Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
No council tax paid on Wards corner by Grainger and TFL since 2008. Can this be true?
Wards Corner, N15 empty buildings.
I have been told by my neighbour that Haringey Council have failed to collect any council tax on any of the empty building on the Wards Corner site when they could have claimed thousands of pounds in back revenue for the people of Haringey, how can this be true?
The law was changed back in 2008 allowing councils to claim tax on empty property, thus provide an income and to encourage occupancy of the buildings. This would be over 5 years of lost tax revenue to Haringey.
This would mean that Grainger a company with over 2 billion Pounds of assets appears not to have paid tax on the 2 two empty shop units by Seven Sisters Underground station and hasn't paid on all those empty homes in Suffield Road, n15. They surely must owe the rate payers of Haringey thousand of pounds at the time when we have to tolerate sacking teachers, closing day centres for older persons or youth clubs.
Plus TFL with approximately 10,000 sqm of space at the corner of the High Road and Seven Sisters Road i.e. prime retail space should owe money.
It sounds absolutely appalling that a local Tottenham priest is fined for non payment of his Council tax withheld in protect against the cuts but a multi billion pound companies and TFL get off scot free and maybe their payment would have avoided some cuts.
How can the Council claim they need money when they allow such terrible tax evasion, can anyone tell me more details of these Wards Corner empty buildings and the tax situation?
Tags for Forum Posts: corner, cuts, developement, homes, housing, local, market, shop, tax, wards
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Had you thought of asking the Council and finding out the facts, Clyde?
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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Permalink Reply by clyde on
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My neighbour’s friend asked for an FOI for Wards Corner council tax payments. The basic question was how much back tax was involved or owed. However the council were very evasive and would not say quoting something like that the Wards corner building had been empty a long time; I expect due to planning blight, so the Valuation office had not given them a figure to use. The omitted the empty Grainger owned houses and shops. When they could have said x sqm of commercial property is worth y thousand of pounds.
The houses we know are worth 1500 per annum council tax approx. So 2013 - 2008 = 5 x 3 = 15 year x 1500 = 22,500. Enough to pay a youth worker to run a social club or a part time teacher. However the commercial ones I could not even guess at. The Wards Corner unit must be 10-20,000 sqm of prime location so the council tax would reflect this location. Have you any ideas on how to calculate the tax value?
Personally in a post riot Tottenham I would have thought the council would have wanted to be transparent and helpful about a public project and raise as much local taxation as possible at a time when we all have to suffer the affects of the cuts.
You are probably an expert on these things Alan as being a local councillor you would know exactly how to draft FOI letters and know what legal phrases to include to get a concise response.
How would you get the information on how much council tax Grainger’s, TFL and possible the previous developer (District and Provincial?) owe since 2008 and how would you phrase the FOI request(s) or would you approach an independent body (if there such a thing). What would you do?
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Thanks, Clyde.
Were the Freedom of Information Act questions asked by your neighbour's friend sent to Haringey through the free public website WhatDoTheyKnow? (I now use this for all my own F.o.I's as I think it's right in principle and practice to have accurate transparent information in the public domain.)
If not, then perhaps your neighbour's friend can be persuaded to post their Q&A on either the Wards Corner Coalition website and/or here on HoL. Without knowing the previous F.o.I questions, and what you say were "evasive" answers they got, it may be difficult for anyone to make sensible suggestions about new questions.
Your assumption that as a councillor I know exactly how to draft F.o.I requests is not actually correct. In my experience the most effective F.o.I. enquiries are based on partial insider information; or at least expert knowledge which most councillors won't have.
I certainly don't have this knowledge and expertise about the history of Wards Corner and the residential parts of the site which may have been subject to Council Tax.
I would guess that the best experts to help the Wards Corner Campaign draft F.o.I requests are already members of the Wards Corner Coalition. Which includes very strong legal advice/backup the Coalition has had. (Judging by the Court cases it was, in key aspects, more capable than the professional planning advice from Haringey's officers.)
(Tottenham Hale ward councillors)
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Thanks, the “WhatDoTheyKnow” web site is a good tip. I will ask my neighbours to follow it up by asking about what council tax is outstanding on the Wards Corner site. . Maybe you could ask as well? You probably know the right route through the Council maze as for some reason the council team seem a little sensitive over anything to do with Wards Corner.
I think it is a little unfair to ask the Wards Corner Coalition to fight everything about the site. After all should not all people who care about council services be chasing any outstanding Council Tax including the local Councillors?
As the tax pay for Haringey services such as teachers wages. I do not understand why the council itself is not chasing TFL, Grainger, etc? Why do you think that is?
I see that TFL has started to improve all the lighting, street clutter, pavements and planters. The site frontage is looking much nicer and the new lighting is very effective. The new Sainsbury’s store and the restored social housing block are also making a positive impact.
It is just such a shame about the empty building owned by the developer. It holds the site back, I feel. However I suppose it helps to make their case that the site is run down and in need of regeneration.
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Clyde, I'm not asking the Wards Corner Community Coalition to fight every battle. But on Wards Corner they've put up a pretty good fight so far. So if anyone knows about the ins-and-outs of this issue, and which questions to ask, it's the WCCC.
Anyway what would I ask? Your neighbour says Council Tax is owed on some residential property by someone - but which properties and by whom? Based on what information? A Freedom of Information Act request and answers which neither of us has seen?
You also seem to be referring not to Council Tax but Business Rates - the tax on Non-Residential Property. At present, though this is collected by local councils it's pooled nationally and redistributed. So while empty business properties are a loss to the community as a whole, it doesn't significantly affect each local council.
It's also fair to point out that had Grainger been allowed to go ahead with its scheme, new flats would have been occupied with people paying Council Tax and businesses paying Business Rate. (Though I assume that the businesses now there are already paying this.)
The points you make about the TfL improvements and the empty building "holding things back" are pretty much in line with the thinking behind the original High Road Strategy some eleven or twelve years ago. Obviously, things have changed since then. (Although perhaps not in what now passes for a Regeneration Service. Except in the sense that until recently, they seem to have seen their role as agents for developers.)
I have to partly disagree with your view that councillors"know the right route through the Council Maze". Large parts of Haringey are what I call a 101 Council. There are always at least 101 reasons why suggestions from residents and councillors cannot work. And 101 reasons why what senior staff want is the only reasonable course of action.
One feature of this system is how some "Cabinet" councillors become spokespeople for senior council officers - to the point of defending the utterly indefensible. They become Benjamin Franklin's "Praise-All blockheads".
The LibDem Opposition "leading" councillors are no better. They are a mirror image "Blame-All blockheads". It is a diseased culture.
There are many good and even excellent council staff. I feel sorry for them having to put up with this.
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There's also the Dear Leader's office, of course. Room 101.
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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I have to smile at your optimism that all 198 flats would be occupied by now - they'll go in blocks to BTL landlords in Dubai who will not bother if they stand empty. Betcha. That's if Grainger gets its way of course.
And the shops - the New Model High Street - will be about as occupied as those further up the road opposite CoNEL. Woolworths, Jessops, C+A, Comet, JJB Sports, Clinton Cards, Game, HMV, Borders, Barratts, Habitat, Focus DIY, Oddbins, Mosaic, Principles, Allied Carpets, Dewhursts, MFI, Blockbuster, Zavvi - all the sorts of 'magnet' shops that were so big a part of the planned regeneration - where are they now? It's an obsolete plan from the last century that LBH are stuck with because of that bloody development agreement. LBH knows it's going to be an embarrassment. If only they could get out of it without having to give Grainger even more that the £1.5million sweetener plus giveaway houses already donated...
I did a bit of top-up education recently, in half term week i went to Stratford's Westfield huge showcase, just ten minutes from Tottenham Hale. Surely the mightiest heave made by C21st retail capital in the last few years. It's massive, overwhelming, I hated it but that's obviously my problem. These are the survivors of the High Street crash. It was a lovely sunny day. Loads of people, may of them family groups, having a day out, there in the designer square drinking designer coffee to the sounds (unescapable) of 70s soft rock. Not many in the actual shops spending actual money though.
Grainger's (only surviving?) nod to S106 was to pledge not to rent to bookies, pound shops or takeaway/fast food outlets. As they must now be canvassing the big names in their hope that they will win against our Judicial Review and not have run out of puff by then, perhaps they could let us know who they think will fill all those gaps that will replace the existing viable businesses? Come on Big G, do tell.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Spot on. I was with one of the UK's recognised retail experts today - not Portas!. He believes that Tottenham Hale retail park is going to need to change radically and his default position on Seven Sisters or any new retail space is that, unless there's a compelling argument to the contrary, additional traditional high retail space is not needed.
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But the G-Plan is the only one being allowed by the LBH hard core. Please invite your expert to contact WCCC and I'll buy him a non-designer but still delicious coffee in the market.
Tottnm Hale is odd - at weekends it's heaving, there are queues to get in to park unless it's pouring with rain. But maybe they are all buying weekly necessities from Lidl and 50p plants from B&Q. Argos is effectively a mail order outlet. The shuttered Comet shows no more signs of life (or of paying tax) than when it went bust shut down at xmas. There's only Lidl for the 5000 people in the new flats to buy groceries, unless there's a secret mini High Street tucked away between the blocks that I've yet to discover. Intrigued to know how your chap thinks it can be changed. They could lose a few parking places and have market stalls?
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You can read for yourself! Unattractive looking book (reminds me of a Daz advert), but he's full of hard talking no-nonsense good sense. I was with him and a few others up at Hale Village (the Tottenham is silent).
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The website says that his book: "... highlights the factors which have never been explored before".
Well, not in the two of his videos I've just watched. But I'll see what he says in the book.
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Just for the record, I said neither that every home in the Wards Corner development will always be let/sold. Nor that this state of affairs would have happened by now.
I was making a far more limited point. Clyde raised the issue of loss of tax income when a building is empty. Grainger may well agree. And they could point out that while the Wards Corner Coalition’s legal proceedings hold up the development, Grainger are prevented from building and trying to sell/rent the space.
Will the flats “go in blocks to Buy-to-let landlords in Dubai? Well that’s one possible outcome. Will the new flats simply stand empty? These are two of the worse-case outcomes.
Pam says “betcha” they will. I prefer to give substantial evidence to back up my own predictions. And I don’t have any evidence.
As for companies which were interested in opening shops in the new building, have they all gone bust? And have their potential replacements all scarpered to Stratford? Maybe. But again I’d like some evidence before accepting another worse-case scenario.
But what of Pam’s general point that this is all part of an obsolete plan from the last century? To my mind this is far more persuasive. I’ve made no secret of my doubts about the whole Kober/Goldberg “Plan for Tottenham”. Which appears to me like a rehash of ideas from the past which have failed partly or wholly. Including - I must admit some ideas which I supported.
And I too have had my doubts about the viability of the Wards Corner plan. Although not because of the problems of Tottenham Hale Retail Park but because of its successes. And yes, I do realise that the shape of retailing has transformed because of shopping malls and online sales.
If I was in the Wards Corner Coalition or part of the Muswell Hill colonial administration, I would go along to Grainger and ask them these questions – rather than posting comments on a website. Unless Kober and Goldberg are even more incompetent than they appear, I assume they’ve done so. And if they haven’t Chief Executive Nick Walkley will do so. (From everything I see and hear, I warm more to Mr Walkley.)
So Hugh, were Pam’s comments “Spot on”. Well, maybe your recognised UK retail expert will be generous and share his expertise with us residents. The Council’s Regeneration service haven’t shared any of their new ideas with us councillors. Assuming of course that they have any.
By the way the issue about not needing additional retail space along Tottenham High Road has been accepted for many years. Which doesn’t stop developers and traders from trying their luck. Nor freeholders from raising rents as high as possible and trying to build as high as possible.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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