£1m property portfolio listed as sold twice on the same day: how did Hackney balance its books?
Special issue 3. Tuesday, March 14, 2006.
© Andrew Veitch
This is the tale of the property they liked so much they sold it twice; of the property they thought they had sold, but hadn’t; and of the £1.5 million they spent on buying back property they seemingly need not have sold in the first place.
As Price Waterhouse Coopers’ auditors begin checking on Hackney’s property sales department to see if improvements recommended in their highly-critical report last year have been implemented, the extent of the chaos in the department is beginning to emerge.
Top of a long list of blunders: numbers 183 - 187 Stoke Newington High Street listed as sold twice on the same day (April 18, 2002) to the London Development Property Company for £1,380,000. While a sticky keyboard may have been to blame, auditors may want to know whether the council’s accounts were wrongly credited with two payments of £1,380.000 in 2002, and why the supposed double sale wasn’t picked up earlier.
This was not the first time it happened. Numbers 23 - 35 Waterston Street were sold to Unistar Properties Ltd on January 6, 2001, for £507,500. On June 6, 2001, all but number 23 were sold to Unistar Properties again for £507,500.
The figures come from the the council’s monitoring officer, Meic Sullivan-Gould. He’s been ordered by councillors on the public enquiry into property sales to fill in the gaps in the department’s official sales list given to the enquiry when it opened. So many documents have gone missing from the department’s files that Mr Sullivan-Gould has had the Land Registry working overtime to track down the details.
Mr Sullivan-Gould told the enquiry last week (March 6) that he was making progress. Councillors have asked for the gaps to be filled in time for their final public evidence session at the Town Hall this afternoon (Tuesday, March 14). They plan to report before the council disbands for the local government elections on May 4. Previous internal enquiries and a police investigation have found no evidence of impropriety.
Among the mysteries uncovered by Mr Sullivan-Gould, and yet to be explained, are the properties listed as sold but actually still owned by Hackney Council. These include 69a Clapton Common. The property department lists it as being sold to an unknown buyer for £100,000 on December 13, 2001. It wasn’t. The registered owner is still the London Borough of Hackney. The same goes for 54 Parkholme Road and 149 Stamford Hill: both listed as sold but actually owned by the council.
Then there are the buy-backs. Four properties in Codicote Terrace were sold for a total of £542,450 in 2001. They were bought back again under compulsory purchase orders. The same happened to 19 Kelshall Court, sold for £77,500 in 2001; and to seven properties in Lemsford Court, originally sold for a total of more than £900,000.
Perhaps by coincidence, almost all these properties were originally sold in March, 2001. The public enquiry is expected to ask why the properties were sold in the first place, why they were bought back - and what sums subsequently appeared in the council’s accounts.
The auditors may want to look at some discrepancies. For example 13 Reading Lane was listed as being sold for £25,000: it actually fetched £42,000. The property department said it sold 6 and 8 Whitmore Road for £70,000. Mr Sullivan-Gould found they fetched £525,000. Which figure appeared in the council’s accounts has yet to be established.
The property department thinks it sold the whole of the Holly Street phase 5a regeneration site by private tender in 1999. But it doesn’t know how much it fetched, or who bought it. Mr Sullivan-Gould is waiting for the Land Registry to tell him.
Mr Sullivan-Gould can claim some significant discoveries. The property department didn’t know how much it was paid for the former library in Pitfield Street, when it was sold, or who bought it: the answers are £1,630,000 in November, 2002, to Searchgrade Ltd: that should fill a small hole in the council’s accounts. The former Redruth Library in Victoria Park Road fetched £1,060,000 in 2003 - something else the property department didn’t know about.
The mystery of the Wren’s Park morgue site has been solved: New Islington and Hackney Housing Association bought it in January 2003 for £240,000. The Christian community in Shoreditch will be pleased to know that when St Leonard’s Church was sold in 2001 it passed into the loving arms of the London Diocesan Fund, price £1. (Actually it’s a fair bet they did know - but the property department didn’t.)
The final unknown owners in Broadway Market have been identified: 35/37 was sold for £167,000 in 2002 to Broadway Investments Hackney which owns Spirit’s Nutritious Food Galley. The Bahamas-based company, which is trying to make Spirit (aka Lowell Grant) pay a massive backdated rent rise, also owns numbers 53-61 in the market.
Links: broadwaymarket.co.uk
34broadwaymarket.omweb.org
hackneygetsrippedoff.blogspot.com
hackneyenvironment.org.uk
opendalston.blogspot.com/
Special issue 3. Tuesday, March 14, 2006.
© Andrew Veitch
This is the tale of the property they liked so much they sold it twice; of the property they thought they had sold, but hadn’t; and of the £1.5 million they spent on buying back property they seemingly need not have sold in the first place.
As Price Waterhouse Coopers’ auditors begin checking on Hackney’s property sales department to see if improvements recommended in their highly-critical report last year have been implemented, the extent of the chaos in the department is beginning to emerge.
Top of a long list of blunders: numbers 183 - 187 Stoke Newington High Street listed as sold twice on the same day (April 18, 2002) to the London Development Property Company for £1,380,000. While a sticky keyboard may have been to blame, auditors may want to know whether the council’s accounts were wrongly credited with two payments of £1,380.000 in 2002, and why the supposed double sale wasn’t picked up earlier.
This was not the first time it happened. Numbers 23 - 35 Waterston Street were sold to Unistar Properties Ltd on January 6, 2001, for £507,500. On June 6, 2001, all but number 23 were sold to Unistar Properties again for £507,500.
The figures come from the the council’s monitoring officer, Meic Sullivan-Gould. He’s been ordered by councillors on the public enquiry into property sales to fill in the gaps in the department’s official sales list given to the enquiry when it opened. So many documents have gone missing from the department’s files that Mr Sullivan-Gould has had the Land Registry working overtime to track down the details.
Mr Sullivan-Gould told the enquiry last week (March 6) that he was making progress. Councillors have asked for the gaps to be filled in time for their final public evidence session at the Town Hall this afternoon (Tuesday, March 14). They plan to report before the council disbands for the local government elections on May 4. Previous internal enquiries and a police investigation have found no evidence of impropriety.
Among the mysteries uncovered by Mr Sullivan-Gould, and yet to be explained, are the properties listed as sold but actually still owned by Hackney Council. These include 69a Clapton Common. The property department lists it as being sold to an unknown buyer for £100,000 on December 13, 2001. It wasn’t. The registered owner is still the London Borough of Hackney. The same goes for 54 Parkholme Road and 149 Stamford Hill: both listed as sold but actually owned by the council.
Then there are the buy-backs. Four properties in Codicote Terrace were sold for a total of £542,450 in 2001. They were bought back again under compulsory purchase orders. The same happened to 19 Kelshall Court, sold for £77,500 in 2001; and to seven properties in Lemsford Court, originally sold for a total of more than £900,000.
Perhaps by coincidence, almost all these properties were originally sold in March, 2001. The public enquiry is expected to ask why the properties were sold in the first place, why they were bought back - and what sums subsequently appeared in the council’s accounts.
The auditors may want to look at some discrepancies. For example 13 Reading Lane was listed as being sold for £25,000: it actually fetched £42,000. The property department said it sold 6 and 8 Whitmore Road for £70,000. Mr Sullivan-Gould found they fetched £525,000. Which figure appeared in the council’s accounts has yet to be established.
The property department thinks it sold the whole of the Holly Street phase 5a regeneration site by private tender in 1999. But it doesn’t know how much it fetched, or who bought it. Mr Sullivan-Gould is waiting for the Land Registry to tell him.
Mr Sullivan-Gould can claim some significant discoveries. The property department didn’t know how much it was paid for the former library in Pitfield Street, when it was sold, or who bought it: the answers are £1,630,000 in November, 2002, to Searchgrade Ltd: that should fill a small hole in the council’s accounts. The former Redruth Library in Victoria Park Road fetched £1,060,000 in 2003 - something else the property department didn’t know about.
The mystery of the Wren’s Park morgue site has been solved: New Islington and Hackney Housing Association bought it in January 2003 for £240,000. The Christian community in Shoreditch will be pleased to know that when St Leonard’s Church was sold in 2001 it passed into the loving arms of the London Diocesan Fund, price £1. (Actually it’s a fair bet they did know - but the property department didn’t.)
The final unknown owners in Broadway Market have been identified: 35/37 was sold for £167,000 in 2002 to Broadway Investments Hackney which owns Spirit’s Nutritious Food Galley. The Bahamas-based company, which is trying to make Spirit (aka Lowell Grant) pay a massive backdated rent rise, also owns numbers 53-61 in the market.
Links: broadwaymarket.co.uk
34broadwaymarket.omweb.org
hackneygetsrippedoff.blogspot.com
hackneyenvironment.org.uk
opendalston.blogspot.com/
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