At this point of change, it is worth reflecting on how far the fortunes of Alexandra Palace have come over the last 15 months, since a former slum-landlord finally withdrew his interest.

In 1980, control of our Palace passed from the GLC to Haringey council. The new Trustee began with a big dowry (£8m) and good intentions. In the same year a devastating fire led to a then-huge insurance payment (£20m?). Haringey, with all that cash, then proceeded to lose all control over re-building costs. Haringey had a fool for a client while the Trust had a fool for a custodian.

Our Trust has been stewarded with the all the flair of parking wardens; our building was managed with the dynamism of an estate manager; and our People’s Palace was marketed with all the entrepreneurship of a municipal swimming pool. Our council-run Trust has limped along for more than 20 years. The involvement of a single, skint council has been seen to have been an unmitigated disaster.

AP is so big that it was always beyond the resources of one local authority. But if all the cash wasted on consultants and sale attempts over the years had been spent on repairs, we might at least have had more to show for our money.

THE CORE problem has always been the Trustees’ conflict of interest: between their duty to the Trust and their duty to the Council. This affected every decision they made from biggest to the smallest and every poor decision of the Board begat another poor decision. When there were two choices before the Trustees, they normally chose the wrong one. This record of failure extends over 29 years.

For more than a decade, the council-trustee has had a policy of the “holistic” sale of all Alexandra Palace – in one go – to a property developer. This was a policy of despair but which would have swept a much dirt under the carpet.

The policy of outright sale, for exclusively commercial use of our Charity’s main asset, was always unlawful. This assertion was not tested in court but that was the considered opinion of a leading Charity barrister.

What was tested in the High Court (in 2007), was the proposition, that the Public Consultation organised by the Charity Commission, was unfair and unreasonable. The Judge agreed easily. The case was in the name of Jacob O’Callaghan but he was acting on behalf of all of us. The judge’s quashing of the Lease was the beginning of the end for the entire flog-it policy.

There is no illusion that the current policies have been brought by a change of heart: real consultation is happening now only because the sham consultation of the Charity Commission (insisted on by Cllr Charles Adje's Trust), was exposed in the High Court.

In the past there have been attempts to rescue our Palace: but the difference this time is that it follows the most spectacular defeat ever of the municipal Flog-it policy. If would be helpful and would concentrate minds, if the council were to announce formally, that the Flog-it policy is ended. There is still cynicism today, but there is surely no alternative to radical change to our Trust’s governance.

Having circled our Palace for about three years, with jaws snapping, in August 2008, Firoka announced that they were ending all interest. Last March came the less welcome news that they are suing our Charity for £6.2m. The Board should resist this cheeky claim robustly with an expert competent legal adviser.

The past focus of the Board has always been short-term. One of the enduring themes of AP governance is that we can’t discuss openly and learn from a past mistake, because it would be embarrassing and might affect current operations.

A recent example has been the efforts of the Trust Solicitor to minimise reference to the damning Walklate investigations in the Trust Annual Report. Generally, concealment and suppression has been counter-productive and it should end.

Now, with open discussion of governance alternatives, we may be seeing the end of the obsessive secrecy that has characterised our Trust.

Today: Five Options
There is a serious consultation underway and it will determine the future of our palace. There are broadly five options to be considered for the governance of our Palace. Three of the five would see Haringey Council retain a controlling interest.

If any one of these three council-alternatives is chosen, nothing will have been learnt and we will have a cast-iron guarantee of continuing failure. No experienced Trustees (or major sponsors) will touch the place if the council stays in charge.

If there is to be even a chance of success, it is vital that tired municipal control is phased out, as fresh independent trustees are phased in. The effects of bringing in committed, interested experts should be reflected in improved trading performance and slowly but steadily, reliance on taxpayer support will reduce. AP must pay for itself in the long run. We cannot will the end without willing the means to that end.

Having been fortunate to have had a comprehensive tour, I can see that much rebuilding will be needed. One day, the large basement should be a hive of activity, possibly a subterranean market. I would prefer not to see a casino (whether or not it is linked to a hotel), but I think a hotel and even a large hotel will probably be needed, to help bring the foot-fall.

Unless there is external intervention from the Charity Commission, the Council itself as Trustee will have to make the brave decision to let go and to trust outsiders. This will be a massive change in mindset and it is by no means a forgone conclusion.

There are still those with reservations about the Stakeholder Workshop. But I say it is much better to make any kind of start than no start. And in my view, it was a very good start. Credit for the Workshop has to go to the AP trading company’s energetic managing director Rebecca Kane and to Chairman Pat Egan for agreeing to it. They have a big task ahead and deserve our constructive support.

With a building as big as Ally Pally and with so many facets, no single individual can get everything they want from it. But let us not make the best the enemy of the good. It would be unlawful to be purely commercial and it is unrealistic for it to be wholly charitable. It has to be a mixed development, in my view. We must seek a broad consensus that works for the majority of the owners, the public, the beneficiaries.

Anyone with new, novel or remarkable ideas about the future of our Trust and Palace should contact:

Amanda Sears
APTL Executive Assistant
Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace Way
Wood Green
London N22 7AY
Tel: 020 8365 4366
Fax: 020 8883 3999
amanda.sears@alexandrapalace.com

Alexandra Palace: The 2007 Fireworks cash buckets scandal – Why the indifference of the Charity Commission?

2009-11-05T00:01:00.003Z

THIS Saturday, 7 November, perhaps 40,000 people will again attend the annual Alexandra Palace fireworks display, the biggest in London. The public may again be asked to contribute by way of donation at the gates. Historically, collections from these evenings have been donated to charities and staffed by volunteers.

But in 2007, our Palace was run by a commercial operator under a licence granted by the Charity. At the gates in November 2007, many collectors demanded a "donation" for viewing the fireworks. When asked where they had come from, they said they were employed by the licensee to collect the money, and for the most part came from outside London. The unsealed buckets were labelled "donations for Alexandra Palace Charity". Some estimates put the amount collected that evening at in excess of £60,000, in cash.

Where did all that cash go?

Despite many questions being raised as to what happened to this money, it would appear that it never reached any charity, nor used directly for any charitable purpose.

The management of the Palace later refused to answer questions relating to how much had been collected, or where the money ended up. In a Board meeting, the previous (now-departed) general manager said that the cash was not accounted for "separately".

Which means that the cash was literally not accounted for.

Did these charitable donations in fact end up in the accounts of a company controlled by one of Britain's richest men?

Should the Charity Commission not be investigating these sort of matters, and examine the system where large amounts of cash donations are made? After pressure from members of the public, the Commission reluctantly began an enquiry into the Trustees' Licence-to-Firoka in 2008. Two case officers were appointed. But despite the evidence in September 2008 of the independent Walklate report, the Commission's own "enquiry" was wound-up prematurely by the end of 2008. Why?

The last 29 years of control by the local authority have been a dismal and expensive failure. It is hardly surprising because the Trustees are all Councillors and have neither the time nor commitment to make it work. Councillors come and go on a regular basis, often lasting no more than a year or two. It was always going to be a recipe for disaster, as it has proved to be.

The Commission has a policy that charities which are controlled by local authorities should be phased out and that the ownership and control of the assets should be maintained by properly constituted Boards of Trustees who have the necessary experience, qualifications and motivation to ensure that the charity is run in accordance with its charitable objectives.

Why is the Commission still sitting on its hands and not getting involved with the phasing out of the local authority control of Alexandra Palace? Should we not have new, independent Trustees on the Board?

Dame Suzi Leather became chair of the Charity Commission in August 2006 and is a political appointee of the current government.

One is bound to wonder whether the political connections between the many majority-group councillors, who have gone on to significant positions within politics, may be inhibiting full and proper investigation of the activities of Alexandra Palace. An enquiry that might expose the poor, and possibly corrupt, decision-making of political figures.

Alexandra Palace needs to be taken out of the political arena so that it can fulfil its true potential.

Consultation on Ally Pally's future: a Casino back on the agenda?

2009-10-09T23:27:00.005+01:00

THE council-controlled Alexandra Palace trading company is currently holding a consultation about the future of the building with the owners of the building.

In law, the owners of Alexandra Palace are the beneficiaries of the Charitable Trust, i.e. the public of north London (this has normally been an inconvenient truth for the council). I would encourage members of the public to participate in the current consultation, which is an opportunity to influence the future.

Among the options being considered are: a hotel, sport, tertiary education and prestigious tenants. Other uses also being looked at are flats, commercial office space and a casino (the quashed Lease to Firoka also promised casino use).

The most prominent casino-lobbyist in the council is Cllr H. Lister, who had vowed to make the council return to the AP casino proposal when on 21 March 2006, the Cabinet Executive voted against starting the casino process. In April last year, Cllr. Lister chaired and dominated the Full Licensing Committee Hearing that awarded the council's trading company a permanent gambling Premises Licence at Alexandra Palace. The council denied that would set a precedent for a casino.

Renewed consideration of a casino is surprising in view of the previous AP Trust chairman's statement last year:

"I want to put this on the record. There is not going to be and can be no casino at Alexandra Palace. It is true there was talk of a casino back in 2005 but to license a new casino under the Gambling Act of 2005, Haringey Council would have had to apply to the Casino Advisory Panel by the end of March 2006. Haringey chose not to, and so a casino is simply not possible. Full stop. Because casinos are controversial, some people have been using that particular red herring to spread intrigue and concern, but that wilful misleading has to stop – there is simply not going to be one."

(Cllr. Matt Cooke, letter to H&H Broadway, 31/01/08)

Some were reassured by the Chairman's unequivocal promise. But regardless of one's views about casinos, this categorical statement illustrates one abiding truth about the governance of the Trust: the lack of continuity. Any long-term promise or commitment by one politician-chairman is subject to voiding by the next politician-chairman.

The vicious-circle of political-control and lack-of-continuity can only be ended by the introduction of independent trustees who are, committed, competent, interested and who might last more than five minutes.

It is unsurprising that few of the current Trustees are able to pay much attention. Regardless of their re-election prospects, their first duty is to their Ward- and Council-work. Some Trustees are on the Board for just a few months and there is normally wholesale change every 12 months (in May).

The chronic instability of governance has partly been compensated for – by default – by permanent officers and municipal managers. This has led to the endurance of cosy and unhealthy relationships and not least in the legal framework within which the Trust operates.

The 15-year old municipal "development strategy" (i.e. flog-to-a-developer), led to directly to decay and dereliction of duty. Few repairs but massive fees for lawyers, PR and consultants. Can the council confirm that the policy of "holistic" sale of Alexandra Palace as a "developer shell" has now been abandoned?

I credit the current chairman with making an attempt to break this mould. Haringey should have learned that one of the principles in law of an effective consultation, is that it needs to be made at the early, formative stages of proposals. There is likely to be dissatisfaction if this turns out not to have been the case.

As to what should happen at Ally Pally, it is certain that the views of no single individual will prevail. The council has the difficult job of trying to synthesise views and come up with a consensus. They should be given that opportunity.

Ideas and comments should go to Amanda Sears at Ally Pally, who is happy to receive them:

Amanda Sears

020-8365 4366

amanda.sears@alexandrapalace.com

"Improving Governance" at Alexandra Palace

2009-07-02T14:13:00.006+01:00

THE LOCAL council had no idea what it was taking on when it assumed responsibility for Alexandria Palace from the GLC in 1980

First, Haringey did not appreciate the implications of being a Trustee of a big Charity and secondly, the size of the commitment might stretch most single London councils, even without trying to recover from a devastating fire (also in 1980).

Haringey took over a Charitable Trust which is of course governed by the law of Trust and Charity. But Haringey has found it expedient to run Alexandra Palace as though it were a municipal department, governed by the Local Government Act. The two sets of laws seek to achieve different things, and with Alexandra Palace, they are in perpetual conflict. This has not yet been tested in court, but the differences seem irreconcilable. It has led to serious, chronic conflicts of interest which are just ignored by the council. One conflict of interest begets another. One mistake begets another.

Given this fraught legal background, only the most savvy, expert legal advice could even begin to help. But for more than 15 years, the Trust has received advice from a single source which has been indifferent at best. The forthcoming Tender for Legal Services is long overdue, especially given that the Board may be considering action in connection with the Licence to Firoka and Firoka currently suing our Charity for £6,200,000 over the botched sale.

The supervisory Charity Commission see all this as a big can of worms and avoid getting involved, so much so that their willingness to discharge their regulatory function has to be questioned.

The current Trust Board Chairman, while chairing a recent Consultative committee, said they were unloved. One wonders why? The new chairman will try his best, but the likelihood is that in another 12 months, the poison chalice will be passed to a new chairman just as in the past, without fundamental progress.

The two peripheral committees (Consultative and Advisory) act as lightning rods for discontent. The council humours and largely ignores them. The Advisory Committee has Statutory powers, but they are so vague that the council is able to define their remit so that they have no authority. The recently departed general manager described some of what he did as "operational matters" and beyond influence of the committees. At one time, he described the Advisory Committee as engaged in a "land-grab"!

Away-day junket-jollies have been organised to enable everyone to get to know each other better. One hopes this will not have the effect of rebuilding the corrosive crony-culture that characterised control in the past. The current regime of political control (by party voting) ensures that the Trust Board will remain dysfunctional and is likely to lead to more wrong decisions.

Post-Walklate, everyone repeats the mantra of "improving governance". But months after the critical Walklate reports, there is not a single independent voting Trustee on the board. Instead, improved governance takes the form of municipal action plans. The council just cannot let go and yet their policy of sale has still not been renounced.

Since they lost control of the re-building costs in the 1980s, Haringey Council has had two main aims with respect to Alexandra Palace. The first is doggedly to evade responsibly for their past crazed spending and second, to sell off the Palace for property development, as secretly as they can. (The spending included extravagance such as the shipping of eight 20 ft high palm trees from Alexandria in Egypt.) The council would prefer to sell the palace in great secrecy before it ever assumed responsibility for its past failure.

It's a problem of ego and pride. The current majority group is a prisoner of past mistakes and cannot bring themselves to do things that will in effect, be a judgement on the actions of their party political predecessors. The prime goal, to evade accountability for the huge rebuilding cost overruns (for which they alone were responsible) has been the council's most consistent and entrenched policy. The refusal to own up led to the council's huge cost overruns being dumped into our Charity's accounts.

The bogus debt currently stands at £37,000,000 and will grow larger with interest. But the sheer size of the bogus debt – now equal to the amount Haringey stashed in the frozen Ice-banks – is becoming an embarrassment. It is high time that the reality of nonsense was faced. Much of this so-called debt amounted to little less than false accounting and it does appear from the seminal 1996 Treasury Solicitor letter, that the council were thought of as cheats and fraudsters, although of course, more genteel language was used.

Improved governance needs to be more than increasing the paper flow between existing employees. With Alexandra Palace, it should mean vision, leadership and judgement – uninfluenced by party politics. Independent Trustees of integrity who would be expert, committed, interested and professional would be a tiny step in the right direction but it must lead to a Board where political control is tapered to a minimum.

• No independent Trustees for Ally Pally

2009-06-26T09:39:00.004+01:00

SO FAR, Haringey Council appear to have learnt nothing over the past three years from the botched sell-off, of Alexandra Palace.

The new Charity Trust Board line-up comprises politicians. This, despite the exposure of their Flog-it policy as misconceived and, as shown by the independent investigation of the Walklate 2 Report, executed recklessly.

Despite calls for an independent Board, or even some independent trustees, or at least an independent chair, the council's majority group has again arranged the Board as a political instrument, by ensuring that majority group members will always outvote others (4 to 3). Only the transient politicians can vote.

This guarantees that council majority group policy is implemented. It means in effect, that the Board continues as no more than a puppet. Minority group members and the non-voting observers are there for window-dressing.

This is not how a Charity is supposed to work.

One of the worst abuses of majority voting occurred when the last annual accounts were "approved" by a majority-only vote and not unanimously. The 2007 accounts saw a £3,000,000 loss, including huge losses attributable to the Firoka Licence period, pushed for by former AP Chairman, Councillor Charles Adje, of the council majority group. The effect was to sweep the loss under the carpet.

A few months ago, the nominally independent board "requested" the council to lift the £37,000,000 of bogus debt.

In the next Board meeting of our Charity (30 June), we may hear whether or not the council has 'responded' to the 'request' to lift the bogus debt, which has long hobbled AP's future. This would also have the effect of burying even more deeply, the losses caused by Councillor Adje, who has a list of questions to answer.

Removal of the bogus debt would be to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

The other constructive thing that the council could do, if it chose, would be formally to renounce the discredited policy of the "holistic" sale of AP, a goal towards which the council has been working for 12 years.

Holistic sale meant selling Alexandra Palace lock, stock and barrel as a "developer shell" to the favoured property developer. This led to a running down of AP's trading business, a running up of debt and the retention of many expensive advisor hangers-on.

£1,000,000 was wasted on Haringey's lawyers and a single PR company. Haringey wanted to demonstrate to the Charity Commission that AP was haemorrhaging money and to provide more evidence of this, they burnt truckloads of (our) cash.

In dealing with Listed buildings, a frequent developer tactic is to neglect repairs or even encourage deterioration. Our council appears to have anticipated the needs of their preferred bidder; repairs appear to have been deliberately ignored.

In the 1980s Haringey paid unknown sums to remove all asbestos from the BBC studios. Completing this task was never a priority. The real reason that the council was unwilling to finish the asbestos removal job in the studios, was that their preferred bidder wished to turn the world's first TV studios into 30,000 square feet of commercial office space. The recently departed general manager emphasised the cost of asbestos removal. But cost was never an objection to the approximate equivalent amount of £200,000 that the Board spent on the PR company.

There has been no public apology for the chronic waste and grand-scale mismanagement. The deceit, secrecy, misleading and untruths uttered in furtherance of the sale have been shameful.

Trust Haringey to select a partner that ends up suing them (us) for millions. None of the Trustees are personally liable for any debts of the Charity as the Council indemnifies them (with our cash) This has encouraged irresponsibility.

There has been no renunciation of the long-held sale strategy. Until that happens the policy remains in place and the council will be hoping that, after a decent interval, they can begin again with another run at a sale with another developer-of-last-resort.

Haringey has yet to demonstrate that it has learnt anything, while any new potential property developer needs to look well at the Firoka fiasco before partnering with the council.

SAP petition: the Government’s response

2009-06-01T12:00:00.001+01:00

LAST Friday, the government finally issued a response to the 2,407 petitioners who asked the Prime Minister to instruct Haringey Council not to sell Alexandra Palace to a property developer. The petition closed on 27 February 2009. Three months later the Prime Minister's office responded :

The Government takes the view that local authorities should be given the primary responsibility for any land disposals they undertake, including disposals made by the granting of a lease. Local authorities have general and discretionary powers under section 123 of the Local Government Act 1972 to dispose of land in any manner they wish.

This view wholly ignores several relevant factors.

First, this local authority (Haringey) does not own the land that they are seeking to dispose of. In law, the owners are the beneficiaries of a Charity, i.e. us, the public. This is quite different from where the council is a freehold owner of land. The Trustee and Charity were referred to in the petition details and the government is mistaken.

Second, the Palace is the principal asset of a Charity. With Alexandra Palace, the Local Government Act to which the government refers, is in conflict with the law of Charity and Trust and although not yet tested in court, we believe that the former is unlikely to take precedence over the latter. The law of Trust is older and better established than the Local Government Act, and it deals in fundamental principles of law in contrast to administrative local authority legislation.

Thirdly, the government seems unconcerned that Haringey has acted recklessly over many aspects of the sale and together with the Charity Commission, acted unlawfully in important respects. They ignore both the High Court judgement and the conduct of Haringey Council.

The Government does not have a role in policing the land disposals made by local authorities and the Secretary of State’s for Communities and Local Government only statutory function in relation to section 123 - and hence her only power- is to give or refuse consent to a proposed disposal where the authority will receive less than the best consideration that can reasonably be obtained which is usually the open market value of the site.

Best consideration and open market value. Given the unlawfulness of Haringey's approach to the sale, money value is a second-order consideration. Putting that aside, it is impossible to gauge whether the council achieved best consideration (value). The Lease & related documents were kept secret at the time of the public consultation.

To this day, all financial details remain secret. Although Haringey were instructed by the Information Commissioner to release the Lease, all financial information was allowed to remain redacted (censored).

An "open market" value was never tested and did not exist. The rumoured sale price of Alexandra Palace was £1.5m, which is the probably less than the value of a couple of houses behind Alexandra Palace. Some might think this a poor price, even at face value. It is also understood that the council hoped to share in Firoka's profits. The likelihood of Haringey's developer-of-last-resort disclosing significant profits available for sharing with the council, can only be a matter for speculation, given the absence of documentation and perhaps, Firoka's reputation.

When carrying out land transactions, local authorities should act within the law and with due regard to their general fiduciary duty to their taxpayers. But within these constraints local authorities are free to undertake property disposals as they see fit.

Again, this ignores completely the Trustee's duty to the beneficiaries of the Charity, which is related to the reason why the attempted disposal failed in the High Court, i.e. the need for the Charity Commission to hold a genuine public consultation that was fair, unflawed and fully informed.

Since the High Court Judge's decision to quash the Lease turned on the promise (for full open public consultation) of a Minister in Parliament, and which promise was ignored by Haringey, one might have expected the Government to take this matter seriously and to understand the issues. Particularly since they involve promises and integrity.

It is disappointing that the government appears wholly indifferent to the fate of the first television studios in the world, as this aspect does not merit the slightest reference.

The response from the Prime Ministers Office is hasty, shoddy, ignorant, misleading and disingenuous – a bit like the reasons advanced by Haringey Council's to justify the sale.

Firoka to sue Alexandra Palace Trust Board

2009-03-31T12:00:00.002+01:00

Firoka to sue Alexandra Palace Trust Board, or
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

I SEE Haringey Council's "preferred development partner" for Alexandra Palace (Firoka) is now to sue the AP Trust/Haringey over the failed sale. The Trust is controlled by Haringey and the claim on our Charity's funds is in effect, a claim on taxpayer cash.

Firoka's claim is probably without merit. We are of course unaware of any still-secret side agreements, such as possible indemnities over the sale falling through, given by Haringey Council to Firoka. That would be a disaster for our Charity. Regardless, we must all hope that the council will resist this vigorously, in court if necessary and preferably with a counter-suit.

From the outset, both parties (Council and Firoka) were aware, or should have been aware, that if the sale of Alexandra Palace to Firoka was to 'succeed', then two conditions had to be met:

A public Consultation by the Charity Commission (before an Order to sell) that was fair and unflawed; and then that
A Judicial Review (within three months of the Order) did not happen, or if it did happen, that it did not succeed in quashing the Lease.

Each of these points was surely well understood by both sets of richly-rewarded legal advisors to the two development partners, Haringey & Firoka. But neither of these events transpired. Both development partners knowingly took the risk of ignoring these factors and just hoped the deal would go through. Both parties acted unwisely.

The two partners knew, or should have known, of the promise of full, open public consultation about any sale by a Government Minister. The promise was made in a debate in Parliament about AP, specifically to assuage concerns raised about the proposed sale. But Haringey is a law unto itself.

Both partners were aware that their shady deal was against the public interest; both partners were keen to minimize public scrutiny of the Lease and both partners were keen on maximum secrecy. Even if that secrecy led to actions by the Charity Commission, that was later ruled in the High Court, to be unlawful (The Judge awarded costs against Haringey because of their conduct).

Both parties are responsible for the fact the Lease was quashed by a Judge but Firoka alone is responsible for not reviving the sale, because they resisted seven months of pleading by Haringey to resume talks.

As a member of the public, I politely asked Haringey for a copy of the Lease in good time in early December 2006. The belated response from Haringey's politicized Legal Services Department comprised excuses, prevarication and dissembling: and no Lease.

The Lease to Firoka was cynically withheld from the public until the Charity Commission Consultation ended on 5 January 2007 (a point noted by the Judge). A severely redacted version was later released by the deeply wretched Legal Services Department of the council.

An almost complete Lease (without financial data) came one year later, but only after the Information Commissioner directed Haringey to release. The Commissioner agreed that Haringey's excuses "were not engaged" (i.e. were wrong).

Firoka were complicit with the Trust Board in the risk-taking of keeping the Lease secret during the Charity Commission's Consultation. We have Mr. Kassam's own Witness Statement to the High Court as evidence for his keenness on "commercial confidentiality" or in layman's terms, secrecy.

[NB relevant extracts from Kassam's Witness Statement at the bottom.
This is in the public domain]

Mr. Kassam was not relying solely on "suggestion" from the Trust about the risks of openness, as he disingenuously asserts in his Witness Statement: he has his own legal advisors to tell him what might be involved in a Statutory Consultation over the sale of a major public asset and of the possibility of a Judicial Review.

This is another sorry chapter in the saga of our Haringey-controlled Charitable Trust. The poor judgement will go on until low-quality governance by local councillors is replaced with an independent Board. The current Board is populated mainly by placemen-councillors, some of whom are of no more than average ability.

This Board, which does not start by overflowing with talent, has long been the victim of poor legal advice. That the Trust Board pretended that predictable legal requisites would not happen is their own folly, aided and abetted by the long-time AP Trust Solicitor. The same Trust Solicitor who guided the Trust through the botched sale, is to try to resist Firoka's law suit.

If a lawyer is at least as concerned about protecting his own record as he is of his client, can he be expected to give the best possible advice? Is now not just the right time that the Board had the benefit of fresh, independent and competent legal advice?

The Lease negotiated by Haringey with Firoka overwhelmingly served the interests of the latter and from this, Kassam will know that Haringey is both feeble and has indifferent legal advice.

The wily chancer Kassam will be aware of Haringey's aversion to embarrassment, accountability and responsibility. He will literally be Banking on the council's reluctance to fight his absurd claim in open public court.

---

The relevant parts of Mr. Kassam's Witness Statement to the High Court:

"
(3) ... For the avoidance of any doubt I (and my fellow Directors) fully support all the efforts made by the Charity Commission and the Trustees of Alexandra Park and Palace ("the Trustees") in these proceedings.

(7) ... If, during these negotiations, the Trustees had suggested to me that, as part of the consultation process which the Charity Commission had agreed to undertake prior to granting the required Order, the lease (and perhaps the other associated documents) would need to be disclosed in full for public scrutiny, I would have been extremely uncomfortable and would have seriously considered walking away from the project at that stage".

Haringey Council to write-off £37 million

2009-02-21T19:44:00.009Z

NO, not the £37 million that Charles Adje (cabinet member for resources) and his colleagues put into Icelandic banks. It's a different £37 million and the "losses" have accumulated over the past 20-odd years.

Only 13 years after having been directed to do so by the government, Haringey Council will finally do the right thing and write-off the supposed debt of £37 million that our charity (Alexandra Palace) owes to the Council. The formal writing-off will be effected in an obfuscatory and bureaucratic fashion by the AP Trust Board, stuffed with councillors, in a public Board meeting on Tuesday night (24–ii–09).

The money that Haringey has claimed our charity owed it, is the matrimonial equivalent of a husband invoicing his wife for rent and a house-extension, plus bills for his smoking, drinking and gambling. She needs a divorce!

In a most important letter of 02–v–96, the Government Treasury Solicitor ruled that a majority of the expenses Haringey claimed over AP was not reasonably and properly incurred for the benefit of our Charity (the total that Haringey set fire to was larger: a figure of £100 million has been mentioned in Parliament. There's little to show for it).

Haringey, being Haringey, never accepted that damning conclusion, because it would amount to admitting their own failings. The council has misrepresented the TS letter, drawing attention to the minority of expenses that were allowed to be "indemnified".

Long-time Haringey residents will remember that this "debt" initially related to the Palace re-building costs after the 1980 fire, over which the council lost control. Interest was piled on top, waste and financial mis-management added much more over the years, and then interest was added to that too. Is it any wonder that our Palace has been able to be represented as loss-making?

The discussion document is dressed up and disguised in jargon by the general manager ("Charity Indemnification" of LBH), but the council has finally recognized the reality, that this so-called debt is, and has been, utter nonsense.

The council probably took this decision internally several weeks ago. The council's instrument, the rubber-stamp AP Board, can be expected to make (effectively ratify) the decision publically on Tuesday night. This is not how a Charitable Trust Board is supposed to work, where Trustees' first duty is to the Charity. If in the past, Board members had acted in accordance with Trust Law, they would never have agreed to these debts in the first place.

Those who understand the principles of double-entry bookkeeping will apprehend the oddity (since 2006/7) of the council's books no longer recording this as an asset, but on the other side, the books of their instrument the Trust Board, saying this huge "debt" continued to be owed to the council. This is Alice-in-Wonderland-accounting, Haringey-style.

Does this volte-face have anything to do with the fact that the minority group on the Trust Board, refused to sign the scandalous accounts at the last Board meeting, but the council still rammed them through, without full agreement?

The £3m Adje-loss is to disappear!

Is this wiping of the slate clean related to a need to bury the three million pound loss during the Licence-to-Firoka period, a Licence that was sought by none other than the current head of Haringey's finances?

Has Councillor Charles Adje approved the burial of the Adje-loss?!

We need an independent Trust Board, with independent Trustees.

SAP's petition to the PM closes in one week

2009-02-19T19:06:00.007Z

The Save Ally Pally campaign's petition to the PM,
about Haringey Council & Alexandra Palace, is closing soon

THE PETITION to the Prime Minister, about stopping Haringey selling Alexandra Palace to a property developer, has been running for almost 12 months and now has fewer than seven days to go before closing.

The SAP petition was worded so as to be against sale to any property developer, rather than to a particular one. SAP foresaw the possibility of Firoka dropping out (as they did, eventually). For a long time and especially during the official "consultation" period, the details of the sale were concealed from the public by Haringey Council, but since February 2008, the most sensitive parts of the Lease to Firoka, the User Clauses, have been on public display on the PM's petition web-site – see the petition, under More Details from Petition Creator.

The extracts were provided not only to show egregious samples of what was in the agreed Lease at the time with Firoka, but also to show examples of what Haringey, in its reckless desperation, was (might still be?) prepared to agree to, in order to further their "asset disposal" of our Charitable Trust, as a "developer shell".

Although Haringey Council is unlikely to attempt such a stunt again in the short- or medium-term, they have never apologised nor officially renounced the flog-it policy. Anyone would suppose Haringey had never suffered comprehensive defeat in the High Court (5/10/07), with scathing criticism from the Judge about their conduct and that of the Charity Commission.

Currently, the petition has gathered more than 1,450 signatures, including the relevant local MP (Lynne Featherstone). At the closing date of 27 February 2009, this petition is likely to have the highest, or second-highest, number of signatures in the category Government, politics and public administration.

Because the SAP petition has more than 200 signatures,

"it will be passed to officials who work for the Prime Minister in Downing Street, or sent to the relevant Government department for a response. Every person who signs such a petition will receive an email detailing the Government's response to the issues raised."

IS the Council saying that our Charity is to blame for the £3m Firoka sham Licence?

2009-01-13T10:19:00.005Z

THE LEADER of Haringey Council, Ms Clare Kober, and the Director of Corporate Resources, Julie Parker are called on to stop the mounting pressure that is being placed on the Trustees of the Alexandra Park and Palace Trust (our Charity) to sign the wholly unsatisfactory draft accounts.

At the Special Board meeting on Tuesday 6^th January 2009 the Trustees were placed under considerable influence from Trust Solicitor Iain Harris and Council Officers to agree the accounts with only trivial changes, and sign within 48 hours. It would seem the trustees are not being advised as trustees, but as councillors.

The Trustees have a statutory duty of care to safeguard our Charity and its assets. Signing the accounts as they currently stand is likely to lead to a Breach of Trust by the current board. Trustees, according the Trust Law, are personally responsible if not liable, for their actions.

The Trustees, who are also Councillors, were instructed by Trust Solicitor Iain Harris in a September 2008 letter attached to the Walklate Report that they should leave politics behind when acting as trustees, and putting their fiduciary trustee duties first and foremost when representing our Charity. They are now being pressured into making decisions that are not in the best interests of our Charity.

The Council, as the main Trustee, has the responsibility to prove that any expenditure was reasonably and properly incurred on behalf of our Charity.

The accounts relate to the eight months of the Firoka unlawful occupation which lead to a £3 million loss to our Charity. This occupation was authorised by a temporary Licence that was investigated by the Walklate report that found that the Board of Trustees had not approved the final version of the licence. Furthermore the Licence was issued for three months but was actually allowed to run for eight months which exacerbated the financial losses. Our Charity has not seen any of the income generated during the Firoka occupation whilst the Council has paid all salaries and expenses.

The ice rink (which normally produces a substantial and direct income to our Charity) was wrongly transferred to Firoka as a result of the unapproved Licence. It made up a substantial part of the £3 million loss whereas in the previous year, it had contributed £1 million to our Charity's fund. The ice rink is a charitable activity – a legal term meaning that only The Board of Trustees has the authority to transfer it. It was only after Firoka's occupation and losses having been incurred that the decision was made to transfer it to APTL – a limited company and trading arm of our Charity. The accounts as they stand incorrectly state the ice rink status at the time of the occupation.

A second report, Walklate 2, it is understood, has been commissioned by the Trustees to investigate the financial impact of the unapproved licence and how to recoup the losses. This report is due, we are told, in February. It is premature and imprudent for the auditors and Trustees to finalise the accounts before this second report is out.

The pressure that is now being placed on Trustees to sign the accounts looks suspiciously like the old regime and the Council wishing to exonerate itself for the financial mismanagement of Alexandra Palace under the occupation by its ex-preferred partner Firoka, when it was the Council who insisted on the sale to Firoka by whatever means. Further, the Council seems to wish to perpetuate the myth that Alexandra Palace is debt-ridden and therefore unattractive to potential investors and partners in our Charity.

This is yet another example of the conflict of interest here, whereby the Trustees are also Councillors. It is clearly time for the trusteeship of Alexandra Palace to be made independent of politics and be run competently for true public benefit.

Firoka is out for good

2008-08-19T17:52:00.009+01:00

The Alexandra Palace Trust issued the following
press release this afternoon (19 August 2008):

The Alexandra Palace Charitable Trust has received notification from Firoka Ltd that the developer is no longer interested in being involved in the future of Alexandra Palace.

This comes after over a year of negotiations between the Trust and Developer.

Matt Cooke, Chair of Trustees, said:

'As this option for moving forward closes I am determined that we will grasp the opportunity this now gives us to explore new ways of realising our objective of securing Ally Pally's future in an exciting and sustainable way.

'I will be taking proposals to the next meeting of the Board which will be about that future and learning the lessons of recent months, years and decades. The Trustees will now focus on reviewing the various options open to them in order to ensure that the charitable objectives of public resort and recreation are maintained. We will take this opportunity to ask the difficult questions and seek realistic proposals for the Palace's future.

'During this period of negotiation we have not been idle and a tremendous amount of work has been done in reinvigorating our trading company culminating in the appointment of a new Managing Director last week. This work gives us a solid foundation for the future - a future which could be tremendously exciting for the Palace.

'Local people and beyond see pure potential in the Palace, and we have a duty to Haringey and all of London to secure and realise this tremendous asset's future.'

Secrecy in Council decision-making

2008-07-24T19:57:00.002+01:00

Or, Alexandra Palace and the code of omertà about the sale

THE intense secrecy pervading the sale of Alexandra Palace continues. The Palace is a Charity, paid for by all of us and whose beneficiaries are all of us. But its disposal, as a Developer Shell by Haringey Council to their favoured property developer, doesn’t feel like simply the sale of surplus land.

The sale is treated with all the secrecy of a big arms deal to a dodgy third-world dictator. Replete with bribes, kick-backs, immorality and government-subsidy, together with excuses of ‘commercial confidentiality’ – unlawful, but said to be in the interests of National Security. It’s surprising the press hasn’t been slapped with a D-notice!

Again and again, the Council uses commercial confidentiality to excuse the mystery about the deal. This is despite the fact that entering into these arrangements was ruled unlawful in the High Court last October and not least, because these arrangements were in defiance of the specific promise of a Government Minister in Parliament in 2004. The shady deal is currently stalled; since the High Court defeat, the silence from the developer himself has been deafening.

Even some Trustees of the main Trust Board have difficulty obtaining basic information from the coterie of council-cronies who control our charity.

Sometimes it is possible for the public to attend an entire Trust Board meeting. But often press and public are told to leave when the meeting agenda reaches Exempt Items. The items the council wants to conceal from the public are always labelled Exempt. These are said to be commercially sensitive but are probably politically sensitive or just plain embarrassing. They might reveal details of council ineptitude and the level of quality of the legal advice that the Council receives.

Some of the current negotiations about the sale of a Lease of 125 years, are believed to be about the need to provide for full disclosure (during the required Public Consultation) and to maintain commercial confidentiality (!)

Month after month, the general manager provides either verbal or written reports which say that there is nothing to report. The Council has been furnished with an Opinion from leading Charity Counsel, that shows that any Lease of AP cannot be solely for commercial purposes. But Haringey is unable to face the fact that this unlawful deal has to be called off.

What little information is released to the public, is carefully channelled and spun via the PR firm Lexington Communications, which our council-controlled Trust has employed at great cost since January 2005.

As for the two nominally autonomous committees which might be expected to have a say about the future of our Palace, the Council cares little what they might say. Nonetheless, the Council has artfully managed to muzzle those two watch dogs: the Statutory Advisory and the Consultative Committees.

Haringey council corrupts their proper independent functioning, by inviting favoured members of those committees to have access to documents on the strict condition that they are sworn to secrecy. By granting access to some members of those committees, the council divides those committees and extends the conspiracy of silence.

Those members selected for access will feel special and privileged and may do more than just keep quiet. They are likely to stifle any reservations they may have had and defend council policies against attack. But by agreeing to such restrictions, these members loose any basis for arguing that the documentation should be open to all, as it should be. Their position is compromised and their independence is shot. The Council has deployed the insidious technique of omertà in order to pervert both committees.

Each committee is also dependent on the council organisation for resources and facilities including venue, Minutes, administration and legal “advice”. The Consultative committee is chaired by the same Councillor who chairs both the main Trust Board and the Palace’s trading company.

Secrecy in local government is probably never likely to lead to good, well-rounded decisions. It can cover-up mistakes. An absence of scrutiny allows a culture of waste and inefficiency to develop. Councillors and council officers, of course, feel more comfortable in such a climate but it is not good governance.

• £3 mlln. loss to Council at Alexandra Palace Trust

2008-07-16T15:47:00.019+01:00

IT IS REPORTED there is a £3,000,000 hole in the Council’s accounts caused by losses at the Alexandra Palace Trust. Mismanagement has been a chronic problem at the Council-controlled Trust, but the past year saw a ballooning of waste, mistakes and irresponsibility. The Council recklessly tried to give our Palace as a ‘developer shell’ to their favoured property developer (Firoka). And now the Charity Commission has opened a case about the matter, with two officers appointed.

The Trustees’ decision last year, to grant a temporary trading licence to Firoka, was like agreeing to sell one’s house for say, £1.5m. Then, on the day of Exchange-of-Contract, handing the keys over and giving vacant possession—without waiting for completion. All this, without taking any deposit, let alone receiving the purchase price.

Then, after you move out, you continue to pay the rates, gas, electricity, phone and insurance bills on your old house. You also still pay the wages of your old cook, cleaner and the gardener at your former home. And you pay for an odd-job man, plumber and electrician just as the new ‘owner’ requires. To do this, you’d have to be either a half-wit or Haringey Council.

The councillor-trustees agreed—probably unlawfully—to a similar sketch for our charity. With this background, is it any wonder that Firoka enjoyed such a long, profitable time in our house at our expense, before the Council reluctantly evicted them?

Despite spending three quarters of a million pounds on their own lawyers, the council appears meekly to have just signed every document placed in front of them by Firoka’s lawyers.

In May 2007, the current Trust Chairman inherited problems from the previous AP chairman, in the recurring cycle of this depressing saga. As the chairman has now been reappointed for another 12 months, sooner or later he and his fellow Trustees ought to begin to take responsibility. The likelihood is that in another 12 months the chalice will be passed on, without progress, to another set of inattentive amateurs.

As for this year’s £3.1 million loss that Haringey taxpayers are expected to make good, the chairman had this to say, probably drafted by Lexington Communications, the PR company employed by our charity:

“The Palace’s accounts are always discussed in open forum and this years’ discussions were no different, these figure have been a matter of public record for months. As unanimously agreed by councillors, a provisional deficit of £3.1 million is in line with the revised budget allocation confirmed by Haringey Council in the last financial year. Alexandra Palace Charitable Trust’s accounts are currently in draft and will be audited and agreed later this year as normal.”

Lexington’s language in effect means, ‘move along, there’s nothing to see here’. In attempting to pass off this huge loss as business-as-usual, the Board Chairman is correct in this respect: the poor decisions by the Councillor-Trustees are typical and they will continue – as long as Trustees are Councillors. A disaster is presented as not merely normal, its almost a matter for celebration. A unanimous vote that there is a deficit, is almost a triumph.

It seems presumptuous to state ahead of time and publicly, that the accounts … will be audited and agreed. An auditor of a private sector company would rightly take umbrage at such a statement, which no real CEO would be likely to make. Auditors are supposed to be independent. The chairman’s statement seems intended either to intimidate the auditor (as the trust bullies the Charity Commission), or it demonstrates little regard for the importance of the auditor’s function as an objective check on the Trust accounts.

The chairman also stated categorically that “We are not subject to any investigation by the Charity Commission”. And yet, when a member of the public asked the Council for an unredacted copy of the licence that permitted Firoka to occupy our palace, it was refused in writing by the Council itself, on the grounds that there was an on-going investigation. The apparent contradiction of this with the chairman’s statement, could be accounted for, if the running of our charitable trust by the Council is the subject of investigations by multiple regulatory agencies.

Most of the Trustees take little interest in this multi-million pound business. Trustees that do try to take an interest, are obstructed in obtaining the most basic information from the coterie of council-cronies who control our charity. One Trustee was informed that he would need to complete a formal Freedom of Information application to obtain a basic document.

Obsessive secrecy has long been a feature of this unfit-for-purpose body and the lack of scrutiny has led to huge losses. One bad decision begets and another bad decision. As a whole, the Trust Board has no shame and take no responsibility for their ineptitude. Meanwhile the opportunities of a community-based solution are brushed aside and council tax payer pick up the bloated bill for bungling.

Edited version
"Bill for Bungling has passed £3m"
Ham&High Broadway

'Pally finances still in disarray'
published in Hornsey Journal,

16 July 2008

• A Civic Centre Casino – regeneration benefits?

2008-07-09T19:01:00.004+01:00

HARINGEY Council intends shifting the Civic Centre up the road to Woodside House. Which leaves the big question of what to do with the old Civic Centre in Wood Green High Road?

This unlovely, uncared-for building needs re-development. Our Council Leader describes the current Civic Centre as “increasingly unfit for current requirements and inefficient, with an escalating maintenance bill.” As for future use, Cllr. Meehan said: “And we can deliver further regeneration benefits by releasing the existing civic centre site for an appropriate development.”

Has the Council considered converting the Civic Centre into a casino? Some councillors argued the case for a casino at Alexandra Palace in 2006, but were thwarted, at least temporarily.

The Council Chamber (renamed Casino Mayorale), would be a grand setting for roulette tables. The game with the highest stakes could be sited under the Mayoral dias, with one-arm bandits located where backbench councillors now sit. The long committee-room wing could house a large number of fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs), known colloquially as the crack-cocaine of gambling.

Necessary modifications would include: removal of any clocks; blacking out of windows, plentiful cheap food available on site and lots of lavatories. The big car park at the rear would encourage punters to come from beyond Haringey, enabling our Council to tax the residents of neighbouring Boroughs! Punters could be dropped off at the front porch by taxis and chauffeurs, just like the side entrance of the Ritz casino.

According to the Council report of 2006 Casino proposal at Alexandra Palace, a “Small Casino” would be permitted to have up to 80 category B gaming machines with a maximum jackpot of £4,000. But the volume of the Civic Centre would surely be sufficient to house a Large or Regional facility? The report argued strongly for the regeneration benefits of a casino at Alexandra Palace, saying that the impact of a casino at Alexandra Palace “would be of particular benefit to black and minority ethnic communities and socially excluded neighbourhoods,” so what is the Council waiting for? It surely follows that the larger the gambling premises, the greater the regeneration benefit?

The profits to the Council—and possibly to some Councillor supporters—would be huge and would take pressure off CPZ’s and parking fines as a means of lifting Council income (the social and family cost of such a facility is harder to quantify).

There would be no difficulty in obtaining a licence. The Council would apply to itself for a gambling premises licence just as it did with Alexandra Palace (the charitable trust it controls). Any licensing committee Hearing could be arranged to be chaired by one of the councillor casino-advocates, who might then finally get the full casino they want. We can find a precedent for that in the permission the Council gave itself in April for the off-track betting premises licence at Alexandra Palace.

Fortunately, gambling is not linked to crime. (Or at least, that’s what we were told by a solicitor acting for the licence Applicant at that Hearing, the Council-controlled company Alexandra Palace Trading Ltd.).

A Civic Centre Casino would be a fitting use for premises that have seen such gaming in the past and such gambling with the future of the Borough.

Beware bogus charity operating in this area

2008-06-25T00:56:00.002+01:00

HARINGEY residents should beware of a bogus charity operating in this area. Using fraudulent claims, it has fleeced donors for huge sums over a long time, with the scam reaching a new intensity last year. Innocent donors do not suspect the true nature of this so-called “charitable” trust.

Do not hand over cash! Collectors for this charity are licensed by the Council but have been known to knock on doors and tell flat out untruths. Superficially respectable, they are easily identified by their pompous platitudes. Residents should close the door and refuse to believe claims made by it’s representatives.

Why should residents disbelieve it’s statements? Like all charities, this one has charitable aims and objectives, but unlike real charities, long ago these aims were forgotten. There is practically no charitable activity.

One example of the perversion of charitable aims occurred on Fireworks night last year. Donors had already paid for the fireworks for a display in a nearby park. Normally its costs are offset by profits from trading activities, but collectors held out plastic buckets into which the public were invited to make additional donations. Where did this cash go?

Unlike most charities, this one owns a valuable asset, rich in history and paid for (£100m?) over the years by donors. But it has been badly neglected. The trustees have been quietly trying to sell this huge asset, for a nominal sum, for property development. This would forever preclude any chance of fulfilling the original charitable aims.

The Charity’s solicitor has written to the Charity Commission, asserting that “casino use does fall within the objects of the Charity as a recreational activity”. The Salvation Army, this charity is not!

In most respects, this charity is run as a private limited company. Unlike most boards of directors, this one rips off its shareholders. It is self-perpetuating and in practice is run for the benefit of its top-heavy senior management and professional advisor-hangers-on.

It is this Borough’s largest expense account. One of the ways it can be distinguished from most charities is by the fact that the Trustees pay themselves cash out of charity funds. It’s fine by the rules under which they operate, but dubious under Charity rules. It conducts much of its business in secret.

Trustees are transitory and are not appointed for their professional expertise. One was overheard to say “I don’t know what’s going on” – they do not take responsibility for mistakes that have cost its donors dearly.

The ‘donors’ are every resident and taxpayer in Haringey. The charity is part of a municipal empire and its name is Alexandra Park & Palace (registered charity no: 281991). It’s trustees are Haringey Council.

Recall at Amnesia Palace

2008-05-29T11:47:00.009+01:00

Or, does Alexandra Palace cause memory loss?

SOME TIME AGO, the Alexandra Palace Trust Solicitor claimed that our charity had never made a profit in “living memory”. This was a curious phrase, but it does contain a clue to a peculiar condition affecting council officials who control our Palace.

The Trust’s solicitor clean forgot that the AP trading company made operating profits in several years and in the 10 years to 2006, was modestly profitable overall.

In the first Board meeting after the High Court stalled the sale of AP, the Trust Solicitor told Trustees said that the Lease had been made available to the public – but forgot that the Lease was deliberately concealed at the time of the Charity Commission’s Public Consultation and a redacted version was made available, only later.

Memory loss is normally associated with old age, but the Council officials responsible for our Palace seem to be affected prematurely.

What is the evidence for Memory-Loss Alexandra Palace Syndrome (M-LAPS)?

The AP sale documents were so secret that the Trust’s beneficiaries (us public) were not allowed to see a single page during the Charity Commission’s Public Consultation in December 2006. The Council stated they were subject to “commercial confidentiality”.

But in a Council debate about AP’s future in July last year, the Chairman of the Trust said that it was “all in the public domain”. He had no recollection of any Council secrecy over the sale.

Our young chairman appears the worst afflicted by M-LAPS. The plans for a casino at AP remain a total blank. He said to me and others that a casino was a “myth”, but forgot it’s on Firoka’s architects’ drawings.

During the recent mayoral election, the chairman of our charitable trust was out canvassing for Ken. At least one Wood Green resident was told on the doorstep that, it is written into the Lease that it would be illegal to have a casino on the premises (!?). This is a big confusion.

If the chairman had read the Lease, then he completely forgot that, in the four brief paragraphs of clause 3.12 Restrictions affecting use of the Premises, there is not a word about casinos. But the lease is not silent on the subject of casinos: seven short paragraphs earlier (3.11.2.6), the Borough of Haringey expressly gives permission to Firoka for use as a small casino.

The AP chair has insisted that a casino cannot happen, but the poor chap forgot that his own council already gave permission in the legally binding Lease. And this was drafted and agreed after the council executive voted against applying for a casino licence in 2006 at Golden Alexandra Palace. Such a muddle could cost taxpayers money if Haringey does renege on that contractual promise.

(The Council reminds us of the executive’s ad hoc decision not to apply for a casino licence at one time. But they forget that there has been no Full Council Resolution to institute a no-casino policy, leaving the door open to the casino wanted by at least one Member of the Executive, Councillor Lister.)

The forgotten Victorian Theatre, magically preserved in a time warp seems to have been overlooked by the Trust Board and may face an uncertain future with the Council’s favoured property developer, along with the Willis organ. Both were largely ignored in the ‘holistic’ sale of the entire building to the property developer.

Everyone associated with the property disposal overlooks that the so-called “old” and “disused” studios, are in fact the first television studios in the world. But the area of BBC Studios A & B are remembered in the plans: they’re earmarked for office space.

After prompting, the chairman managed to remember that the Lease gives permission for an office in the building, but due to chronic M-LAPS, he could not recall that it is to be 30,000 square feet’s worth of commercial office space in our charity’s premises.

THE CHAIRMAN's Xmas blog promised more openness and information. Months later, that is forgotten. The Trust Board always remembers how to exclude the press and public from the parts of meetings that are exempt (i.e. secret and embarrassing), but forgets that our Charitable Trust was set up for the benefit of the public.

Was M-LAPS responsible for the failure to renew the temporary licence to Firoka, whose Period expired on 1st August 2007, but whose occupation – and hyper-profits – lasted another five months before their eviction?

Is there something debilitating in the building that induces M-LAPS? Is it asbestos dust? Perhaps the world’s first television mast emits magnetic pulses which erase parts of Councillors’ memories. Or is it stress and exhaustion that causes M-LAPS at Amnesia Palace?

Published
Ham & High
29 May 2008

• Is the Firoka deal dead or not?

2008-05-01T08:07:00.007+01:00

THE CHAIRMAN of the Alexandra Palace Board of Trustees (for at least another month) recently wrote that “the Trust continues to explore” how to achieve the significant investment needed for the palace.

This may or may not be news to Firoka, the property developer with which the London Borough of Haringey signed a 125 year lease for our charity’s asset.

For some time now, the Trust and its PR company Lexington have claimed that Firoka will deliver £75m or £55m or - most recently – £45 million of “investment”. Why does the exploration for cash continue? Has the Trust in fact lost its way?

The contract with Firoka specifically promises a Casino in the User Clause section. Despite much obfuscatory bluster, this is not denied. The chairman has not yet offered an explanation for the casino clause or even acknowledged it. Is the reason for no comment that this Clause is a matter of embarrassment to the Council? Perhaps the next chairman will address it.

Another sign the deal is dead is that the Chairman has, for the first time, publicly opined that the casino “would be totally inappropriate at the Palace”. Is the reason that this was not said earlier, because of a fear of offending Mr Kassam, who insisted that there was the promise of a casino in the contract? But if the whole deal is off, it is now safe to make such a bold statement? Is this leadership?

If a casino fails to materialize at AP, it will be because either the whole Firoka deal is off or because Haringey renege on its promise to Firoka of a casino in the legally enforceable lease. The later to cost the Council a lot of money, but hey, its only our money they would pay to Firoka in damages!

For the past two years, the Council has described Firoka as its “Preferred Development Partner”

When Firoka were evicted from Alexandra Palace in December, following their unlawful occupation, the Trust issued some kind of ultimatum to Firoka.

This was followed in January with what the chairman then described as receipt from Firoka of a statement expressing the “clarity” the Trustees had been seeking and “fresh commitment” from their preferred partner. The commitment that was fresh then, now looks stale and even rancid.

And recently we heard a renewed offer to takeover AP from the current London Mayor, in which the Haringey council leader expressed glee and interest. Is this another signal the Firoka deal is dead?

The chairman is keen on always being clear, or at least saying he wants to be clear. Can he please clarify whether or not the Firoka deal is on or off? Will the Trust proceed with the Firoka deal or consign it to the dustbin where it always belonged? The uncertainty is not helpful and some of the Trust’s concerned beneficiaries would like to know.

The chairman’s commitment to openness “in the coming months” was first made last Christmas, four months ago. Since then we have had the normal secretiveness and repeated exclusion of press and public whenever there needs to be discussed something that is politically embarrassing. The public – the beneficiaries – needs fewer vacuous platitudes and more information from this shady Trust.

Published
Hornsey Journal
30 April 2007

Essential discipline

2008-04-15T12:00:00.004+01:00

… But in a statement defending the spending Alexandra Palace Trading Company said:

"In the context of attempting to secure this massive investment to restore the Palace, we think people will understand that associated costs on advisers, legal fees and other expertise is money well spent.

The figures from this pressure group conflate spending with several different firms of advisers in several different essential disciplines over several years. It would be bizarre to suggest that the senior management and Trustees would have gone into a £45million negotiation with a property developer without legal advice, or that the trust does not merit the best advisers in essential areas.

Such claims just show how those focused on a single issue don't 'get' what it is going to take to really save Alexandra Palace".

Statement made to Ham and High newspaper
10 April 2008

Comment:

THE STATEMENT from the Alexandra Palace Trading Company, defending the blazing spending again comes from a unnamed spokesperson. The statement uses PR phraseology and almost certainly comes from APTL’s expensive public affairs company, Lexington Communications. This PR company specializes in crisis management and are themselves a big part of the burning of our cash (£182 k worth of smoke and rising).

Yet again, the AP Trustees hide behind anonymous spin doctors instead of taking personal responsibility for their decisions.

APTL-Lexington’s argument, in essence, is that the big spending is a sprat to catch a mackerel; that the millions already gone are justified because they will gain much more from the sale. If this was truly the context, the spending might make sense.

First, the sale price is reported to be a derisory £1.5 million – a sum never denied by APTL and a sum now well exceeded by the sale costs. Secondly, the “massive investment” intimated by Firoka has been variously reported as £75m, £55m and now £45 million (what is it?).

APTL knows how much of these fantastic sums, allegedly to restore the palace, that they have received so far: not one penny. All these figures are illusory and none of them will materialize.

Last year Firoka served notice that they reserved the right to withdraw without notice; not even a single penny of the agreed sale price was received. In their hearts, the members of the AP Board know the truth about the extent of good faith demonstrated so far by their ‘preferred development partner’.

What Lexington language cannot re-cast is the reputation, in Oxfordshire over many years, of the Developer-of-Last-Resort. The Kassam Stadium, the Oxford United Football club and the deal with Oxford City Council are all public information. If ordinary members of the public can Google about this, why didn’t our local Council exercise due diligence on the reliability and trustworthiness of their ‘preferred partner’?

Lexington would have us believe the Trust Board has behaved responsibly. Nothing could be further from the truth! We think people will understand this by reading the High Court Judgment and the latest set of Alexandra Palace accounts.

The PR company adapts the truth when they say “the figures [have come] from this pressure group". As Lexington well know, the figures were required to be supplied by law from Haringey Council. They were provided unlawfully late and only after formal request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Lexington insinuate that SAP have exaggerated the wasteful spending. They try to minimize the size of the bonfire by saying that the figures conflate spending over “several” years – as stated, these figures are for the 24 months to November 2007. They may under-represent spending on the fire-sale, because there will have been sale-related spending before and after this period. The extent of spending on APTL’s law firm Bates Wells and Braithwaite is unknown and not included, because although asked for under the FoI Act, it was declined with flimsy excuse.

Lexington described the spending as being on “essential disciplines”. Interesting choice of words – would that be like the discipline the Council exercised over the Palace rebuilding costs in the 1980s or are we expected to believe that spending is now under strict discipline? The only discipline that is essential, is a flogging of the AP Board for wasting so much of our money!

Most of us would be wise to seek good legal advice if buying or selling property. It might be thought unsurprising that a PR firm raises in this context the subject of the need for legal advice.

It beggars belief that a PR company, even one specializing in crisis management, would have the brass neck to imply that in this case, the £800k plus spent on law firms, has been money well spent on the best advice and expertise.

Thanks to the Judicial Review, some of the veil of obsessive secrecy over the agreed Lease was lifted. We now know that this was a disastrous deal for the public who are the beneficiaries of the Trust. For all the protection we have, the Lease might as well have been written by the property developer’s lawyers (as it was) – and then simply signed by the Council without legal representation. That would have saved a lot of money. The £800,000 of lawyers’ fees bought us … nothing.

It would be interesting to know what Lexington has charged us – via the our charity – for their 120-word sound-bite of distortion, but we probably won’t see a breakdown to that detail. At our cost, Lexington send an spin-doctor to each Alexandra Palace Board meeting. Lexington will soon have a real crisis management job to perform on behalf of their client and it will be interesting to see how fast they can really spin!

Finally, the PR company misrepresents the role of the Save Ally Group campaign group whom they describe, not for the first time, using typical Lexington-language as a ‘single issue’ group. The mouthpieces of slave-owners probably described William Wilberforce’s anti-slavery campaign as ‘single-issue’. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a single issue, especially if it’s a good one. The main focus of SAP is to oppose the Council’s shameful deal.

However, SAP’s aims also include the preservation of the world’s first television studios (so casually abandoned by Haringey) and safeguarding the ‘Father’ Willis Organ and the Victorian theatre. And not least, to change the trustees away from the transitory local Councillors who have proved so inept over so long. SAP has already presented a positive alternative, The Way Forward.

The present managers are living in a detached bureaucratic-world where they seem to believe the amount of paper that they and their lawyers generate is equal to the likelihood of the Firoka fire-sale going through. It is those currently in charge of AP who do not “get it”, that giving away our charity asset to The Property Developer-of-Last-Resort, does not count as saving it!

Trust the lawyers, charity begins at home

2008-04-11T06:36:00.004+01:00

MORE than £800,000 has been incinerated in Haringey Council’s futile attempt to sell our charity’s main asset, Alexandra Palace, by payments to law firms.

Via the Alexandra Palace Trust which it controls, Haringey has once again lost control in a firestorm of spending on lawyers. The following figures were obtained from the Council only after formal requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

They comprise £345,000 paid to the Trust Solicitor’s firm Howard Kennedy and a further £452,833 went up in smoke to Berwin Leighton Paisner (in both cases, only for the 24 months to November 2007). The monies paid to another law firm, Bates Wells and Braithwaite, is an undisclosed amount. All these law firms have a vested interest in flogging the dead horse of the sale of our People’s Palace.

On 13 February 2007 the Alexandra Palace Trust Solicitor wrote to the Charity Commission (para. 5.2.7):

“The Trustees accept the representations that the TV studios are part of the national heritage. However, the Trustees are without funds.”

But he could easily have added,

“but thankfully that problem doesn’t apply to my firm”.

The Trust’s Solicitor has enjoyed that role for many years. The regular turnover of Trustees, due to their being elected politicians, has meant that in practice, the persistent managers and advisors enjoy unusual and overweening power that they are able to exploit.

One of the reasons our Trust has less money than it would otherwise have, is because so much of our Charity’s cash has been transferred to the law firm hangers-on in connection with the flawed and failing attempt to sell the People’s Palace.

The Trust Solicitor guided the Trust through the field of Charity Law in the effort to dispose of AP to a property developer. The trail eventually lead to the High Court with the Trustees listed as the First Interested Party. Last year, the Trust’s Solicitor’s fees to our Charity were even larger than normal for two reasons.

Firstly, with the Judicial Review, the Trustee’s costs were run up in the belief (wrongly, as it turned out) that those costs would eventually be awarded against the Applicant, Jacob O’Callaghan. Secondly, not only was the Trust obliged to pay its own self-inflated costs, but the Judge also directed that the Trust, thanks to their conduct, must pay half the costs of Mr O’Callaghan.

Thus, the ordinary taxpayer has been burnt twice because of the conduct of the Trust and its principal legal advisor.

The process of needing to satisfy various statutes lead to an unusual situation which would be unfamiliar to many lawyers. It was at least as important to get the deal finished as to get a good deal for the client paying him (the Council controllers). In order to convince the Charity Commission of the merits of the case for sale, the lawyer advising his client as seller was also, in effect, representing the interests of the buyer.

We now know that it was a terrible deal for us public as beneficiaries of the Trust, whose interests appear to have been represented by no one.

This blurring of normal legal relationships lead to unusual representations. For example, on 7 July 2006, the Trust Solicitor wrote to the Charity Commission (extract from letter forced into the public domain thanks to the Judicial Review) arguing,

“that casino use does fall within the objects of the Charity as a recreational activity”.

Was he acting for us beneficiaries of the Trust, or for the property developer? The Council’s favoured property developer is well known to want a casino at Alexandra Palace and casino use was later specifically agreed to by the Council at User Clause 3.11.2.6.

Huge legal bills will keep burning for the foreseeable future as the Trust is hell-bent on flogging the Palace to Firoka. If the process ends up in the High Court again, the Trustees will be defeated again and legal costs will be generated again.

Just two things seem to be missing in this farrago from the Council: judgement and leadership.

• Crisis too big for crisis managers

2008-03-20T23:56:00.005Z

AP crisis not responsibility of PR crisis managers

THE High Court defeat (October) of the Alexandra Palace Trustees saw costs were awarded against them, severe criticism and the quashing of the shady sale of the whole Palace to Firoka for £1.5m.

It could be said that the policies of the Board of Trustees (Haringey Council) are in crisis and in need of the attention of professional crisis managers.

But shouldn’t the flawed policies of the majority group be defended by the elected politicians responsible for them, rather than getting one of London’s most expensive PR companies to put a gloss on what is going on?

More than that, why are our funds, public funds, nay, charity funds being used for this purpose? Wouldn’t it be better that this money was spent on maintenance of our Trust’s main asset, something Haringey has been remiss over in recent times?

For example The chairman now claims the world’s first TV studios are “riddled” with contamination and that that contamination is “serious”. Why wasn’t this job – started 20 years ago – finished? It is said that an extra £225,000 is needed to finish the job, so the public can visit them again.

In the last two years, our Alexandra Palace Trust, a registered Charity and overseen by local Councillors, has paid over £182,000 to one of London’s largest public relations companies. Lexington Communications boast on their website that they specialize in Crisis Management.

Some of this vast sum was spent in an effort to show that the publicity for the tendering exercise was huge and so as never to be repeated. The tender that lead to a “preferred development partner” (i.e. the developer-of-last-resort) that lead to the consultation and then to the High Court.

Alexandra Palace, mismanaged by Haringey Council since 1980, is certainly in need of better public relations but spending all that money on PR doesn’t change the facts on the ground.

The local Council lost control of re-building costs after the fire of 1980 and (unlawfully) lumped their huge cost overruns onto the accounts of the AP Charity. Now other costs appear to have been allowed to spiral away. Who is in control?

PR spin cannot substitute for well-thought-through policies in the first place. They cannot disguise the fact that Haringey has made a mess of the sale of AP in the same way that they’ve made a mess of the management for years.

In truth, we need new, non-political Trustees. Trustees who have the long-term interests of AP at heart and who are not trying simply to sell the idea of a sale. We need spokesman who do not need to speak through PR firms at great public expense in order to persuade us, because they would be committed, responsible people of integrity and would naturally speak the unalloyed truth.

Open letter from Jacob O'Callaghan

2008-02-25T19:58:00.016Z

"To the Mayor and all Councillors, London Borough of Haringey as Trustee of Alexandra Palace

Dear Mr Mayor and Councillors,

ALEXANDRA PALACE

YOU know from previous letters to you all that I challenged the financial information on which the application to the Charity Commission was made for the "holistic" disposal of the whole Palace. I then successfully applied for Judicial Review of the Commission's Order authorizing the lease, on the obvious grounds of insufficient information given to objectors. The Alexandra Palace, a building of national and international importance, is governed by Acts and Orders of Parliament.

IN COURT the judge placed heavy emphasis on the undertaking of Fiona Mactaggart MP to Parliament in proposing the 2004 APP Order that there would be sufficient public consultation about any proposed lease. He was astonished that the Commission, and the Trustees, appeared to have ignored this solemn promise to Parliament.

OF COURSE, what Ms Mactaggart had also solemnly promised Parliament during the debate in answer to concerns raised by MPs, and the Commission and Trustees and their advisers had equally overlooked, was that any proposed lease would not be allowed simply to be a commercial one.

I AM sending to you with this letter a copy of a legal Opinion I have obtained on behalf of the Save Ally Pally Campaign from Francesca Quint, a well- respected charity law barrister who has been legal adviser to the Charity Commission, about the extent of the legal powers and restrictions of the Mayor and Burgesses of Haringey regarding leasing the Alexandra Palace, This has already been sent to the Charity Commission and the Attorney General via the Treasury Solicitor. Our solicitor sent it to Howard Kennedy, solicitors to the Board, so that it be brought to the attention of the trustees as well. I am re-sending it now to members for ease of reference in time for Tuesday's Board meeting.

WHAT this Opinion now confirms is that the 2004 APP Order does not allow the grant of a long lease of the Palace simply to earn a financial return. The User Clause of any lease granted by the trustees must continue to safeguard the continued free use of the Palace for recreational - that is, charitable recreational and educational - purposes. ("Recreational" has, in a charity context, a more restrictive meaning than its common use.)

WE are advised, and we feel it would be in the interests of all parties and helpful to pass on this advice to the charity trustees, that the scope of consultation by the Commission about any new application for an Order authorizing any lease would have to take account of the principles in Mrs Quint's analysis, if that consultation is not to be again challengeable by judicial review.

WE have now had sight after various FoI applications of most of the putative Master Agreement, the Lease and the Project/Building Agreement. So we are, additionally, quite confident on the basis of this Opinion that these agreements would have in any event not survived a separate challenge in the Chancery Division under charity law should the JR not have succeeded, as will any similar new agreement most if not all of whose terms, of course, will now have to be disclosed to the beneficiaries of the charity in connection with any new consultation.

WE believe that the trustees must require of those negotiating for Haringey that the basis of any negotiations must be that any new agreement must be fundamentally different from the former one, in the light of this Opinion and the continuing public concern and opposition to what has been disclosed including ensuring public access to and preservation of the historic TV studios, to CUFOS and to other areas, by a requirement to sub-lease them at a peppercorn or no rent to charitable or not-for-profit bodies, which the trustees have powers to do, and ensuring preservation of the Willis organ.

HOWEVER Keith Holder, who has been conducting the negotiations with Iain Harris, has told the recent meeting of the Statutory Advisory Committee that he thought that there would be no fundamental change in the terms; in which case the trustees should direct that no further time nor money is wasted on pointless further talks with Firoka.

IT IS irrelevant, though ironic, that while I and the Save Ally Pally campaign were imaginatively accused by an anonymous poison pen letter of somehow being both a front for the Liberal Democrat party and at the same time in the pay of the unsuccessful bidder for the lease, the company which a Labour council were proposing to make an agreement with, Firoka Limited, contributed (as is its right) £10,000 to Mr David Cameron's election as Leader of his party, and another £8,000-odd to the Conservative Party itself, as recorded on the Electoral Commission's current register on their web site. In fact our campaign has members of all three main parties, and none.

HOWEVER, since the Palace is an educational charitable trust and you also must undertake due diligence, please do carefully reconsider a 125 year lease to a developer

whose principal was described in an Evening Standard article as going "From slum landlord to Mr Ally Pally" (2 February 2006, and see entry on Mr Kassam in Wikipedia);

whose dealings with Oxford City Council regarding Oxford United's ground, and what they have ended up with, are now publicly bitterly regretted by that Council (not to mention Oxford United fans) and apparently the subject of challenge by Oxford's District Auditor for not providing best value (see for instance

http://archive.oxfordmail.net/2006/3/17/91771.html

and subsequent articles);

who proposed gambling casinos, which are known to attract crime, as suitable uses both at Oxford and in the Palace, an educational charity much used by children;
who apparently demanded, and got, a late change in the Master Agreement so that it could claim completion of the lease while the Order was yet subject to Judicial Review;
who then threatens you with possible court action;
who occupied the Palace for eight months, under yet another secret arrangement, at the charity's expense, during which time we and local press were sent accounts of allegedly terrible staff relations, and
who it seems pocketed, under this agreement, perhaps over a million pounds of profits which should have gone to the charity, thus necessitating a huge subvention from council funds; and

whether some of this surely merits just a few second thoughts about what Haringey and London may be saddled with for 125 years.

Perhaps Board and Council members should also give some thought to who was responsible we do not really know for advising them and protecting their and the charity's interests, regarding all this.

Surely there are better alternatives to that. Save Ally Pally is saying that there is an alternative. We have, of course, no connection whatever as a group with any unsuccessful tenderer: we simply believe that another option is viable and preferable and in the best interests of the charity. Some of our members are helping to prepare a formal submission to you and the Commission, because the presence of viable and preferable alternatives to alienation of the main asset must weigh on the Commission in reviewing any renewed application by the trustee for an Order.

I am writing personally to you because firstly, I really do not want the charity or the council to clock up any more bills than necessary for legal correspondence; and secondly because we should surely be all on the same side as residents of Haringey, in wanting the best deal for both the people of London as beneficiaries, and the council taxpayers of Haringey, in ensuring the future of this landmark, world-famous building and its park.

We would rather we did that in partnership than at loggerheads, and the energy and passion of our campaign was applied constructively in finding permanent solutions ensuring the Pally's future rather than years of legal battles with the trustees. The choice now lies with yourselves.

Best wishes

Jacob O'Callaghan

cc Lynne Featherstone MP, David Lammy MP, Howard Kennedy, Solicitors to the Trustee

Why all the secrecy about the agreed Lease?

2008-02-12T10:25:00.001Z

UNLAWFUL secrecy was the main reason why the High Court quashed the first attempt to sell Alexandra Palace. But why was the secrecy about the Lease so great?

The Trustees remain embarrassed at what was revealed in court about what they were prepared to agree to and probably are still prepared to agree to, in the Lease.

The recent letter by the current trust chairman deliberately avoids relevant clauses in the final Lease agreed between the Council and Firoka.

A difference in weight attaches to promises made, on one hand, by a transitory councillor, to the public in a letter to a newspaper and on the other hand, promises made by the London Borough of Haringey to a property developer in a 125-year Lease, plus Master and Project agreements, all legally binding.

The Trust chair is a continuous supporter of the Lease. On 5 October 2007 he sat in court and watched it quashed. Within days he vowed to run it again.

Office Plan: the secret size: The figure for the area for commercial offices has not been denied. In the secret Firoka User Clause (No. 3.11.2.7) it is shown as 2,788 square metres, which sounds less than 30,000 square feet. This change-of-use alone might be worth £18 million pounds to Firoka.

The true size of office development was not even hinted at in the Palm Court Display and the sheer scale was one of the biggest secrets in the Lease. Sketchy outline proposals never showed how the huge swathe of offices might spill into the East wing.

Firoka’s architects’ plans showed – in place of the world’s first television studios – the single word ‘office’. There’s a difference between an office and thirty thousand square feet’s worth.

Surprisingly, the chairman holds up the Palm Court Display as a model of consultation. Yet he sat in court the whole day when it was analyzed for its worth as consultation. The Palm Court effort was found so unsatisfactory that it contributed to the High Court defeat (including costs awarded against the Trustees because of their conduct). However, in deciding on the unlawfulness of the overall Consultation, the biggest factor for the Judge was the secrecy of the Lease.

Unsurprisingly, the Trustees do not speak about this court defeat. Full details online at:

http://tinyurl.com/2yzlzf

Casino The council itself may not be keen on the idea of a casino, so why did they nonetheless agree to a casino in the Lease? The Firoka User clause contains:

3.11.2.6
use as a small casino (as referred to in section 7(5)(c) of the Gambling Act 2005).

If, in order to licence a new casino, Council had to apply to the Casino Advisory Panel by the end of March 2006, as claimed, why did Haringey agree to provide for a casino in the Lease by the end of that year? If a casino was mere “talk … back in 2005” as claimed, why did the Council agree to the casino clause in the Lease in 2007?

The secret casino clause is in the contract stalled by court action in October, and it would be in force already, but for the quashing secured by Jacob O’Callaghan.

The chairman claims that “a casino is simply not possible”. Firoka must believe a casino is possible, otherwise they would not have thought it worthwhile to insist on the clause. Since the Council has already approved the casino-clause, it will be harder to refuse a casino licence at a later date; Firoka could lever this clause in court.

Casinos may become popular in the next 125 years and a future lessee could say that the Trustees are behaving unreasonably in withholding permission. The casino Lease clause is the fulcrum on which a future Lessee can force the Trustees to approve the casino already in the Lease.

Will the clause still be in the Lease that the Council still wants to run? Is APTL still applying for a permanent track-betting premises licence on behalf of Firoka? The clause and permission reinforce each other.

World’s first TV studios: After the 1980 fire, huge public monies were spent on rebuilding. One of the jobs undertaken was to remove asbestos from the studios. How much money was spent on the first removal work and why was that not completed? If Council-approved work was not done fully, how big a task would it be to finish the job?

Buildings are either contaminated or not, but it is claimed that the studios are contaminated “seriously”. Is this a smokescreen or is the councillor prepared to publish the inspection reports? Publishing these reports would be in the spirit of openness and accountability claimed.

Even if there is some contamination, would that be a good enough reason to demolish the world’s first television studios? Is Firoka aware of the magnitude? Thus far, the issue doesn’t seem to be a problem for Firoka, who would replace the studios with an ‘office’.

Asbestos is a mineral. It is not nuclear waste but asbestos dust is hazardous. If it exists, it is a technical issue and manageable. It is far easier to deal with, than the toxic talk of a trustee seeking to demonize an old building material for political purposes.

Fire-sale It took an Act of Parliament to permit a term as long as the 125 years of this Lease. If any lease is sufficiently long, in the marketplace it acquires the characteristics of a Freehold. For practical purposes, a ‘lease’ of this length is as bad as a freehold sale.

A long lease is a negotiable asset and can be used as security and borrowed against. The Lease can also be sold on, which could be how Firoka intend to make their killing. An ultra-prime seven-acre building-site with panoramic views over Europe’s biggest city is worth more than £1.5 million.

Much hot air is spoken about plans for Alexandra Palace. What counts is what is in the enforceable, legally-binding Lease. And that is the document about which the chairman says little.

Abridged version published in Ham & High Broadway
7 February 2007

• Ally Pally Fact or Fantasy – Charity Begins At Home

2008-02-06T13:55:00.001Z

CLLR Matt Cooke, Chairman of The Alexandra Palace Charitable Trust (APCT) is unable to separate fact from fiction in his letter of 31st January edition of the Ham and High. His letter has provided a one sided view and is not presenting the truth of the horrors that await us should Firoka get the lease.

CLLR Matt Cooke is a fantasist if he wishes the public to believe in his and the trustees desperation that to flog Alexandra Palace on a 125 year commercial lease is in the public or charity’s best interests. Firoka, naturally, want to buy it on Firoka’s commercial terms i.e. on the cheap. It must be remembered that the Council have spent over £50 million pounds after the 1980 fire to the mid 1990s, funded by an insurance claim and £8.5m dowry from GLC. This ended up being £30 million over budget, paid by the taxpayer, and unauthorised by the Charity Commission. Since the rebuild, the Council have been charging Alexandra Palace approx £1m p.a. of interest out of Alexandra Palace profits. In the Firoka sale, the £30 million overspend can never be repaid to the taxpayer anyway. It is a travesty therefore that the Council now wish to give Alexandra Palace away to a developer on the taxpayer’s behalf.

CLLR Cooke’s letter states that APCT as the landlord will ‘oversee the development ensuring all the covenants are met’. This is another fantasy. This is a Board that has allowed Firoka to move in and take over trading without lease being signed. APCT’s legal advice here seems to have been questionable at the very least as Firoka were allowed to occupy Alexandra Palace and its businesses at the same time as the Charity Commission Order was issued in May 2007. It is normal for 3 months to elapse in case a Judicial Review manifests. Cllr Cooke omitted to say all its revenue income from May 2007 till January 2008 were kept by Firoka who have not paid rent or upkeep. APCT are left with but not restricted to £2.46m debt projected over 12 months due to dear PR (Lexingtons -£182200 since Jan 05), poor legal representation and excessive retainer fees for consultant managers.

Unprotected under this commercial lease are the first TV Broadcasting Studios in the world, a Victorian Theatre, the finest 100ft concert Willis Organ in Europe and CUFOS. Haringey Council is deliberately making the financial position of Alexandra Palace worse and further neglecting the gems it has in its charge on our behalf. Imagine what could have been if the Council had used some of this expenditure to develop these hidden treasures!

The highlight of Cllr Cooke’s letter, out of so many that beg to be addressed, is the TV Studios. These have been closed for years out of the public gaze according to Cllr Cooke and The Council due to asbestos ‘contamination’. It is the public’s right to see these reports since this is the only reason as to why the Council will not allow anyone in.

Clearly it is not in Firoka’s interest as a developer to renovate the 1936 studios. It is a pity that Cllr Cooke himself doesn’t think that the television studios are part of his heritage :

‘TV studios would be left untouched until year 3 of the development in order to allow for those wanting to create a facility celebrating their heritage to compile their business plans, raise cash needed and then work with the Trust and Firoka to develop them’.

Its sheer fantasy to expect Firoka interests to lie with the setting up of a national television media centre when the APCT have already allowed 30,000 sq feet of office space in the lease to go over the site of the TV Studios, after 2 years have lapsed. It does not guarantee the first TV Broadcasting Studios in the world will be in their original location and to a diminutive scale. Further, the developer is to charge a market rent and grant between 15 to 20 years term maximum.

Should a world tourist attraction and heritage site not deserve terms greater than a 20 year commercial lease? When Firoka comes to assign the lease for Alexandra Palace or parts of it, does that mean the new owner may not renew?

The fact is that the lease, apart from being commercial, is weighted to Firoka. It states that the accommodation of the TV Studios Museum is not to exceed 558 m2. How did APCT arrive at this exact figure? Why not state it as a minimum?

In July 2006, The Alexandra Palace TV Group handed a 1600 signature petition to Keith Holder, then Consultant General Manager of Alexandra Palace, now Consultant Development Manager and driving force negotiating the Firoka sale. In presenting the petition to APCT, Mr Holder had summarised the petition and some say weakened the presentation, as none of the numerous comments were reported to the Trustees. It is not surprising that Haringey Council did not want the detailed contents of the lease be known to the trustees let alone be made public and precisely why Lord Justice Sullivan quashed the Charity Commission’s Order to grant the lease in October 2007.

The objects and purposes of The Ally Pally charity were set out in the 1900 Act, s 17: "the park palace and other lands shall be available for the free use and recreation of the public for ever". This would not be so if the Alexandra Palace were sold to Firoka under a commercial lease.

It is vital that APCT actively preserve the historic areas of Alexandra Palace and open up the building for greater use as befitting its charitable status for us, the beneficiaries. It is timely now to change APCT from a board of councillors to a board of experienced and capable CEO and trustees who can develop each area of Alexandra Palace operations to expand its existing profit, pride and jobs in Haringey for our lifetime and future generations. Lets not give it away, charity begins at home.

L Zilkha
Guest Writer
N10

• Flogging the failing Firoka deal at AP

2008-01-30T22:22:00.000Z

SO THE Alexandra Palace Board is still trying to flog the failed Firoka deal. The smell of big profits means that Firoka overlook the behaviour of their partner and has given a ‘fresh commitment’, whatever that means. The Chairman claims that “Firoka has provided the clarity the board wished to see”. For the public, the only clarity is the clarity of named documents obtained from Haringey Council, grudgingly, under the Freedom of Information Act.

The reported sale price agreed is £1.5 m and that figure has almost certainly now been exceeded by sale costs. The deal only makes sense to the property developer-of-last resort.

It would be easier to believe that the AP Board will “keep its responsibilities as guardian of this precious and much-loved building uppermost in mind”, if the Board had not already agreed to a huge swathe of commercial offices (30,000 square feet) and to demolish the world’s first television studios. In the agreed Lease, there is also provision for a casino. The Chairman said the casino was a myth and was not in the final proposals. A casino is arguably not within the aims of our Charity.

In his High Court Witness Statement, Mr Kassam of Firoka attested

“If the deal that was finally agreed, after an extremely long negotiation process … and which has cost so much … for both FAP and/or Kings Cross, is not allowed to complete in the terms agreed, the current intention is to abandon any interest in Alexandra Palace”.

The judge had no difficulty in calling Firoka’s bluff over the withdrawal threat, but Mr Kassam also described the negotiations as “difficult, protracted and complex”. We can believe that. How likely is it that the public – kept in the dark – will get a different and better deal? Now the two sides want to drag it out further. We are told that discussions will proceed – but how much longer?

After nearly suffocating the trading company, the Board has only just revived it again and they’ve claimed it needs to generate the maximum profit possible. Is the Board standing by to shut it down again? Uncertainty hanging over APTL hobbles its future.

If the deal goes forward to Haringey-style consultation, it is likely to end in the High Court again and with the same result as before.

The council needs to act decisively. Any idea of selling to an asset-stripper must end now.

More honesty and less secrecy is needed in AP debate

2008-01-27T14:31:00.001Z

COUNCIL management of Alexandra Palace has generated heated criticism over the years. Unfortunately, little new light was shed on the shady affairs of our Trust in the article (Ham and High 17/01) run over the name of its Chairman. It seems the public – the owners and beneficiaries of the Trust – are still expected to be content with bluster and platitudes.

IT IS possible that the article may have been drafted or edited by Lexington Communications, one of London’s more expensive Public Relations companies. Since 2005, that PR firm has been retained at a cost to our Charity of more than £180,000. According to their website, Lexington specialize in crisis management and one of their jobs has been to represent Trust-bungling to the public in the best possible light. The possible PR-hand in the article may explain the welter of warm woolly words of waffle.

Who is the real ‘Burden’?
WE are told that the trading company (APTL) has to generate the maximum profit possible to lighten the burden of the Palace from the Haringey taxpayer. This is misleading because:

(a) Councillor-trustees deprived our Charity of hundreds of thousands of pounds by agreeing prematurely to let Firoka take possession of trading operations (early 2007) without completion; (b) the ballooning of the deficit in the last 18 months was caused by wasteful expenditure relating to the council’s bungled sale attempt; (c) the council evaded the large recurring cost (up to 2006) of maintaining the associated public park: the burden was carried by our Trust; (d) the council, in defiance of the 1996 ruling of the Treasury Solicitor, lumped their huge interest costs into Palace’s accounts and (e) on the whole, AP has been subsizing the council and not the other way around, as the council would have us believe.

For the ten years to the end of 2006, the AP trading operations were modestly profitable. The Trust accounts have been analysed by an independent accountant whose findings can be seen at:

Myth of the White Elephant

The chronic council-burden is represented by fitful control exercised by transitory, inattentive trustees who occasionally authorize reckless spending. Alexandra Palace is not a burden on the council; it is the other way around.

Progress and development in 27 years?
IT IS misleading to characterize the opponents of the sale to Firoka as having an “obsessive agenda against development and progress”. In the High Court filings (Statements of Fact and Grounds of Challenge #4), for SAP it was warranted:

It should, however, be noted that the claimant and the members of the ‘Save Ally Pally campaign’ of which he is part, are not by any means opposed in principle to the granting of leases by the Trustees or to appropriate development of Alexandra Palace”.

It is council stewardship which has lacked flair and vision: the only vision the council could see was that of a property developer. The lack of progress and development over the last 27 years is not the fault of any one councillor, but a monument to Municipal meddling. Yet the potential of the building is huge, possibly as a world-famous tourist attraction, The Birthplace of Television with panoramic views across Europe’s biggest city.

The article recognizes that the Palace is an ‘historic asset’ but there’s no mention of why it is a potential UN World Heritage Site. It is a great pity that the Lease agreed by the council made no provision for keeping the world’s first television studios and indeed, there was expectation that they would have to go. Why must ‘securing the future’ necessarily mean demolishing the past?

Simply by not caring, Haringey has distressed the asset, but when Listing issues are raised, it is not unknown for developers to speed up the distressing of assets – it eases the wholesale (“holistic”) development of the prime parts. The irony is that the world’s first public TV broadcast was the inspiration for the council’s logo for 40 years.

Chronic council misleading
THE council never released any AP sale-related documents before the end of the Public Consultation (5 January 2007). Heavily redacted versions of some documents were released after formal application under the Freedom of Information Act and some documents were never released.

Yet in July 2007 in a council debate, the Chairman asserted (all recorded on web-cam) that AP’s future was “all in the public domain”. This kind of misrepresentation will continue as long as AP remains a political football.

It would be nice to be able to overlook council conduct in these matters; but anyone in doubt about Trust deceit and duplicity has only to read the evidence and Decision of the High Court.

The successful Judicial Review shone a powerful spotlight on Trustee machinations and Justice Sullivan delivered his decision to quash the Lease in cool, reasoned terms.

The suggestion of AP “as a centre point of our community; alive with people from all over our borough” misses the point that the building is more than just a Borough or London asset: it is nationally and internationally important. The article’s sentiment about community also needs to be contrasted with earlier statements from Palace spokesmen which implied the need to offload the venue was more desperate than ever.

We need the misleading and the misrepresentation to end. The only purpose it serves is to promote mistrust of the Trust.

A vision not shared: a casino and 30,000 square feet of offices
The article speaks of the need to create “a Palace fit for the people of Haringey and beyond to enjoy for many years to come”. That enjoyment may refer to the small casino, which the chairman has said was a myth and never part of the final proposals.

But is it not the case that after a fire-sale to Firoka, the People’s Palace could see conversion to 30,000 square feet of offices, likely to be let at full market rental? Would this office space replace only the world’s first TV studios or would it spread into most of the East Wing?

The User Clause in the agreed Firoka Lease (finally obtained under the Freedom of Information Act 2000) provides for:

3.11.2.6—use as a small casino (as referred to in section 7(5) (c) of the Gambling Act 2005); and

3.11.2.7—use as offices for community based uses and other uses, not exceeding 2,788 m2 of Net Internal Area within the area shown [ ] on the Plan.

The article spoke twice of a shared vision with the public. The Trustees so little wanted to share these visions, that they did all in their power, including unlawful actions, to ensure they never saw the light of day. It took no less than defeat in the High Court for these visions to be ‘shared’. And within days of that defeat in October, the Trust had resolved unanimously to persist with the agreed Lease.

Was the big office development shown in the Palm Court display? Perhaps for the Trust Chairman, “providing a range of exciting uses” does include a huge swathe of commercial office space, but it may disappoint locals who hoped for something even more interesting.

What we need is plain speaking and an end to public relations spin which only promotes cynicism about the council. What is meant by “move forward together with a mutual aim of securing our palace for everyone”? Sorry to appear so rude, but does that mean selling the building for £1.5m to Firoka for offices, or not?

Obsession with secrecy
ANY resident daring to ask to see documents relating to the sale of our asset (under the Freedom of Information Act) was refused on grounds of commercial confidentiality. As was found by the High Court, Haringey council put great pressure on the Charity Commission to throttle public information and make an utter farce of the Consultation.

The article speaks of “working harder to ensure the public knows what is going on up at the hill”? But the current chairman has often chosen to exclude press and public from Board meetings. Will this policy change? Allowing us beneficiaries to hear deliberations of our Charity would be a good start. Perhaps that is what is meant by “new means of engaging with local people”?

We need the obsession with secrecy and control to end – they serve no purpose except to reduce public confidence. We need transparency, information and questions answered. For example, why should a council company (APTL) be applying to the council for a permanent gambling licence at the Palace? In that decision, what role was played by the public or the advisory or consultative committees?

Previous policies have kept the public in the dark and stifled debate, even though AP is our building and owned by our charitable trust. It has been our misfortune it has been controlled by a single, skint council. Understandably, the chairman does not want to discuss how the present situation arose. The lost opportunities of 27 years, the bloody-minded policy to get rid of AP for a pittance, the waste of money in that pursuit, all happened before the current chairman’s tenure.

Effect on APTL staff and customers
PERHAPS the most damaging and regrettable aspect of the seven-month period in which the Trust let in Firoka to run the Palace, was the effect on staff morale and the lives of workers. Firoka’s aggressive management style drove away staff and customers.

Firoka bosses turning up the heat, may have been calculated to reduce the viability of the existing business and prepare a situation for flexible asset-stripping. It was cheaper for the developer-of-last-resort to create conditions such that staff left of their own accord, rather than having to pay redundancy.

APTL lost both staff and reputation. The promoter of the Antique & Collectors Fair for 25 years was unable to agree new terms with the Firoka boss. On the Pig and Whistle website she said:

“key members of staff have left, the new management have shown a lack of understanding of the complexities of running the event …”

After the Trust nearly suffocated APTL, its resuscitation is now presented to us as a success. The truth is that reviving APTL was forced on the council because of the unlawfulness of Firoka’s continued occupation of the Palace and thus far, Firoka’s failure to respond with a firm commitment. The continued pleading with Firoka to take over, is the mark of an organisation still keen to abdicate responsibility.

Waiting for the developer-of-last-resort
THE Trust’s declared intention is to “wait for Firoka’s decision with confidence”. The public is waiting with apprehension as we now know how flawed the deal is. How is the public involved with this process? Firoka’s decision would relate to a deal Cooked up by the council in secret. Apparently, the council is still prepared for the same deal to go ahead – will they be more open and honest now?

The PR smokescreen is intended to hide the hedging-of-bets by the Trust. The haziness of the Trust’s timetable is alluded to by reference to decisions taken to secure the Palace’s future for “the medium term”. The short-term is a total write-off, while the prospect of a long-term future with the council makes hearts sink. “Immediate development” may not be possible, and there is doubt whether the council’s developer-of-last-resort will commit, sue, or slink away.

The council may not have noticed that the economic outlook is not good – particularly for the leisure sector and for commercial property. This could be the deciding factor and the council may be waiting a long time for Firoka’s decision.

We are told that AP has a future. But what kind of future? Is the get-rid-of-it policy still on, or off? Is the articulated lorry steered by the chair, careering ahead or not? Organizations with resolve and direction do not perform U-turns. If Firoka return tomorrow with a ‘firm commitment’, will there be another screeching U-turn? Any more driving like this and there won’t be much rubber left on the tyres.

Ultimatum? What ultimatum?
IN December, it was reported in the press that the Trust had given Firoka two weeks to make a “firm commitment”. This demand expired on 28 December without response. The tactic failed and the Trust looked more feeble than ever.

The PR article muddied the waters by having us believe that no ultimatum was issued in the first place, so an ultimatum could not have failed, could it?

To pretend no ultimatum existed only serves to demonstrate a lack of clarity. By continuing to wait for a decision from Firoka, the Trust is signalling that APTL might be a stop-gap, that they are standing by, ready to shut APTL down again in the future. This message leaves uncertainty hanging over the future and hobbles the declared intention of getting APTL to generate the maximum profit possible.

Council vacillation about the lack of response to the cut-off date/ultimatum has left APTL as a hostage to fortune. It would be preferable from all points of view if the council acted decisively and announced the Firoka deal was ended. Any idea of selling to an asset-stripper must end and end now.

Trust past and future trust
A FUTURE Leader of Haringey may yet be candid enough to regret dealings with Firoka, in the same way that the leader of Oxford City council recently and publicly regretted his own council’s past dealings with that property developer (see: saga of Oxford United Football club).

The original rationale for placing our Charity in the control of a local council was to provide a backstop in case of financial trouble. The trust could not go bankrupt because the enduring council would always be there to underwrite any loss. In practice, the very involvement of the council has increased the financial problems due to poor management, for example the more than £20m cost overrun on the re-building after the fire. The building was de facto incorporated into the council empire and drawn in to the traditional culture of municipal management. Alexandra Palace was run by amateur council managers and treated as a municipal block for 27 years.

The council privately realized their continuing involvement was not ideal and tried quietly to give it away to a property developer. They would care little what happened after that point: it would be off their hands. But AP was not theirs to sell. We need the long heavy council burden lifted and our Charity returned to us, the beneficiaries.

Few would envy Councillor Cooke’s job as chair
THE current chair is the same age as the length of time AP has been in Haringey’s hands. He cannot be responsible for the chronic, deep-seated problems with our Trust. The problems are inherited from previous politicians and past misconceived policies. Because the current chair is also a politician, it is too much to expect recognition, let alone acknowledgement, that predecessors made mistakes which cost taxpayers dear.

Councillor Cooke now chairs both the Trust Board and APTL and bears a heavy responsibility for the AP future. But he also has a rare, brief chance to break the cycle of one AP chair handing on AP’s problems to the next chairman. One of Haringey’s mistakes is believing that all their AP problems will be over as soon as they get rid of AP to a property developer – but still remain as Trustees. It will be hard to let go.

There is little long-term hope for AP while it continues – as it has for the past 27 years – under council trusteeship. The trustees, including the chair, are all fleeting figures whose priorities are properly their wards and council business. Councillors are only ever able to give AP passing attention and then only for a year or two before new faces arrive.

The ‘advice’ that is acted on by the councillors – and in practice, the real decisions – come from long-term senior AP employees and hangers-on, who are deeply entrenched. Some of their advice to the transitory politicians, including legal advice, has been questionable and the Board might reflect on this. If the still relatively-new chairman is sincere about things at the Palace changing, he would be sensible to question closely the ‘advice’ he receives from the advisors handsomely paid for by us.

Problem presents opportunity for radical change
THE council might allow that the Trust has long been a distraction from core council responsibilities. If the council still want to divest themselves of this Trust asset – and there would be few who would dissent from that proposition – they will have to consider the tough and difficult decision to hand over responsibility to new trustees who have abiding interest in the building and its internationally important history.

Any continuation of the failing, flog-it-to-Firoka policy could end up in the High Court again. When the Trustees are defeated again, they may begin to detect their policy is not ideal. But, in the wake of the humiliation of a damning Court defeat – and its repercussions – there are created conditions conducive to real radical change.

Management theory has it that problems also present opportunities. The fact there is a big problem at the Palace also means that the chance for dramatic change is also large. Matt Cooke could build a big positive reputation as a fixer if he seized the chance: exhibit bold leadership and cast out the old failed policies.

This would see the council relinquishing control of our Palace by handing over responsibility to a new fully independent board of dedicated trustees, appointed for their experience and professionalism. In this way we would see a return of the People’s Palace to the People and set in motion a virtuous chain of events that leads to a restoration of AP to its world famous heritage status. A win-win outcome for both the Council and the People. A consensus.

• Alexandra Palace declared a no-pride zone

2008-01-27T14:27:00.000Z

HARINGEY Council has declared Alexandra Palace to be a no-pride zone, extending to the boundaries of AP park. The zone is to be enforced against council staff who exhibit pride in the Palace’s history.

The Council agreed contracts for the fire-sale of the Palace to Firoka and these documents provide for the vanishing of the world’s original television studios.

The signal radiating 25 miles from the world’s first television mast is the basis for the stylized ‘lightning flash’. For 40 years it has been the theme for the Council’s corporate identity. Once, there was pride in this achievement. The symbol is still there, even on the Borough Coat-of-Arms.

Nine weeks after the deal was quashed by a judge, in December the Council served notice of eviction on their “preferred development partner”.

Even though Firoka failed to respond to the ultimatum to commit by 28 December 2007, Haringey are now begging Firoka to return. Not content that the Trustees agreed contracts allowing the destruction of BBC Studios A and B, our council are now imploring Firoka to return and destroy the potential UN World Heritage site.

A palace spokesman said: "A formal pledge has not been given and, based on Firoka's lack of correspondence, we cannot say whether it is still interested in the project or not … The board previously stated it is still a willing participant if Firoka is keen, and that statement still stands."

The “lack of correspondence” isn’t because Mr. Kassam didn’t put enough stamps on the envelope. The ultimatum expired some time ago and the continued pleading shows self-respect has evaporated. It’s undignified for a London Borough to prostrate themselves like this.
Historian Jacob O’Callaghan tried repeatedly to restore pride in the AP-zone but was shot at repeatedly. Enforcement is now formalized: the council’s no-pride memo lists phrases banned from use by council staff:

“Birthplace of Television”

“Most important building in the Borough”

“The Bletchley Park of London”

“Potential UN World Heritage site”

References to AP being the site of one of Britain’s greatest achievements of the last century and “leading the world” are banned. The Chairman of the Board has led the way by punctiliously avoiding the worst offending phrase “World’s first television studios”.

Transgressions of the new code will be brought to the attention of the Re-education Team, comprising Councillor-trustees Egan and Peacock. Repeat offenders will be whipped by the Chairman.

• Who would be a ‘preferred partner’ of Haringey Council?

2008-01-16T10:58:00.000Z

Short version (Journal) – Medium length (Independent) – Maximum: below

UNSUCCESSFUL bidders for Alexandra Palace would have been disappointed 18 months ago, at missing out on the opportunity of becoming Haringey’s ‘preferred development partner’. Now they may know how lucky they were.

The tender process, stacked in favour of one company (Firoka), was conducted by one of the least competent Boroughs in London and the lucky winner must now be wondering what they did to deserve their fate.

In the first instance, Firoka were probably mislead by the local Council about the legal status of the Palace and what exactly would be entailed in a purchase of the principal asset of a Charitable Trust. Let alone a huge Trust asset of international historical importance, about which the public happens to care.

Firoka was certainly mislead by the Council about the need for a public consultation. Maybe the Council didn’t understand that they needed to abide by the promise of a government minister over that consultation. Haringey’s legal team seems to have overlooked this – but it is hard to believe they never knew about the debate in Parliament over Alexandra Palace.

The preferred partner entered into secret agreements with Haringey but we don’t know which side wanted secrecy more. Regardless, Haringey had no business entering into any such secret agreement and this aspect was judged in the High Court to be unlawful. Any future tenderers now know there can be no more secrecy if Haringey continue to try to flog the Palace.

The level of deceit engaged in by the Council may not have surprised Firoka, but it surprised even hardened Haringey-observers. However, all the secrecy, dissembling and misleading (second nature to LBH) was not in the interests of the preferred partner, because it would come up against the law of the land.

The Council never really understood the implications of being responsible for a Charitable Trust. From the beginning (1980), their involvement has been more or less continuous mismanagement. The Council has tried to treat our Trust and our building as simply an extension of Council property management, with all that that implies.

But AP is not a municipal building. The Council cannot treat it as just a ‘disposal’ as for any other council-owned facility and flog it with gay abandon. The very fact that they needed to obtain an Act of Parliament to allow for a 125 year lease ought to have told them something. It seems Haringey just grabbed the lease extension-ability they wanted and in typical Cavalier Haringey style, simply ignored anything else that came with it, like the promise of a Minister for a full open public consultation.

Haringey Council put great pressure on the Charity Commission to limit consultation and information to the public. The council then proceeded to ignore all (324) representations by a concerned public in the matter. This was their undoing. In the High Court of Justice.

The ‘preferred partner’ then found himself listed as an Interested Party on the wrong end of a Judicial Review. Wisely, Firoka avoided legal representation and avoided the costs that the Trustees (i.e. Haringey) found themselves lumbered with.

The preferred partner - nine weeks after the High Court decision - was served with a notice of eviction from Alexandra Palace by their development partner (the Trustees). If this is what ‘preferred’ partnership with Haringey means, Firoka must have wondered what it feels like to be a ‘partner’ of Haringey who is out of favour.

The preferred partner was strung along by Haringey and messed around by the usual amateur slip-shod LBH approach. The Trustees (and ratepayers) will do well to avoid a claim for damages, over their behaviour, from their development partner. The Council’s position is understood to be, that it was known all along by all parties that the deal was contingent on a public consultation: that contention is doubtless receiving careful examination.

The preferred partner, during the purchase process was in the hands of Haringey and relied on the Council to guide them through the statutory and regulatory maze to a successful conclusion. That journey ended on 5 October 2007 in Room 28 of the Royal Courts of Justice in front of Judge Sullivan.

Haringey, in typical Cavalier style, has learnt nothing from this and there has been no apology to the public for the wasting of millions of pounds in sale costs and lost revenue (the lack of maintenance and the wasted opportunities are too big to describe here).

The unsuccessful tenderers must now be thanking their lucky stars that they never became preferred development partners of Haringey. All of this sorry tale must serve as a lesson to any re-bidders or new bidders for Alexandra Palace who might be contemplating doing business with Haringey. At first glance, it appears that there are vast profits to be made by exploiting the desperation and stupidity of London’s Least Competent. But it’s not worth it!

Haringey bungling is so potent, that it has now defeated one of the hardest, shrewdest, most ruthless operators in the business. This mess will not have been lost on other potential bidders, who might have lost patience with the Council much earlier.

Other possible bidders will have taken note of both the final outcome and the extent of waste of money and management time that Haringey caused to the successful bidder and ‘preferred partner’. Haringey referred in court to ‘Alexandra Palace fatigue’ (amongst potential other bidders). More accurately, it is ‘Haringey Council fatigue’. The lesson is clear:

You can’t run rings round the Keystone Cop Council. If you are interested in developing AP, do not deal with Haringey Council. You will be burnt. If you’d like to help develop AP, only deal with a new independent Trust comprised of people of long-term interest, expertise and integrity.

A BEGINNER’s guide to AP - click pic for bigger

2008-01-12T13:24:00.000Z

ALEXANDRA Palace disorganisation chart.

Note: this diagram does not reflect the Board's serving notice of eviction on their ‘preferred development partner’ (!) in early December 2007, but it still shows the main relationships. Note the number of committees, in practice mostly disregarded by the Council-run Trust. Tangled or what?!

• CHAIRMAN’s blog Xmas day, 2007

2008-01-10T20:56:00.001Z

The Christmas day message of the Chairman of the Alexandra Palace Trust.

IT was good of the Ham and High to offer a forum to facilitate a meaningful debate about the future of Alexandra Palace (editorial, 29 November). Unfortunately, the proponents of the current policy – getting rid of the whole building for a paltry £1.5 million – seem not to want to join a debate.

This is a pity, because the public - mere beneficiaries of the Charitable Trust - are often excluded from listening to the Trust Board’s deliberations; still less do they have an opportunity directly to influence the decisions that the Board makes on their behalf’s.

In his Christmas day message from Brighton the Chairman of our Trust had this to say in his Blog about the future of the Palace:

It's funny picking up a copy of the Ham & High and reading things which people attribute to you personally which are either hugely wide of the mark, totally untrue or so widely speculative that you could drive an articulated lorry through most of the arguments that are put forward by spokespeople for status quo and/or unrealistic ideas about ally pally's future.

If there is anything in the Ham & High that is ‘wide of the mark’ the chairman owes it to himself to spell it out clearly and if there is anything ‘totally untrue’ about him in the paper, he needs to identify it and insist on a correction, so we are all better informed. If Cllr Cooke honestly feels that he is being misrepresented, he should represent himself by joining the debate which the Ham & High offered to host.

If Councillor Cooke thinks ‘you’ could drive an articulated lorry through most of the arguments [of his opponents] … why doesn’t he climb into the cab and drive it forward himself? He does have an HGV licence doesn’t he?

Even defeat in the High Court, costs being awarded against his Trust and scathing condemnation by the judge, have failed to persuade Cllr. Cooke that his Trust’s ideas about Ally Pally’s future are unrealistic.

There seems to be a readiness to engage in bluster, but an unwillingness to address specific points. The Board avoids talking about detail – indeed they avoid saying anything at all - and prefer to speak through a PR company.

When Cllr. Cooke attempts to make a detailed point, like the (false) claims of asbestos in the TV studios, he is quickly shown not to be in possession of the facts. Cllr. Cooke - in person - claimed to me and two members of local residents associations, that it was a myth that a Casino was a part of Firoka’s proposals (the casino is shown in Firoka’s architects’ plans which are a matter of public record). It is a myth that young Matt is fully familiar with his brief.

Cllr Cooke and his fellow trustees are reluctant to talk about the world’s first television studios and refuse even to utter that phrase, lest it draws attention to the fact that his Trust is acquiescing in their eventual destruction.

I have previously referred to several of Cllr Cooke’s claims, including his denying there was any Casino proposal, his (scurrilous) claim alleging asbestos in the TV studios and his claims that everything about AP’s future was in the public domain (dissembling, to put it mildly).

In the Ham and High others have drawn attention to the false claims about wheelchair inaccessibility and misleading claims about BBC disinterest in the Studios. The huge, chronic misleading about finances is too great a subject to cover here; for them moment, I say that the Council has not been accurate over its claims of debt owed to it by AP.

The unwillingness to join open public debate is no surprise. Obsessive secrecy has been the hallmark of the scandal of the sale of Alexandra Palace, something which Cllr. Cooke has done nothing to rectify since becoming chair in May. He regularly insists on excluding the press and public from Trust Board meetings. Cllr Cooke has personally mislead about the extent of the secrecy, notably in a council debate in July when he said that the future of Ally Pally was all in the public domain: utterly, outrageously, untrue.

In his Christmas message, Cllr Cooke goes on to say:

What I really hope to achieve through the coming period as chair is for a period of calm reflection about how things could have progressed differently over the last year or so at the palace and how we move forward in a way which is informed by that past whilst also being visionary and having the confidence of local people …

(Funny there was no mention of his Trust’s defeat in the High Court in October and the fact that costs were awarded against his Trust because of his Trust’s conduct. He does not quote the Judge’s remarks: “The Trustees are the authors of their own misfortune”. We will look for content in the blog in the weeks ahead.)

At the end of the waffle about moving forward and being visionary, Cllr Cooke seeks the confidence of local people. Fat chance. His Trust had done everything in its power to limit the public consultation and restrict information available to the public. He may not have noticed that of the 328 people wrote in to the Charity Commission, 324 wrote in expressing at least some concern about his Trust’s proposal (i.e. 99%). This may be unprecedented for a Charity Trust asset disposal.

If we assume the 4 (four) people who wrote in support are probably connected to the Trust, it is safe to say that the Trust’s proposals do not enjoy the confidence of local people.

It is surprising that the Chairman does not go into any detail on his own personal Blog, where he need have no fear of being contradicted, misquoted or misrepresented. He could have taken the opportunity to refute any wrongful things said about him. He seems to be ambivalent about which are the matters best left to the public relations company.

Is Councillor Cooke prepared to stand by the press releases of the PR firm that he is paying with our money? Our Charitable Trust is using Charity funds to employ one of London’s leading public relations firms (Lexington Communications) to mount a PR campaign on behalf of the Trust. They have their work cut out. Is our Charitable Trust paying enough money to the PR company in order to get their message over? Cllr. Cooke’s complaints about press coverage seem to suggest the PR company have not yet succeeded in the PR campaign and more of our money may yet have to be spent in order to persuade us.

The Councillor is sure of the righteousness of the Trust’s flog-our-heritage policy, but because he is convinced he knows best, he won’t get into any detail, beyond misleading claims that AP is costing the Council money.

While the chair engages on quiet meditation over the weeks ahead as to where it all went wrong, the practical consequences of the failed policies pile up. We can only hope that the chairman takes a genuinely fresh look at the Palace and questions the fundamental assumptions of the get-rid-of-it policy.

The one thing we can all agree on is that the present situation cannot continue. It is (typically) misleading of the chairman to speak of saveallypally.com as proponents of the status quo.

The “status quo” comprises Council-appointed trustees pursuing a bankrupt policy of trashing our history and heritage and flogging Alexandra Palace for £1.5 million, a sum almost certainly exceeded now by the sale costs.

The positive alternative proposed by saveallypally.com, is for the Council to agree to a hand-over of the Trust to new, non-political Trustees. New independent Trustees would be unlikely to do a worse job of stewardship than the Council has over the past 27 years, and would quite possibly do a very much better job. Such a change would probably enjoy more public support than the proposals supported by Cllr Cooke. New Trustees would be the first step to a brighter future which would not involve a total betrayal of the Trust’s original charitable objects.

Let’s get the politics and the politicians out of our Charitable Trust of which we are all beneficiaries.

letter sent to and published
by the Ham and High
10 January 2008

Responsibility and irresponsibility

2008-01-10T20:50:00.000Z

AFTER the GLC was smashed up by Margaret Thatcher, in 1980 responsibility for the historic Alexandra Palace landed up in the sole hands of one of London’s least competent borough councils.

THE current Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Alexandra Park and Palace is, like most of his fellow Trustees, a political appointment of the ruling majority group of the local council (Haringey).

He is reported recently to have said of the recently announced multi-million pound deficit at Alexandra Palace,

“obviously the financial situation we find ourselves in is not ideal.”

It sounds like the Trust Board is the victim of an inexplicable freak accident. But who was at the steering wheel of the vehicle that sustained £2.5 million damage? Perhaps the posing of a few questions might help the current chairman (only since last May) discover the mysterious cause of the less-than-ideal financial situation in which the Trust finds itself …

WHO allows the same management of trading operations to continue – despite mediocre performance – year after year?

WHO embarked on a fatally-flawed and misconceived policy of flogging Alexandra Palace for a paltry £1.5 million?

WHO, by the end of 2006, had spent £1.2 million on advisors in AP sale-related costs (2007 will add much to this bill)?

WHO ruled out all respected and experienced bidders for Alexandra Palace?

WHO entered into secret commercial agreements in defiance of the promise of a Government Minister?

WHO agreed to a late change in the Lease permitting the ‘preferred development partner’ to occupy the Palace two months before a judicial challenge – capable of overturning the sale – might be mounted?

WHO let Firoka bosses into the Palace and start intensively milking the cash-cow without payment and without a formal agreement?

WHO let Firoka trouser hundreds of thousands of pounds of cash for events and exhibitions since May 2007, for little or nothing in exchange?

WHOSE conduct led the High Court to award costs against them in the Judicial Review of 5 October 2007?

WHO did the Judge describe as the “authors of their own misfortune”?

WHO retains the same legal advisor – year after year – the same advisor who allowed them to sign a Lease allowing Firoka occupation before payment and who led them each step of the way through the ‘public consultation’ and right up to the High Court dénouement?

WHO mislead the preferred development partner over the need to have a Public Consultation?

WHO left themselves open to a huge law suit, due to their incompetence?

WHO often holds their meetings in secret session, away from public and press scrutiny?

WHO bear no personal responsibility for their decisions and indeed, some of whom profit regardless?

WHO is facing enquiries by the Attorney General and the District Auditor?

WHO does not recognize the conflict-of-interest where an individual is responsible to both a Council and to a registered charitable Trust?

WHO is so unable to defend the situation they “find themselves in”, that they pay a public relations firm to speak on their behalf?

The answer to each question is the same: the Trustees of the local Council-controlled Alexandra Palace Trust. The failure to take responsibility is typical, chronic and set to continue.

In the past, for the problems at Alexandra Palace, the Council-controlled Trust has put blame on everyone around them: their political opponents, a failed AP-bidder, a campaign group and even on an individual private citizen!

Now it seems they blame the stars, chance or bad luck (at least this is consistent with their intention of granting themselves a permanent gambling licence at the Palace).

The problems will go on until amateur Councillor trustees of our charitable trust are eventually replaced with committed trustees of long-term interest, integrity and independence.

In the meantime, ratepayers pick up the multi-million pound tab for more or less continuous incompetence and mismanagement. The public deserve better.

7 January 2008

THE ULTIMATUM: Alexandra Palace Trustees and Firoka

2007-12-31T12:00:00.000Z

IN the disposal of Alexandra Palace, the weakness in the Council’s position, vis a vis Firoka, is now fully revealed. The attempt at obtaining a firm commitment from the so-called ‘preferred development partner’ has fallen flat.

The levers of power must be satisfying to operate, even if little thought appears to lie behind their exercise. The young chairman of the Trust since May, seems to have relished his powers to evict members of the press and public from meetings of the Charity Trust Board.
Then in early December, the Trust proudly announced that they were serving notice on their preferred partner (!) from Alexandra Palace and, if that eviction wasn’t enough to demonstrate how tough was the Council’s new position, they also gave Firoka an ultimatum, reported in the press as:

“The time has come for Firoka to decide whether to move ahead in partnership with us as preferred development partner at the palace. If there is a will to progress, we are prepared, ready and willing to move forward.”

The only will demonstrated so far, has been a will to treat the Council-run Trust with contempt. The ultimatum expired on 28 December, without any apparent response from Firoka. The bluff by our Council - with their empty hand - has been called by professional players.

The Trustees do not admit publicly that they learnt anything from their defeat in the High Court, apart from learning the way ahead was now clarified (?!). But they probably did learn one thing: that the bluff of Firoka could be called - as it was called finally by the High Court judge - and Firoka does not necessarily walk away as they threatened.

In their earlier negotiations the Trust had buckled each time Firoka had threatened to walk. The custodians of our history, the Council, even agreed to the demolition of the world’s first television studios in their craven desire to appease commercial greed. The Council-Trustees should have called the bluff of Firoka a long time ago and pretended to Firoka that the Trustees were competent partners to be respected.

The recent attempt at a tough position came far too late and with its failure, the feeble position of our council is exposed still further.

Chamberlain’s speech to the House of Commons after the failure of his ultimatum to Hitler is well known, but do not expect any statement from the trustees along similar lines:

“Sir, that was a final Note. No such undertaking was received by the time stipulated and consequently this Trust is now at war with Firoka.”

Instead, expect an increasing bunker-mentality from the beleaguered Trust. Expect no public comment, but actions that signify the following statement:

“Ratepayers, that wasn’t actually a final request to commit (nobody really believed us, did they?). Although no undertaking was received by the time stipulated, the Trustees will continue to beg, bungle and grovel to Firoka to take Alexandra Palace away from us.

We now know we are rubbish negotiators, we don’t have any Plan B, and no exit strategy because we have burnt our bridges. We will get an awful deal on behalf of the Trust beneficiaries (the public).

We must appease Firoka before they turn on us and sue us for millions due to misleading them over the need for a public consultation. We (the Council Trustees) deliberately ignored the promise of a Government Minister and we may yet end up paying a far bigger price than merely the costs that were awarded against us in the High Court.

We have no choice but appeasement. You ratepayers will suffer, but hey, you’re going to suffer anyway!”

Having the local Council running a big asset disposal is like an anemic hemophiliac trying to get a good price for a blood-bank from a vampire.

31 Dcember 2007

• Council condoned casino?

2007-12-24T12:00:00.001Z

Uncertainty over the Casino option for the Alexandra Palace Charitable Trust

THE Chairman of the AP Charitable Trust, Councillor Matt Cooke, has described the Casino shown in the plans of the Council’s favoured development partner, as merely an ‘option’. It might be helpful for the public if the status or likelihood of the Casino option could be clarified. Firoka’s casino option is I believe, the only casino currently proposed for Haringey.

A few factors give rise to concern. The Council has stated that they have not decided whether or not to have a ‘No-Casinos’ policy. This is shown on page 17 of the Council’s Statement of Gambling Policy.

There are currently no casinos operating within the borough. There is no resolution to prohibit casinos in the borough at present. The licensing authority is aware it has the power to do so under section 166 of the Gambling Act 2005. However the Council reserves the right to review this situation and may, at some time in the future, resolve not to permit casinos. Should the Council choose to make such a resolution, this will be a resolution of full Council.

Thus, the door is left open for the Council’s favoured business partner, Firoka, to have a Casino they want (Firoka were disappointed last year to be thwarted in getting casino permission in Oxford).

Firoka’s outline proposals show only a small casino in the basement, but if they eventually get approval for their casino, that operation would likely generate the most cash and the most profits within the Charitable Trust. The desire to expand from a small casino would be great, in the same way that there is great pressure for more gambling establishments in Green Lanes.

The Chairman of our Charitable Trust has previously discussed the casino option only in managerial terms: whether it is possible under current legislation (it is), rather than in terms of whether it is desirable. Not all of Cllr. Cooke’s colleagues are as indifferent as he appears to be, about gambling and its social effects.

Last year, the Charity’s long-time legal advisor, Trust Solicitor Mr Iain Harris, wrote to the Charity Commission

You have expressed concern that use as a small casino is not charitable. This is a very small part of the development proposal, certainly not something that is likely to happen for some time. Be that as it may, I would advance the proposition that casino use does fall within the objects of the Charity as a recreational activity

(letter to Mrs. V. Crandon,
Charity Commission, 7 July 2006, p.3)

Is Mr. Harris is writing on behalf of a Charitable Trust, on behalf of a property developer or both?

Some find it remarkable that the Council is currently sponsoring the first gambling license for Alexandra Palace. It is an application for a premises licence for permanent track betting. The application is in the name of Alexandra Palace Trading Ltd. (APTL). This is the council-owned and council-controlled trading company that runs day-to-day operations in our Charitable Trust. It appears this license is being sought on behalf of Firoka, whose first application – almost identical to the APTL one - was rejected because Firoka (wrongly) claimed the right to occupy the Palace.

It seems likely that when it comes to the licensing hearing, the committee Councillors will award the license to the company controlled by fellow Councillors. The public may see this as Council condoning and endorsing of gambling and be concerned that this will pave the way for wider gambling use in future in the seven acre Alexandra Palace building.

The Council is keen to keep their favoured business partner in discussions over the sale of Alexandra Palace, even though a High Court judge quashed the sale in October. Firoka at that stage may have contemplated suing the Trustees on the grounds that the Council mislead Firoka over the need for a public consultation. Firoka probably bit on their tongue because the deal they still want is monstrously lucrative for them, even more with a casino option.

Now the Council have (finally) evicted Firoka from the building, nine weeks after the High Court ruling, Firoka may feel let down by their ‘development partner’ and feel somewhat bruised. What could be offered to Firoka to keep them quiet and sweet?

Knowing how badly Firoka want a Casino in the Charitable Trust asset, is it possible that there is a private understanding that they will eventually get it, with quiet Council approval? This could be the one ultra-lucrative sweetener that keeps Firoka in the deal and prevents them from suing the Trustees for breach of contract and for misleading Firoka over the need to have a public Consultation.

The sale agreements for Alexandra Palace, which remain concealed from the public on the basis of ‘commercial confidentiality’, may contain clauses providing for Haringey’s first casino.

Notwithstanding the general commercial confidentiality agreement, is it possible for the Council to confirm - at least on this particular question - whether or not the sale documents refer to or allow for a casino in the Charitable Trust asset (Alexandra Palace)?

There has been too much secrecy and equivocation about this. An unambiguous statement is needed from the Council about the casino option so the public knows where it stands.

• Carry-on-bungling

2007-12-17T12:00:00.000Z

IT'S CARRY ON bungling at Alexandra Place, with Council-appointed Trustees last week agreeing to evict the Council’s favoured business partner (Firoka) and in the same breath, begging him to stay (!). The public could be forgiven for being confused and it would all be hilarious but for the fact that the incompetence and mismanagement is being paid for by us and by cuts to services. The bungling tab is picked up by the Trustees = The Council = Taxpayers.

HARINGEY would have the public believe that the Firoka-eviction is the smooth execution of a coherent strategy to relieve ratepayers of a large burden. A spokesman for AP stated “it was a good time to end the agreement giving both parties an opportunity to reflect on the outcome of the judicial review” (they’ve had about nine weeks to consider on the judge’s damning remarks). The Chairman said of the U-turn “… it is right and proper that we now look to bring our own trading company back on-line …”

The truth is different. Firoka’s occupation - approved by the Trustees - was brought to the attention of both the Attorney General and of the District Auditor. The Trustees knew that the slipshod situation they had engineered would not pass muster. We shall watch with interest to make sure they really do leave and that this is not just another Haringey-sham.

Firoka leaves the Palace having trousered money from all the events held there since May. This could be a seven figure sum. We do not yet know how much of this money is owed to our Trust and how much, if any, has been passed to our Trust. We do know that Firoka has not paid for the Lease since they assumed the management of the building in May; the Lease was quashed by order of the High Court of Justice on 5 October 2007. Haringey let the occupation slide on for a further nine weeks.

Did the oft-quoted short-term licence agreement “dated” May 2007 really exist? Does the public get to see a copy of the 28 day notice to leave? When did the notice start? It is besides the point that Firoka may have paid some running costs during the time of their occupation. Did they pay rent? Goodwill? A Premium? Who pays for Insurance? Repairs? Maintenance? Is the taxpayer to wear all this? When will the Trustees take responsibility for this bungling?

Firoka’s boss at the Palace, Shaun Ormrod leaves behind a bruised and demoralized workforce, what is left of it. Ormrod expected to stay in charge and the staff were unhappy with the management style. They were encouraged to resign, which avoids eligibility for redundancy payments. It is surprisingly that a Labour Council allowed its workers to be treated so shabbily.

Firoka should not have been allowed in the palace in the first place. The incompetent Trustees, some of whom do not know what is going on, agreed to a late change in the Lease by Firoka, that would allow Firoka to occupy the Palace just one month after the Charity Commission sealed the sale Order. Normally the period would be three months, allowing sufficient time for any Judicial Review to manifest itself.

How many folk selling their property would allow possession before completion? In effect, this is what the Trustees agreed to.

The Trustees and their legal advisor, if they thought about it at all, were presumably gambling that no legal challenge would come. It came, they lost, costs were awarded against them. It seems that negligence was involved at some point and it is a pity that the Trustees never take personal responsibility for their decisions, otherwise they might take them more seriously.

The Trust chairman said

“The time has come for Firoka to decide whether to move ahead in partnership with us as preferred development partner at the Palace. If there is a will to progress, we are prepared, ready and willing to move forward.”

The time has come for the Trustees to decide whether or not to persist with the biggest rip-off of public assets in Borough history, or to hand over the reigns to those who have the interests of the people at heart.

The Chairman has spoken of his love for the Palace: so much love that he can’t wait to get rid of it! His love for the Palace might be compared with the love of a mother giving up her baby for adoption to a known pedophile! (see: Firoka and Oxford City Council)

The Council believes their problems over AP will end as soon as they get rid of the Palace. But when new problems arise, the public would still look to the Council as Trustee to solve them. Except the Council would be in a hugely weaker position to do anything about it, having sold the building.

Eviction of Firoka does not end the troubled stewardship at Alexandra Palace. The only thing that will end the agonies over AP will be a change in Trustees, away from the dead hand of an incompetent Council.

[letter sent 17 December 2007]

Original TV Studios vs. travesty of the TV ‘museum’

2007-12-13T12:00:00.000Z

IN his letter published last month about the future of Alexandra Palace, the Chair of the Charitable Trust claimed, amongst other things:

“We are dedicated to ensuring that the main recreation goals of the project – namely: …, retention of the Willis organ and the television museum – are delivered.”

It is misleading to imply, as the Chairman did, that any television museum is being retained. No television museum exists. The real TV studios would either be demolished and/or used for other purposes – on the architect’s plans they are labeled as offices. No part of the so-called ‘museum’ would be in the famous studios. Since the Alexandra Palace Lease and related documents are still secret, what is meant by a television ‘museum’ we can only guess at. All we have to go on are Firoka’s architect’s concept sketches, see this web-page,

plus, that small part of the secret Project Agreement revealed in the High Court (in the case that quashed Haringey’s first attempt to ram through this shady deal). From Firoka’s plans, we see the studios are gone. As substitute for the world’s first television studios, off to one side, we see a square room of about 10% of the size of the real studios. Space for a mock-museum is given as a sop and if it ever got off the ground, it would in all likelihood be a short-lived affair.

Correspondence forced into the public domain via the High Court, includes a letter dated 13 February 2007 from the AP Trust’s Solicitor to the Charity Commission. This was more than five weeks after the end of the public consultation on the Lease. “This proposal [for ‘museum’ space] and the concept drawings has been incorporated into the agreed documentation.” Clause 9 (The Museum) of the still largely secret Project Agreement shows:

9 The Museum [this is a sop, fake, fiction and a travesty]

9.1 Having regard to the historic importance of the Premises as the first and former sole television broadcasting centre in England, the parties intend to allow the Museum Operator the opportunity of taking up an underlease of the premises … to accommodate a broadcasting museum and working recording studio (“The Museum”). The following provisions of this clause 9 are to apply accordingly as to the terms of the underlease and the premises to be available to the Museum Operator. [the TV broadcasting centre was not only first in England, but first in World. How generous of the parties to rent a room to a museum ‘Operator’ after destroying the original studios, currently owned by a charitable trust for the public in perpetuity]

9.2 The Landlord shall notify the Tenant of the identity of the Museum Operator as soon as reasonably practicable and in any event prior to completion of the underlease referred to in clause 9.1. [could lead to a rush to find any Operator]

9.3 The accommodation for the Museum is not to exceed 558 m2 [where does this precise figure come from? The area limit: (a) guarantees that any museum cannot later move to occupy the real studios, which are many times this size; (b) ensures any Museum cannot expand; (c) stipulates only a maximum area, (no minimum), and (d) suggests that the present place on the plans is not permanent.]
9.4 The Tenant shall provide the accommodation … to a specification agreed with the Museum Operator … [This is the strongest right enjoyed by the M.O. but Firoka is still in the driving seat.]

9.5 The underlease is to be offered for a term of not less than 15 years nor more than 20 years. [why 20 years? Will any TV museum be irrelevant after 20 years? Most retail leases are for 25 years. Does it perhaps mean that Firoka needs 20 years to amortize capital gains taxes? And then they want to be able to sell the whole building, without the ‘museum’? The 20 year maximum guarantees that Firoka will not have to tolerate any museum presence indefinitely.]

9.6 The rent of the premises is to be a market rent … exclusive of outgoings, service charges and insurance contributions … subject to rent reviews of a frequency according with current market conditions at the time of grant of the under lease. [any Museum would be set up to fail. These terms are intended to be so unattractive as to put off most would-be Operators right away. Yes, we are talking about what is now a Charitable Trust, the beneficiaries of which are all of us. As the real studios are demolished, Firoka will quietly wait while no Operator materializes. Until three years is up (see below). After then, even the sham Museum goes].

9.7 The underlease is to be on an interior repairing basis but subject to a pro-rated contribution to the cost of repairs maintenance and upkeep of the Premises (not comprised in an [sic] lettable area of the Premises) and recoverable by the Tenant by way of comprehensive service charge. [Firoka has in reserve all the power it needs to squeeze out any M.O. foolish enough to take on the underlease]

9.8 The underlease is otherwise to contain such other terms as are consistent in all material respects with the approved form of underlease referred to in clause 3.8.8.9 of the Lease. [this clause, like most clauses in the Project Agreement, is still concealed from the public, so we do not know the approved form of underlease. Presumably it will contain standard terms relating to a commercial enterprise]
…

9.11 If no agreement has been reached with the Museum Operator within three years after the date of this Agreement, the Tenant having endeavored in earnest to do so, the Tenant will then be released from the obligations under this clause 9 which are to lapse accordingly. [Who will judge whether Firoka has tried to reach an agreement with a M.O in earnest? By setting impossible conditions, the whole notion of a Television Museum would probably not get off the ground. Firoka does not want it there because it is inconsistent with maximizing their profit potential.]

The Trust Solicitor presents this one-sided deal as evidence of how generous are the provisions for a TV museum. After reporting the failures of the Trustees to secure funding in the past, the concluding comment by the Solicitor to the Charity Commission is that

“In these circumstances it is quite impossible for the Lease to contain any covenant specifying the nature and type of museum or to ensure that it will have the resources necessary for its running costs.”

With these words and by setting strictly commercial criteria, the Alexandra Palace Trust Solicitor seeks to set in motion a sequence of events that step by step, will drive out anything tangible from the historic site.

Any possible Museum is tolerated by the grudging permission of Firoka who will hold several levers to force out the unwanted underlessee after an interval. The intention of the limited time, limited space and especially the reviewable market rent, is to give every chance for any Museum Operator to fail and fail fast. Firoka want their unloved Museum Operator-underlessee out, not immediately and not publicly but nonetheless out.

Our Council has gone along with all of this.

If, in the highly unlikely event – in spite of all the obstacles – of the Museum ‘Operator’ being a commercial success, then the backstop from Firoka’s point of view is that the underlease is for a maximum of 20 years (after which time, the Museum Operator would presumably be forced out anyway). This is possibly the timescale that Firoka are contemplating after which they want to be able to sell-on the entire building, once their capital gains taxes are amortized. Is this the best deal that our Council could achieve?

Hot-dog Concession or future UN World Heritage site?
It is bad enough for Haringey willingly to agree to the demolition of the BBC studios A and B, the world’s first. But even the ‘Operator’ of their token-gesture museum would be dealt with by Firoka on the same basis as the owner of a long-term hot-dog concession. At the end of this Council-approved process, to which they turn a blind eye, will be a ‘Heritage Facility’ which could be no more than a display board. Do we want a Haringey Heritage Facility or do we want restored historic studios?

Britain led the world in 1936 with the pioneer work that is such an influence in the lives of billions of people. To mark where it all began, if we are lucky, Firoka might permit us to have that display board in a corner, once any Museum Operator fails as it has surely been set up to do. Is this good enough?

Neither Firoka nor the Council have any genuine interest in history or preserving something truly valuable for the enjoyment of future generations.

The present Trustees …

“accept … that the TV studios are part of the national heritage. However the Trustees are without funds.”

If the Trust/Council had wisely spent the £100m of our money they used up, and had managed it well, the whole place including the studios would have been a gleaming, thriving facility for many years now and attracting tourists from around the world.

That the present Trustees have chronically failed to organize a solution for a site of such huge potential, is more a reflection on their imagination and competence rather than any inherent difficulty, apart from the conflicts of interest inherent with political appointments.

Simply because the present Council trustees have failed to find a workable solution does not mean that no trustees could find a solution. The present situation is untenable. Do we want political hacks as trustees or high-calibre experts with a genuine interest in AP? We don’t need a new Trust but we certainly need new Trustees.

The current trustees have always been compromised by the conflicting roles of their duties as Trustees to the Charity and their duties as Councillors to the Council. They love the Palace so much they cannot wait to wash their hands of it. The Save Ally campaign does not want to hand this immensely valuable facility on a plate to a developer but put it in the hands of Trustees who will preserve the studios and develop the place with enthusiasm for the benefit of all the public.

The pride of Haringey

2007-12-11T12:00:00.000Z

WHILST walking around in any street in Haringey on any day, one may catch sight of a familiar symbol on the side of vehicles, on the odd sign tied to a lamp post, even appearing on a flag flying from the town hall; yes it is the most famous sign in Haringey, you’ve got it, it is Haringey Council’s own logo.

The logo was taken from Haringey’s coat of arms created in 1965 when Haringey was formed. The emblem symbolizes the London Borough and Haringey has displayed it with pride. It’s on signs, buildings, vehicles, documents, letterheads and every page of the Council’s web-site.

Yet how many know the origin of this symbol? Haringey Council doesn’t care to remind people of its background and they would probably rather people forgot if they ever knew. There is a certain irony about the kind of web-site it took to reveal the history behind the symbol which stands for the Borough. On a Casino web-site (Cashour.com), there is a piece about our history:

The Haringey Symbol is based on a device in the Borough Arms. It is a stylised electric flash representing the first television transmission in Britain from Alexandra Palace

At some point in the Council’s past there was obvious and justified pride in this. Alexandra Palace is the highest place in the Borough above sea level, it is the most important building in the Borough and it is the Bletchley Park of London. It’s fame as the birthplace of television is known around the world. The world’s first television transmission came unsurprisingly, from the world’s first television mast (still standing) alongside the world’s first television studios, at Alexandra Palace.

“This is direct television from Alexandra Palace” were the first, simple yet immortal words spoken by Elizabeth Cowell on 2 November 1936 at the beginning of the first public television broadcast in world history. It happened at Alexandra Palace, Haringey, and fittingly this was celebrated in the symbol used throughout the Borough. The radiating zig-zags represents the transmission signal.

But one of the most important events in the history of Haringey – arguably of the world – is being forgotten. The pride in being home to the birthplace of one of the greatest engineering and technical achievements of last century is quietly being cast aside. Haringey want to get rid of the building to a favoured business partner for a reported £1.5 million pounds: a sum they have already spent in sale costs.

But Haringey Council has lost its former pride to such an extent that it has now agreed to the destruction of these television studios by Firoka, their favoured developer of Alexandra Palace. The story of the sale being attempted can also be seen online at saveallypally. The Council are still trying to flog the Borough’s most important and most historic building, for property development.

The world-famous studios A and B, just to the west of the BBC Tower, are still there. Waiting, either to be demolished by Haringey or to be declared a UN World Heritage site. The public are barred from entry on the pretext that the studios are riddled with asbestos (it was completely removed 10 years ago). Early television exhibits continue to be concealed from the public by Haringey Council. Today’s Council no longer speaks proudly of the television studios as first in the world, but refers to them as the ‘old’ studios or the ‘disused’ studios. Such has been the decline in self-respect.

Because the Council made such a mess of managing the Palace, the studios will be sacrificed in an effort to flush down the drain the evidence of Council incompetence. The ultimate price for the loss of control of rebuilding costs, after the 1980 fire, is to be paid by the Studios and to the cost of history and future generations.

Casino2all.com is another casino web-site that has a section on the Borough of Haringey. This source of interest in Haringey is surprising given that the Borough possesses no casinos – yet. Do they know something we don’t? See here.

It is fitting that I learnt about the history of the Borough’s symbol from on-line casino sites. Haringey’s favoured business partner, Firoka, is keen on having a casino in Haringey, having been thwarted last year in getting a casino in Oxford. Firoka’s boss spends much of the year in Monte Carlo, famous for its casino.

While the Council is still trying to win public approval for the sale, Haringey decline permission for that casino. But Haringey Council are nonetheless now assisting with Firoka’s first gambling licence at Alexandra Palace – they even offered to put the Application in the name of Alexandra Palace Trading Ltd, a Council-owned company. Haringey are currently asking themselves for a permanent gambling licence on behalf of their favoured business partner.

Are croupiers to be the glamourous new role models for Haringey’s youth, rather than boring old electrical engineers? If the Council is prepared to see demolished the history on which their corporate identity is based, why not be honest and get rid of the logo too? A vestige of such a leap forward in technology would be an anomaly after the Council allows the demolition of the world’s first TV studios.

After 40 years with the old logo, earlier this year Haringey decided to spend thousands of pounds of tax money in giving it a tweak. In March 2007, perhaps to disguise the now-embarrassing origins, the Council arranged for the logo to be tilted and coloured orange and green to become the current edition (once described as a squashed spider). Instead of symbolizing knowledge radiating out equally in all directions, the revised signal is twisted, contorted. The same signal is being slowly crushed, struggling to escape from a box of darkness (the Council of course prefers modern metaphors rather than allusion to what they see as ancient history).

But to truly break with the past, maybe Haringey should bring it more into line with the modern era and today’s new values and update it significantly. In order honestly to reflect the new priorities, perhaps the Borough’s symbol needs to reflect the likely change of use. It would represent not the world’s first TV broadcast in Haringey, but the future: the first casino in Haringey. Why not change the Council logo to a stylized roulette wheel?

[letter of 11 December 2007, unpublished by local newspapers. Was it unpublished through fear of offending Haringey Council?]

Haringey Council’s free magazine: I apologise and take back all my criticism (!?)

2007-12-10T12:00:00.000Z

Haringey People magazine and its coverage of the High Court of Justice decision that led to costs awarded against the Council.

I take back my criticism of Haringey People as a journal of Council propaganda. Some people thought that Haringey tries to suppress news that does not reflect well on them. So you can imagine my surprise at the extent of coverage of one particular story in the latest Haringey People issue (p.16, December 2007), which confounds Council critics.

Everyone can now read the full story about the Council defeat in the High Court of Justice over Alexandra Palace on 5 October 2007. Devoting a double-page spread (‘Highlights of 2007’) to the Council’s reversal was more than fair: it is a credit to the dedicated investigative journalists on the People staff.

The article also went into detail about the punishment meted out: both how and why the Council came to have costs awarded against them, by a judge who was highly critical of their conduct. It all proves that the editors of Haringey People are making a strong effort to be open, objective and impartial.

“AUTHORS OF THEIR OWN MISFORTUNE” was the banner headline, quoting the judge’s words about the Trustees (i.e. the Council). This is proof positive that Haringey People gives space to viewpoints that differ from those of the majority group.

Haringey People – paid for out of general taxation – can now show it is not simply a mouthpiece for the majority group and the centre-fold spread is the proof. This big article gives the lie to any suggestion that the publication is just a means for the ruling party to communicate with its supporters and is little more than a misuse of public funds.

(Was this change of heart possibly helped by public relations firm Lexington Communications, in a move to make a clean breast of what had gone on before?) Although there was copious coverage in Haringey People, if anyone is interested in reading just a little more information, please visit this web-site for the Court Decision.

In the same spirit of openness, I wonder if the next issue of Haringey People will carry out a thorough investigation into the accounts at Alexandra Palace and of the ‘sale’ itself?

Can I suggest an in-depth, follow-up interview with Firoka boss Shaun Ormrod at the Palace? Shaun leads the Firoka team who were let into the Palace by the Trustees (and without payment), just four weeks after the Charity Commission sealed the Order allowing the sale. The same Order later quashed in the High Court. The public might be interested to know why Mr. Ormrod may now be given notice to vacate and why?

I’m sure Shaun would be delighted to have an opportunity to speak frankly and on the record. Has the Charitable Trust received any money for the sale of the building or any money from the events at Alexandra Palace that have taken place in the last six months? That might total millions of pounds that might be better in Council coffers.

....

ON A RELATED point, I was delighted to see that the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Alexandra Palace has promised that the public will never again be excluded from Board meetings. He has even apologized for the exclusion of the press and public from previous Charitable Trust Board meetings, “after all, they are the beneficiaries of the Trust, our decisions affect them and they need to feel a part of the Board’s decisions. We now believe in inclusiveness and community involvement. There has been too much secrecy in the past”.

The newly appointed young chairman is showing a welcome independent line, demonstrating that he is keen to make a clean break with the past and set a new open agenda. This change of heart is overdue – the public have always been beneficiaries of the Charitable Trust.

Next the public might even be given copies of the secret documents about the sale of Alexandra Palace to a favoured business partner for a reported £1.5 million.

Haringey People is worth every penny of its cover price.

• The long term risk to Alexandra Park, by selling the Palace

2007-12-04T12:00:00.000Z

THE Council is sensitive to suggestions that the deal to sell the Alexandra Palace building would place Alexandra Park in jeopardy. But the long term future of the park – as it exists today – is in doubt as a direct result of the current deal to flog the building and the agreed change in park funding.

In an effort to sweeten the deal to the greatest possible extent for the buyer – Firoka (Alexandra Park) Ltd.) – Haringey Council agreed to take over the running costs of park security, park upkeep and the costs of maintaining the road.

This currently amounts to £740,000 per annum and is a cost that will rise in the years ahead. It is also a cost that the Council should have been bearing all along and not a burden on the Trust’s accounts. In the past, the Council has treated their wholly-owned company Alexandra Palace Trading Ltd. (APTL) as a cash cow. But now they intend to sell the cash cow for just £1.5 million. Yes, that’s for the whole Palace building with 125 year lease. Equivalent to £12 k per annum.

The three quarter million pound AP park cost is an entirely new and additional charge on the Parks Service budget. How will this extra regular recurring expenditure be funded? The cost was previously met entirely out of the modestly profitable operations of the APTL. Where will all this money come from now?

At 196 acres, Alexandra Park is the largest park in Haringey, much bigger than most, with many fine features that are the envy of the rest of the Borough. Some eastern councilors may wonder why Muswell Hill should enjoy such a good recreational facility and begin to question whether it should be now be funded from general taxation (as it should have been all along).

Some members of Haringey Council’s Majority Group despise Muswell Hill. I live in a different part of our Borough but the loathing towards Muswell Hill residents is not hard to detect; many of these residents have heard it with their own ears. If senior Majority Group councilors are prepared to say rude and insulting things about Muswell Hill in public, the public can only wonder what they say in private. It is not hard to conclude that the Council is likely to regard this park as too big and too good for Muswell Hill and too expensive for the Council to fund in the long run.

If the shady deal goes ahead, in a few year’s time our Council is likely to make the same misleading claims about the park as they’ve made about the building: claiming that it’s a loss to the Council, a disproportionate drain on council finances and a burden on the ratepayers. Both claims are false. Perhaps the Parks Service mobile Hygiene Team need to visit the Council’s accounts department. For an independent accountant’s analysis of the Trust’s accounts.
Those Muswell Hill residents who are indifferent to today’s sale of the building (including the destruction of the world’s first television studios) may in a few years time, wake up one morning to learn of council proposals to start pruning either costs or land or both, from the park itself. Maintenance will be the first thing to suffer as those changes are not noticed quickly. These pressures might originate due to Council budgetary constraint or pressure from their lease-holder, Firoka.

Even if the Council is delighted to continue to fund this big new expense indefinitely, Firoka will probably put pressure on the AP Trust or Council for more control over the Park (golf? roads? parking?). Firoka currently have the Council over a barrel over the entire sale process: the Council prematurely let Firoka bosses occupy the building without receiving any payment. All income from events goes to Firoka. Firoka bosses wasted no time extending their grasp throughout the park. The Farmers Market is already is already under pressure to move elsewhere so as to tidy up the entrance. Firoka’s reputation and record with ex-Council land is easy enough for anyone to research: just put the relevant key words into Google with ‘Oxford’, ‘City Council’ and ‘Football Club’. Recently, the leader of Oxford City Council, said:

The saga of Oxford City Council and the Kassam Stadium deal rumbles on, more than seven years after the event (Oxford Mail, October 19).

I am glad that the information is, at last, in the public domain. I believe it is right that the documents should be available for people wishing to investigate this episode in the council's history. As leader of the council, I don't have the power to turn the clock back or to revisit this sort of decision ...

But what I can do and am determined to do is to be assured that, if a poor deal was struck in the past, the same sort of thing could not happen again.

I have asked our officers to make certain that checks are now in place to ensure that the council gets value for money and is seen to get value from any property deal.

The officers now are well aware of the need to show to all the world - both the regulatory authorities and the public - that a deal is in the best interests of the council and the city.

This council has moved on a long way since the Kassam deal was done.

John Goddard, Leader Oxford City Council
The Oxford Mail, 26 October 2007

http://tinyurl.com/ywckw2

Will Haringey learn? No one can say they were not warned. It is difficult to see how this secret deal makes financial sense to anyone except Firoka. Whatever the outcome, that company is likely to walk away with millions. Even if the sale falls through, Firoka may yet cry all the way to the bank after a successful lawsuit against our Keystone Cop Council and their lamentable legal team.

• Power-play, poker and permissions at the Palace

2007-11-27T12:00:00.000Z

I WAS GLAD to see the Member of Parliament for Tottenham, David Lammy, publicly endorse a recent refusal of an application for a betting licence:

The decision by Haringey Council to refuse a licence for yet another betting shop on Green Lanes should be applauded …

… This is something I will support in our community and will fight to keep this on the political agenda in Parliament.

David Lammy MP

Letters, various local papers, 20 November

I hope the MP would agree that there are more than enough betting facilities in Haringey. I further hope that Mr Lammy, as a former Minister of Culture, might oppose another betting licence application in Haringey, this time in our Borough’s most important building, Alexandra Palace.

This latest application might be the thin end of a thick wedge (of cash) that culminates in a few years time in Haringey’s first casino. This current application (just for track betting) is made in the name of ‘Alexandra Palace Trading Limited’ (APTL).

APTL is a secretive company controlled by none other than Haringey Council itself. The sole shareholder of APTL is the AP Trust Board. Both Boards comprise Haringey Councillors and all Councillors on the APTL Board are on the main Trust Board. APTL is therefore absolutely under the control of the Majority Group of the Council.

(What’s the betting that the Haringey Licensing Authority will find in APTL, a most trustworthy applicant of utmost integrity to whom they have no hesitation in awarding a gambling licence?!)

I hope that Mr. Lammy will hold firm to his principles and not be deflected by the fact that, with this new gambling licence application, Haringey Council is in effect, applying to itself for permission (a conflict of interest?).

What might further complicate this matter for the Member of Parliament, is that Haringey would be granting a licence to themselves in order to help out a private business with which they have become enmeshed. The need for APTL to help out their crony, arose because of what appears to be a need to circumvent Section 342 of the Gambling Act (see below) in connection with an earlier application made by the private company. Unofficially, APTL is applying on behalf of Firoka (Alexandra Palace) Ltd. whose original gambling application was turned down because it contained two fascinating claims:

In Firoka’s original application of 9 November 2007, they (a) confirmed that they had the right to occupy the premises and (b) applied for a permanent gambling licence.

There is no doubt that Firoka do occupy the premises and the claim for permanency may not at first sound remarkable.

But on 5 October 2007 – less than five weeks earlier – a Judicial Review had quashed the Order to sell Alexandra Palace to Firoka. Haringey’s behaviour leading up to that sale had been such that the High Court awarded costs against Haringey. The Judge said that the Trustees (i.e. Haringey) were “the authors of their own misfortune”. No one should hold their breath waiting for Haringey to explain that away!

The Chief Executive of Haringey Council, Dr. Ita O’Donovan, recently confirmed that Firoka Management “was given a very short term licence to trade at the Palace” but she has declined to give further details. Firoka’s managers have been handed both the income and management of Alexandra Palace, in exchange for – nothing. At least, nothing that the public knows about.

According to the gambling licence application form “… it is an offence under section 342 of the Gambling Act 2005 to give information which is false or misleading in, or in relation to, this application”. Again, no one should hold their breath waiting for Haringey to take action over the statements of their business partner.

I sincerely hope Mr. Lammy will not turn a blind eye to the continuing irregularities at the Palace. Three things seem certain:

1. Firoka are keen to have a Casino at Alexandra Palace. A casino would be generate much cash and profits for the Firoka company. Last year, Firoka tried to get a Super Casino in Oxford but were frustrated. A casino is clearly shown on Firoka’s architects’ plans for Alexandra Palace.

Firoka are insisting on total control over the entire building with what is euphemistically called a ‘Holistic Lease’. Firoka have repeatedly threatened to walk away from this shady deal unless they get everything they want. Haringey have suggested in the past that he will not be allowed his casino, but Mr. Kassam has a reputation of getting what he wants and he is a past-master at dealing with local authorities of variable competence.

2. Haringey are keen to sell Alexandra Palace to Firoka. Haringey have bent over backwards and forwards to accommodate their favoured partner. They are so keen to give Firoka everything they want, they have agreed to sell AP for a reported figure of only £1.5 million. But if one deducts the sale costs – by 2006, £1.2 million – from the sale proceeds, the Council will have received nothing. But it is worse than that for ratepayers: as part of the deal, the Council will incur new, extra, regular costs which are the annual upkeep of the park and road: now running at £740k/year and rising, costs previously met by the profitable Trust). The lengths to which Haringey are prepared to go to please Firoka, can be gauged by the fact that our local Council has even agreed to the destruction of the world’s first television studios, a potential UN World Heritage site.

3. Most of the deal remains secret. All the sale documents, including the Lease and Master Agreement were deliberately concealed by Haringey from the public during the Consultation. That was heavily criticized by the High Court. Even now, those documents are available only in severely redacted form. But the top-secret Project Agreement has never been available to the public, even in redacted form. The key finding of the High Court, was that Haringey had no business entering into any confidential deals in the first place over the AP sale, which contradicted the promise of a Minister in Parliament. Some of the concerns raised here may be groundless, but unless all sale documents are published un-redacted, we will never know. Haringey’s PR statements and politician-assurances have negligible legal value: only what is contained in the contractual agreements is legally enforceable.

Conclusion: For public consumption, Haringey claims there will not be a Casino at AP. Before the sale of our Charitable Trust’s asset, they will probably repeat this. But how can we know there does not exist a “gentleman’s” agreement or a clause in the secret contract providing for a casino in the future? A couple of years after a sale, and after Firoka threatens to pull out for the umpteenth time, they might then be granted the full gambling facilities they are keen on.

Even with the arrangements over the current APTL application (for permanent track-betting) we see how eager the Council is to help their favoured partner. A private or secret arrangement about the Casino could be the one sweetener that prevents Firoka from walking away.

By turning a blind eye to the occupation of AP by a private company, probably after the expiry of their licence to trade, Haringey thumb their nose at the High Court decision. The whole process relating to this sale shows that Haringey Council believe they are beyond the law.

I hope David Lammy MP might read the evidence and the Judgment from the totemic High Court case, together with further information about the continuing scandal at Ally Pally, all of which is freely available at www.saveallypally.com

• Alexandra Palace: Gambling back on the Agenda

2007-11-20T12:00:00.000Z

THE latest news from Alexandra Palace is that there is an Application in with the Council for a premises licence under the Gambling Act 2005. It happens to be for a permanent track betting licence. But it is more evidence of the determination of Haringey Council’s favoured development partner (Firoka) to bring gambling of one kind or another into the Alexandra Palace Trust – a registered Charity – with Council connivance.

The first Application for this gambling licence was made by Firoka (Alexandra Palace) Ltd. on 9 November 2007 for Track Betting and the licence would cover betting services provided for the World Darts Championship and other sporting events held at the hall at the Premises.

It is questionable as to whether Firoka should be in Alexandra Palace (AP) at all – and more questionable after the AP sale Order was quashed by the High Court. But, less than five weeks after the High Court quashed the sale of AP to Firoka, that same company applied for a permanent track betting licence at AP. On their original application form, they confirmed that they (Firoka the applicant) had the right to occupy the premises.

This was a little too rich, even for Haringey Council. Haringey’s Chief Executive confirmed recently that Firoka Management

“was given a very short term licence to trade at the Palace”

although what is meant by very short term, we do not know.

The secretive Alexandra Palace Trading Ltd. (APTL) is a company wholly owned by the Trust. And so Firoka’s cronies in APTL are now applying in that name for a licence which will doubtless be used by Firoka. APTL is now a shell, having prematurely handed over to Firoka both management and the income from the Palace, in return for – nothing. Is this not another example of the inherent conflict of interest in having a Charitable Trust board comprised of political appointees who implement Council policy?

The gambling Application makes a mockery of the licensing process. The puppet company of a puppet board of the ruling party, seeks permission to have permanent gambling in the principal asset of a Charitable Trust, whose beneficiaries are all of us. In effect, the Council is asking itself for permission.

Can this be regarded as good governance, an arms-length transaction or free from conflict of interest? Does anyone imagine that the public consultation about APTL-Firoka’s gambling licence will be any more sincere or effective than the public Consultation over the sale of the entire building? The so-called Consultation about the sale was condemned by the High Court as being fatally flawed, it was quashed and costs were awarded against the Council. The Council put much pressure on the Charity Commission to ensure that public consultation was limited, unfair and uninformed.

If there are submissions from the public about the gambling Application, what is the betting (off-track of course) that any objections will be ruled vexatious? Objections will be ignored because it is almost a forgone conclusion that Haringey will award itself a licence. Does anyone doubt that this is an incestuous relationship and that Haringey will award itself this licence? I’m sure that APTC and the Council are all in the same team; let us wait and see how independent is Haringey’s ‘Licensing Team’.

The intention of Haringey’s partner (Firoka) is to demolish the world’s first television studios and we are expected to be reassured on that score because it would need a Planning Application that requires approval by Haringey’s Planning committee. Does anyone believe Haringey will not give their favoured development partner all the approvals they demand?

Haringey continues to try to force through the sale, most aspects of which remain shrouded in obsessive secrecy. Is the gambling licence application another example of the corruption of normal processes that we now expect from this Council over AP?

How many more irregularities before the Charity Commission steps in to remove the current incompetent Trustees and replaces them with committed, independent Trustees of integrity?

GAMBLING: Firoka and the Casino
THE other manifestation of Firoka’s strong desire for gambling at AP is the Casino. The chairman of the Trust board has claimed that it was a myth that a Casino was ever a part of Firoka’s proposals. (Firoka certainly wants a Casino, although a Super casino now appears less likely.) A Casino – later described by Cllr. Cooke merely as an ‘option’ – is clearly shown on Firoka’s architects plans in the AP basement.

Cllr. Cooke said “One thing that needs to be highlighted is that since the implementation of the Gambling Act, the casino is no longer a realistic option.” Another thing that needs to be highlighted is that Cllr. Cooke sees the Casino option solely in terms of whether or not it is able to proceed under an Act of Parliament.

Is Cllr. Cooke relieved or disappointed on behalf of Haringey’s favoured partner, that the Gambling Act makes Firoka’s casino no longer a realistic option? Is he relieved because of the potential embarrassment or disappointed that Gordon Brown has stopped further Super Casinos? Would he prefer that the casino was a realistic option? Prostitution might fit with the casino and a hotel but there’s probably an Act of Parliament implemented that means that that too was not “a realistic option.” Money laundering, drug dealing and organized crime might also fit well with the Casino.

A small scale casino is allowed under current legislation so some sort of casino is a real possibility. On the gambling licence application form, it is just another checkbox: Casinos come in three sizes: Regional, Large or Small. Which size is favoured by our Charitable Trust?

Does the Chairman see casinos as desirable in Muswell Hill or anywhere else in Haringey? Does he believe that Firoka’s desired Casino – and all that would go with it – would not promote social problems? Those seems to be the prior questions. Politicians sometimes show moral courage and leadership. It’s troubling that gambling is seen only in managerial terms rather than in any moral context, the more so from the representative of a party that prides itself on looking after the more vulnerable in society.

Although Councillor Cooke has claimed to represent the position of the SaveAllyPally group, he is careful to avoid mentioning its principal address www.saveallypally.com which has copies of the evidence from the High Court case that he wants to avoid publicizing. Why did his Council have costs awarded against them in the High Court over AP? That web site also contains the goals of the campaign and much additional information.

Haringey Council has prostituted itself over the sale of Alexandra Palace, but they are not a very business-like prostitute – the reported sale price of £1.5 million will pay for just 24 months’ worth of regular additional costs they have agreed to take over (the park and road upkeep), before the extra costs become a burden on Haringey’s long-suffering ratepayers. After spending £100 million on AP over the years, it doesn’t seem like a good deal to flog it for just £1.5 million.

Sent to local newspapers on
20 November 2007

Haringey Council have agreed to demolish world’s first television studios – click on pic to enlarge …

2007-11-02T12:00:00.000Z