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 Cllr Brian Woodrow with his wife Shaku outside the hearing |
King’s X article ‘sexed up’ claim
Former planning chief fights for reputation
ONE of the longest serving councillors at the Town Hall yesterday (Wednesday) defended his reputation amid claims that he used his position to “quietly lobby” against the massive redevelopment of King’s Cross.
Labour councillor Brian Woodrow is in the thick of a Standards Board hearing, standing accused of breaking a strict code of conduct by alledgedly ‘tapping up’ government advisers English Heritage in a series of private telephone calls to see whether they would oppose designs mapped out by developers Argent Limited.
He is also accused of speaking out against the £2 billion blueprint for the railway lands in the Architects Journal (AJ), a specialist magazine, in September 2004, long before it had been discussed and approved by the relevant council committee.
Argent’s chief executive Roger Madelin later made an official complaint, raising concerns of potential bias against his company’s plans.
If found guilty of breaching member rules, the Adjudication Panel for England has the power to suspend Cllr Woodrow from political office.
But on day one of a long-awaited tribunal yesterday (Wednesday) – it has been 18 months since the case was first referred to the Standards Board – Cllr Woodrow came out fighting.
He told a three man investigating panel that his comments to the AJ had been unfairly “sexed up” by a reporter and his conversations with English Heritage were part of mutually beneficial information sharing and did not constitute lobbying.
He was quizzed by lawyers at a public hearing in Shropshire House in Capper Street, Bloomsbury, for two hours yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon and faces a further two hours of questions when the inquiry resumes this morning (Thursday).
Cllr Woodrow said he had done his best to always bring balance to the planning committee.
He said: “Most of the things that come to committee these days are controversial. There are going to be winners and losers. Those who are losing are going to be angry. I’ve been spat at. I’ve had a knife thrown at me.”
Cllr Woodrow lost his grip on the planning committee after seven years at the helm when he was ousted by his own Labour colleagues last year. He no longer sits on the committee.
Over the King’s Cross masterplan submitted by Argent – the biggest ever application that the Town Hall has had to deal with and still mired by controversy and potential legal action over how the giant expanse of land will be used – Cllr Woodrow said he felt officers working on the scheme had lost their way.
Asked about his level of confidence in the officers involved at the time of his stewardship, he said: “Very low. There was a juggernaut moving in a certain direction. I was increasingly pessimistic.”
The hearing also heard yesterday (Wednesday) from Patrick Pugh, a chief officer in the London wing of England Heritage.
If English Heritage had opposed Argent’s plans, the developers would have found it far more difficult to win approval for plans to demolish and alter listed buildings on the site – but no objection was filed.
A former Camden planning officer, Mr Pugh told the hearing that he had known Cllr Woodrow for more than 20 years and that there was regular telephone contact between the two. On one occasion he interrupted a holiday to call Cllr Woodrow back – but insisted that he never initiated the conversations. Mr Pugh said that he had never been “pressurised” to raise objections to the project.
But he added: “The purpose of the call is absolutely on the margin, on the line. It was to chat around the issues. To seek support for the view he felt that this was too large a scheme.”
Neither Mr Pugh nor Cllr Woodrow can remember exact dates of the phone calls apart from that they took place in summer 2004.
Asked about Cllr Woodrow’s claim that the telephone exchanges was mutually beneficial, Mr Pugh added: “I’m not sure that it benefited me to understand how Cllr Woodrow felt about it (King’s Cross redevelopment).”
Mr Pugh said that environment director Peter Bishop had grown frustrated with Cllr Woodrow’s phone calls, believing that the communication should have gone through him.
Mr Pugh told the hearing: “There is a sensitivity… I didn’t prompt these calls. It is quite difficult to put the phone down and say that it completely inappropriate to talk about this.”
When interviewed ahead of the hearing, he described Cllr Woodrow’s calls as “quietly lobbying” and told the tribunal yesterday (Wednesday): “It is quietly seeking support from English Heritage. Lots of people do that. It is not an unusual thing to happen.”
While Mr Pugh spent two hours answering questions yesterday (Wednesday), Ed Dorrell, news editor at the AJ, has refused to take to the oath and appear at the tribunal – despite being the reporter who compiled the controversial story that landed Cllr Woodrow in trouble.
The hearing has run on without him and Mr Dorrell was not present as Cllr Woodrow attacked AJ’s track record, which he claimed has been bleamished by regular mistakes.
He said: “It is not a paper of record.”
When interviewed by an investigating officer last year, Cllr Woodrow said: “We were coming to the end of the consultation period (on King’s Cross) and he was one of a number of journalists who were saying ‘hows it going?’ and my recollection is that I gave him the background information I’d given to other journalists. He’s the only one who sexed it up into a.. you know, hyped it up into something which has hit the headlines. Which I should have been more careful. Ed Dorrell tends to do that in the Architects Journal.”
Mr Dorrell had initially contacted Cllr Woodrow on a separate issue but the conversation later switched to King’s Cross. An article subsequently appeared in the AJ quoting Cllr Woodrow as warning off the developers from using high buildings in the new development.
Mr Woodrow told the hearing that he was used to speaking to journalists in his role as planning chairman and that he “educated” reporters on complicated policies.
He said his exchange Mr Dorrell was for background purposes only, not the “searing attack” on the scheme that the journalist put to print.
As part of the charges against him, Cllr Woodrow is accused of failing to write to the AJ to correct Mr Dorrell’s story. He said that Dame Jane Roberts, then Labour’s leader of the council, had written to the magazine and secured a rebuttal on the letters page.
Mr Dorrell had been asked to attend the hearing but declined the invitation. In an interview with an investigating officer last year, Mr Dorrell said: “I stand by the quotes in my story. The AJ prides itself in its journalistic standards and I am happy to state that categorically that I have never knowingly misquoted anybody.”
The journalist did not ask Cllr Woodrow for a full interview and described the exchange as a “conversation” rather than a “formal question and answer” session.
The hearing is due to resume today (Thursday). |
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