I am indebted to the very many members of Sandwell's Muslim community who have contacted The Skidder expressing their concern about the "curious" way Sandwell's Labour Council conducts its business. (And please do continue to contact me!)
The name of one organisation keeps cropping up over and o
ver again - The "SMO" or Sandwell Muslim Organisation - in which Labour Deputy Leader
Mahboob Hussain was once a leading light. Now there are many stories about that organisation but, here, I will just share one with you together with some other matters of concern.
There is a rather nice large building (formerly two separate office buildings) right opposite the Kremlin at 33/35 Church Street which the SMO coveted. Sandwell Labour were anxious to help and back in 2003 the then Head of Corporate Property offered a lease of the building (probably on very favourable terms). But SMO spun them a yarn that their own original estimate for refurbishment was inadequate and that to raise further capital from the bank what they actually needed was, er, an option to purchase the freehold instead. The Head of Corporate Property readily agreed as did the Cabinet Member for Urban Form although the Council insisted upon a restrictive covenant (ie a legal requirement) that the SMO couldn't sell the property to a non-charitable party for 25 years.
It appears that the actual transfer was dated 13th August, 2003 and so there should have been no re-sale until. at least, August 2028 (unless to another charity). The legal transfer was to two individuals as "trustees" but only one was named at HM Land Registry as the Proprietor - Mr Abdul Fazal Hussain (apparently NOT a close relative of the the Dear Deputy Leader). Later Council documents claim that the sale was at "open market value" but that figure is
not shown publicly anywhere. Of course, the market value would be much lower than "normal" because of the restrictive covenant.
At this time the SMO was also getting large grants of taxpayers money from Sandwell Labour and, apparently, from the Big Lottery Fund but became mired in financial and other internal problems. In 2004 SMO suggested that Labour either buy back the lease (!) or allow an amendment to the restrictive covenant permitting various individual trustees to take the freehold and they would then -themselves - grant a 24-year lease to the SMO. It is not clear who these other mysterious trustees were. The Head of Legal and Democratic Services was left to sort it out with the Head of Corporate Property though little progress seems to have been made.
For financial year 2005/2006, Sandwell's Labour Council had agreed to pump in £33,650 to the SMO even though the Big Lottery Fund was withholding cash because of "concerns".
On 9th November, 2005 three cabinet members resolved to stop funding the SMO from 1st April,2006. At the time they were again told that four unnamed individuals would buy the property and lease it back to the SMO - but that the bank of these four individuals needed release of the restrictive covenant! Cooper and his two colleagues agreed to that subject to the building being repaired AND the lease being granted. The sale of the building to the "four individuals" would allegedly bring in enough cash to keep the SMO going.
But it appears that nothing happened. The funding stopped and, so far as I can see, the property just sat there until 2012. If anyone had a problem it was Mr Abdul Fazal Hussain - presumably still as a "trustee" - who could not dispose of the property except to a charity. Or could he.......?
(I should add here that a Mr Saf Hussain made a Freedom of Information Act request about the amount of money Sandwell Labour piled into the SMO but was refused the information in their usual arrogant way. Part of it was eventually answered by a Mr Cross who appears to be a member of the public!!!! The figures he supplied were £32,675 for 2005/2006 and some small winding down costs of £2,975 in 2006/2007).
Nothing seems to have happened then until 2012 when then there are a number of "strange" occurrences. Mr Abdul Fazal Hussain - still apparently the sole registered proprietor - applied for planning permission to change the use of the building from office use to TWO residential units. The first strange thing here is that if you type "Church Street, Oldbury" into the Sandwell Council website there is no trace of ANY planning applications for 33 or 35. But I did manage to eventually find the application under number DC/12/55148 in a Planning Committee report (see below).
Another oddity is that the declarations on the application are signed 7th June, 2012, as was the separate fee form, but the application was allegedly not received by Sandwell Council until 17th September. Someone, somewhere, appears to have been waiting for something to happen.....
If you look at the application itself the detail in the planning report is very sparse indeed but the matter was not dealt with by the planning committee. Instead it was decided solely by our old friend £108,614 per annum Area Director,
Nick Bubalo, who approved the plan for TWO residential units in 22nd October, 2012 under the "delegated authority" given to him by the Labour comrades.
But trumping all this is a reference in the current Land Registry title to an event of key importance that happened just 10 days before Bubalo granted the planning permission ie:
"By a deed dated 12th October, 2012 made between (1) The Borough Council of Sandwell and (2) Abdul Fazal Hussain the covenants contained in the transfer dated 13th August, 2003.....
were expressed to be released."
And so Mr A. F. Hussain had gone from owning an office building in a poor state of repair and encumbered with a restrictive covenant on 17th September to a much more valuable building free of the legal restriction and with planning permission just 5 weeks or so later!!!!
Now I have searched and searched for any reference to any Council committee deciding to release the covenant to no avail and it is now imperative that Sandwell Labour explain (a) who agreed to release the covenant and
why, (b) who dealt with this in SMBC's legal department and did they know about the planning application that was then in progrees and (c) how much they asked Mr A. F. Hussain to pay them (ie us, the taxpayers) for the covenant release? There is also the question of who paid for the legal costs of drawing up the Deed.
Now something else odd happens. The property is converted not into two residential units but into six ie 33, 33a, 33b, 35, 35a and 35b Church Street. As above there is no reference to this on the SMBC planning website and, this time, I cannot even find any reference to the change in any planning committee report. It may be there but I can't find it in the expected places.
Mr A.F. Hussain then sold all six units to a company based in Wolverhampton. I have done some searches and as far as I can see that Company is entirely legitimate. Now it seems very unlikely that a legitimate company would have bought the properties without being satisfied that the appropriate planning permissions had been granted. My
guess is that they were since the six units were not sold until, it seems, 15th October, 2013. There was probably an application in the interim which has disappeared from the Council website for whatever reason. (There are just some later building control applications on there apparently made by the new owner in 2014).
Oh, and I forgot to mention. The property was sold for
£170,000. Quite how Mr A.F.Hussain is divvying up the money in his capacity as a trustee I know not. Neither do many members of the local Muslim community who have contacted me!!!
It remains to be seen what was paid for the property with a covenant in 2003 but, on the face of it, a valuable public asset has been let go yet again by Labour for a song.
Which brings me neatly on to two more mosque "deals" involving restrictive covenants......
We travel over to Tipton and to a large plot of land on the north side of Peel Street. This is the long, thin, rectangular area of land in the Google Earth photo above just to the left of the orange pointer.
It seems that way back on 1st December, 1995 this land was conveyed by Sandwell Council to the trustees of the nearby Kanz-ul-Iman Mosque three minutes walk away in Benfield Street. There were restrictive covenants. This is a large plot measuring 120 m x 16 m - suitable for an entire terrace of houses. It is not clear what exactly this 1995 Deed conferred upon the Mosque trustees.
Once again, there is no mention of what happened in early 2013 via internet searches but whatever the position previously, Sandwell Labour formally conveyed the land to the Mosque on 30th January, 2013 - again with restrictive covenants - for just
£25,000. That is cheap even for an 84-space car park in Tipton!
In went a planning application for an "overspill" car park and this is what the Express and Star reported:
"Leaders at the Kanz-ul-Iman mosque,................., is [sic] now hoping to construct the new car park on derelict land that is nearby.
Planning bosses at Sandwell Council will consider the application at a meeting next Wednesday, for the site at the junction of Peel Street and Barnett Street, which is a three-minute walk from the mosque on Binfield Street.
The committee is recommended to approve the application, subject to a number of conditions including limiting its use to between 8am and 9pm.
The current site used to be a housing estate, but that was cleared and it has been left vacant for about 15 years.
Graham Durrant, who is acting as agent for the application, said: “The mosque itself has its own car park, but this application is only for occasional use for things like funerals, special days, things like that.
“It won’t be open and used daily, so it’s a fairly low-key thing really. It will benefit so there won’t be traffic around the nearby island junction on busy days.”
Of course, the application was granted. Let us hope that a similar situation doesn't occur as above and that Labour doesn't simply remove the covenant in secret at a future date - in which case a huge piece of publicly-owned land will have gone for just
£25,000.
There are other instances of Labour transferring car parks to mosques eg Cambridge Street, Smethwick but regular readers will be aware of the attempt by Labour to sell a large car-park in West Bromwich to the Mosque a few minutes walk away in Dartmouth Street. The full list of my blogs on this potential scandal is set out below the subscription but suffice to say here that although the Dartmouth Street Mosque has its own 19-space car park and is within a very short walking distance of two SMBC pay and display car parks and a very short walk from bus routes along the High Street and from the Metro station, the plan was to gift a further non-adjacent car park to them at a low price on the basis that there would be a, er, restrictive covenant.
Anybody detect a pattern emerging here.....?
Of course the Mosque had only received planning permission relatively recently where traffic was deemed to be unlikely to cause a problem (according to SMBC officers) but then, suddenly, traffic WAS alleged to be a problem - particularly on a Friday! As ever, Labour were keeping everything secret in the Committee papers (Committee Chair - Sandwell's most-celebrated amnesiac,
Mahboob Hussain) and whilst acknowledging that the land would be worth considerably more to the taxpayer if sold for housing it was felt that a cheap deal with the Mosque would be preferable! A strange approach, you might think for an allegedly cash-strapped Council cutting services and staff.
Needless to say Labour did not bother to consult with the residents of Earl Street who would be very adversely affected by the proposal.
Fortunately, The Skidder, was able to fire a salvo before Hussain's Committee (as was) met and the "deal" is allegedly on hold in that the Committee agreed to just licence the land to the Mosque at the present time pending developments with Shaftesbury House itself. Clearly it will be necessary to keep an eye of this to make sure an "odd" deal doesn't slip through "under the radar" at considerable cost to the taxpayer.
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| Nightmare for Earl Street..... |
Of course, Sandwell Labour has a legal duty to secure the best value on the disposal of land but it seems that it needs to be reminded about that despite these austere times. Birmingham City Council auctions all its surplus property save in exceptional circumstances but Sandwell Labour seem to want to retain a "degree of control" over the sales process. They can't be seeking to "buy" influence and votes can they? It seems that the shifty "socialists" should also change their rules to provide that restrictive covenants are not lifted on properties without the matter being publicly aired by a "cabinet" committee. But that would mean they couldn't get away with doing secret deals and that would never do, would it?
THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - A COMMUNITY BLOG - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!
E-mail: thesandwellskidder@gmail.com Twitter: @bcrover (Vernon Grant)
Confidential phone no: 07599 983737
Previous blogs on the Dartmouth Street Mosque:
29/08/14 - "Mosque Car Park - Another Labour Sale at an Undervaluation"
31/08/14 - "Mosque Car Parking Scandal - Chance for Labour Group to Reflect...."
03/09/14 - "Mosque Parking Scandal in Pictures! Spot the Oddity!"
09/09/14 - "Late Final - Cashmore and Mosque Parking Exclusives".
