Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Alan Stanton asks for Charles Adje's resignation over Ally Pally (but Adje 'doesn't see why he should')
From the Haringey Independent
A Labour councillor has broken ranks to call for his boss's resignation over the Alexandra Palace affair.
Embattled Councillor Charles Adje, Haringey Council's cabinet member for finance, has been asked to resign by a fellow Labour councillor Alan Stanton.
Mr Stanton said Mr Adje should take responsibility for the stinging criticism of the council regarding its handling of the sale of the lease for Alexandra Palace.
He said in his blog earlier today: "There is a long and honourable tradition in British politics that the person who holds senior political office should take responsibility for the failures of subordinates.
"As anyone who has met Mr Adje knows, he can be both charming and graceful. In his own and the borough's interest he should now go gracefully.
"There's a council meeting this evening where this matter will be raised by the opposition."
A Labour councillor has broken ranks to call for his boss's resignation over the Alexandra Palace affair.
Embattled Councillor Charles Adje, Haringey Council's cabinet member for finance, has been asked to resign by a fellow Labour councillor Alan Stanton.
Mr Stanton said Mr Adje should take responsibility for the stinging criticism of the council regarding its handling of the sale of the lease for Alexandra Palace.
He said in his blog earlier today: "There is a long and honourable tradition in British politics that the person who holds senior political office should take responsibility for the failures of subordinates.
"As anyone who has met Mr Adje knows, he can be both charming and graceful. In his own and the borough's interest he should now go gracefully.
"There's a council meeting this evening where this matter will be raised by the opposition."
Tags for Forum Posts: ally pally
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Well spotted.
This taking of the planning process for granted, which verges on contempt, is what would have happened at Alexandra Palace, had the dirty deal with Firoka had gone ahead. Kassam might have pressured Councillor Adje or others like him, for approval for the casino or to demolish the world's first tv studios etc. The planning committee might not have felt comfortable with it, but they'd probably have given the property developer everything he demanded (as the council did last year with the Licence). The developer might have threatened not to have spent any more money unless he got everything he wanted. He's been running rings round councils for years with enormous success.
The public cannot have confidence in the planning (or licensing) process where Haringey council itself, or one of its friends, is in effect, one of the participants. The council makes token gestures to portray independence - but in these circumstances, the committees can become rubber stamps.
We saw this earlier this year when Haringey Council made an application to itself for a permanent gambling licence at Alexandra Palace (on behalf of their trading company, on behalf of Ladbrokes). The licencing committee comprised five councillors and was chaired by the pro-casino Councillor Harry Lister.
That committee had no trouble awarding themselves the permanent gambling premises licence inside our Charitable Trust.
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Permalink Reply by Joe on
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The full council meeting is live on the Haringey webcast now
http://www.haringey.ukcouncil.net/site/player/pl_compact.php?a=1929...
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Thanks, Joe for giving this link.
Several people asked me how to view only the bits on the £37 million and/or the Firoka licence at Alexandra Palace. Not everyone has worked out that there's an orange header in the middle of the page labelled "Index Points". Scroll down the timing list to 00:28:57 for the start of Council Leader George Meehan's statement on the Icelandic banks; and then 00:35:54 for Opposition Leader, Cllr Robert Gorrie's response.
01:00:46 takes you to Robert Gorrie on the Firoka licence scandal. 01:09:57 jumps to the reply from Cllr Matt Cooke, the current chair of Alexandra Palace Board. Then 01:17:54 to Cllr Charles Adje's brief statement.
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By the way, I'm hoping that Cllr Adje's reference to "punters that choose to publish spin on things" was a reference to Haringeyonline and the comments here! Though sadly, the only spin was in Charles Adje's own desperate and pathetic statement which demeaned him and his office.
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P.S. Having viewed these video clips several times, can I make a small factual correction to Clive Carter's comment above. It was Matt Cooke who referred to the expectation that Firoka would invest £40 million in Alexandra Palace. Charles Adje gave the figure as £50 million.
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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Thanks for this guidance, Alan, on viewing the meetings. It might be worth adding that navigating using the Index Points' is only possible in Explorer ( Firefox needs a special plug in.)
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Alan, I'm more than happy to stand corrected, as yet another differing amount – £50 million – has appeared on the scene. All these figures were pie in the sky. Regardless of the numbers agreed – and which even now remain secret in the Lease etc. – the figures publicly bandied about represented hope and trust that the developer would spend.
Firoka might have spent significant sums over time – but only after getting absolutely everything he wanted from the Council, including all licensing and planning permissions required by Kassam. In effect, our Charitable Trust would have had to have agreed to unconditional total surrender over all aspects of the People's Palace. The likelihood of Firoka of spending this money has to be seen against Firoka's reputation, which can easily be researched on the web. One Oxford City councillor, with experience of Kassam, warned Haringey to be very careful in its dealings with him.
Councillor Adje admitted that he had no plan B with respect to Alexandra Palace and he appears to have been prepared to do almost anything to get the putrid deal through. Councillor Adje never seems once to have stopped in his reckless drive, to ask: was this a good deal?
A wiser man might have realized that much of the time, Kassam was bluffing in his verbal threats of withdrawal from the deal. The wise old judge - Justice Sir Jeremy Sullivan - in the High Court called Kassam's bluff in his (written) witness statement by quashing the dirty deal and yet Firoka did not finally withdraw until 10 months later).
Had Kassam pulled it off, it would have been the deal of his life, and the biggest rip-off of public assets in the history of the Borough, ably aided and abetted by Charles Adje. It so nearly came to pass.
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I'm not dismissing Clive's or anyone else's concerns about Firoka's plans for Alexandra Palace and what might have happened if they'd got a lease. Nor am I unwilling to learn from the past or debate what we should do in the future.
But right now please let's focus on the Walklate Report; and the process (or lack of one! ) for granting Firoka a licence to run the Palace and keep all the profits pending a lease.
Yesterday evening at the Council meeting Cllr Charles Adje tried to blur this focus. He'd like us to look at the "inherited" problems of the Palace. [Perfectly true] To observe that the plan to grant Firoka a lease was discussed by the Board. [Also true.] And that this went through a procurement process. [Again true.]
But this was not the focus and main purpose of the Walklate Report. There was no such procurement process for the licence granted to Firoka pending a lease. There was no proper legal or financial advice about this licence.
At last night's Council meeting Robert Gorrie, Opposition Leader claimed that this licence "cost the Trust more than two million pounds". Nobody disputed this figure. And for "cost the Trust" you should read "cost the people of Haringey" because the Council is picking-up the bill for Alexandra Palace.
So who bears responsibility for the dog's-breakfast of the licence to Firoka? The senior staff told Walklate that Cllr Adje was actively leading on it. Cllr Adje told Walklate that the senior staff did not tell him about the terms of the licence.
I don't know the answer. But if this had been "on my watch" - if I'd been chair of the Alexandra Palace Board at the time - I'd have accepted my responsibility as the politician in charge.
For some people taking responsibility is old-fashioned. Even so, last night at the Council meeting I was - at least - hoping to hear some small expression of regret and contrition from Cllr Adje. A teensy faint "sorry" to the people of Haringey.
Regrets? He's had a few. But then again, too few to mention.
"It is regrettable that the changes in the terms of the licence were not brought to mine - or that of fellow members of the Board's - attention.
Yep. That's it folks. Two million down the pan? He had his eye off the ball and nobody told him.
So that's all right then.
And this is the politician now in charge of . . . [take a deep breath] . . . Haringey Council's Property, Council Tax, Procurement, IT, Personnel, Organisational Development and Finances.
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You are right to try to keep the focus on Walklate and the Licence to Firoka (and its "development").
The losses attributable to the Firoka Licence may prove to be much more than the two million pounds claimed. It is little wonder that that modest figure was not denied. As far as I can work out, most of the losses comprise profits made by Firoka in which our charity did not share a penny (as it would have, had the council's trading company been in occupation rather than Firoka).
These profits might fairly be described as super-profits, or even hyper-profits. We know from Walklate that Firoka agreed to pay £1,000 a month for the use of Alexandra Palace (!) (not a typo. One thousand pounds, per month for the seven and a half acre Peoples' Palace). It is not clear that they contributed to any running costs - at all.
To spell it out, taxpayers of this Borough continued to pay for the utility bills, repairs and maintenence while Mr Kassam was laughing all the way to the bank (probably in Monaco rather than Iceland).
It is worse. Staff from the council, whose salaries continued to be paid by the council, were seconded to Firoka and contributed to the profits of this private company controlled by Mr Kassam. Thus, there was a council subsidy to an extremely rich person who may be non-domicield for tax purposes. This at a time when front-line services are under pressure.
The profits struck under these conditions carried on for eight months which included the busy Christmas period and included the hugely successful World Darts Championship with associated gambling and which event was broadcast in high definition to many countries (what were the global television rights worth to Ladbrokes and indirectly, to Firoka?).
It gets even worse. After they were finally evicted in about 7 January 2008, Firoka were thought to be in possession of perhaps £600,000 of advance deposits - deposits by organisers of events and exhibitions against future bookings which could be up to four years in advance. It is not known what is the status of those deposits.
Does anyone remember fireworks night last year? Does anyone remember people at the entrances with buckets seeking donations to the Alexandra Palace Charitable Trust? Where did this cash go?
Someone made all this possible by granting permission for this to take place. Someone should accept responsibility for these huge losses that have hurt everyone in this Borough.
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Valuable and interesting questions, Clive. Can I suggest you pose them as Freedom of Information requests and post the answers both on Harringayonline and another website accessible to everyone.
Two useful features of the Walklate Report are that it's independent and has a low-key factual grounding. With Alexandra Palace we need hard, dispassionate information - about the past; about current developments; and about proposals and plans for the future.
Incidentally, I've posted a slightly fuller version of my own comments here on Flickr for anyone who isn't a Harringayonline member.
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Alan, I mentioned the stewards at entrances soliciting donations from the public for the AP charity at last year's fireworks night (into unsealed buckets) during the occupation by Firoka. These monies appear to be unaccounted for.
But the huge security guard presence that was needed was one of the night's big costs. It is thought that the wages of the dozens of guards was borne by our Charitable Trust (i.e. us tax payers) and not Firoka, who were in occupation and enjoying hyper-profits.
The only sop to the public in the excreble Lease was that F***** agreed to put on a quality fireworks show once a year for the public. At fireworks night last year, F***** were still the council's "preferred development partner". How much of the fireworks bill did they foot? For many residents, Fireworks night is the only visible sign of public entertainment at AP and they might have missed it if for any reason, it was not put on. And the public would still have looked to the council to take responsibility for the show ...
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WITH this posting I have attached a copy of the document that gave away so much to Firoka: the Licence Agreement and which led to such great loss to the Council (i.e. council tax payers).
The redacted Licence was obtained by a member of the Save Ally Pally campaign earlier this year under the Freedom of Information Act (2000) following delay and prevarication by the Council.
It was the drawing of attention to this licence that is thought to have alarmed the administrative wing of the council so much, that it led to the commissioning of the independent Walklate report. At the Consultative Committee meeting on Tuesday night, the Chairman recommended that as many people as possible should read Walklate.
Note that the Licence is dated 4 May 2007; that it has some censorship. The figures "redacted" (censored) for the monthly fee, we now know from the Walklate report to have been a derisory £1,000 per month.. To use Alexandra Palace. The total fee for eight month's use – £8,000 – would probably have been more than recovered by the hiring out of the West Hall for one day.
Has any licence ever issued by Haringey ever enabled any private company to make so much profit, so fast and at such great public expense? - Attachments:
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Firoka Licence.pdf, 952 KB
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Cllr Charles Adje - News Update.
HoL members may recall Clive Carter's postings about Cllr Charles Adje and Alexandra Palace. If you haven't seen them, there are news items in this week's Ham & High and Haringey Independent.
These cover Cllr Adje's hearing before the local Standards Committee and his suspension from the Council for four months. Cllr Claire Kober was quoted, saying that: "His conduct fell well below the standards expected of any Councillor but he has particularly failed to meet the high expectations that the Labour Party places on its members who hold elected office”. (As required by the Labour Party Rules, he has also had the Labour whip withdrawn.)
Clive Carter was the complainant and I applaud his perseverance,
Background papers to the Standards Committee hearing are published on Haringey Council's website. Unfortunately the file is 38 megabytes. I've asked that a shorter text version is posted.
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