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For sale at unfair price
• KEI Kagami’s experience is just one of 220 stories of unfair and unreasonable behaviour by Islington Council towards small businesses (Fashion workshop price ‘oversized’, August 3).
In February the council executive reconsidered its preferred sale process of sealed bids and offered affected leaseholders the opportunity to match bid prices reached through a competitive bidding process between property developers. This would provide them with the market value of the properties!
This was a flawed process from the beginning but the only option we were given.
Many investors did not participate in the council’s process of market testing because of the perceived political repercussions of this unpopular sale. Some of these investors and property developers approached leaseholders directly with an interest in financing the purchase of their property.
Therefore, the chosen method of sale has not effectively tested the market because the political ramifications deterred potential participants. We have provided the council with numerous examples of equivalent properties being given widely differing bid prices and vastly different properties being given the same bid price. There is no logical or reasonable explanation available.
The unfair and unreasonable assignment of prices to the properties concerned has been challenged through legal representation by several affected leaseholders. All representations have been stonewalled by the Liberal Democrat executive and the council’s legal department.
Concerns about the council’s obligation to behave fairly and the impact of its current policy on the human rights of affected business owners have been summarily dismissed.
The council asserts it is obliged to consider its fiduciary obligations over everything else, including the human rights of its constituents. This has been stated publicly by the head of law, Louise Round, at an overview committee meeting on June 12 and in correspondence to the lawyers involved with the challenge.
The market-tested offer prices deputy council leader Councillor Terry Stacy asserts are being applied fairly and consistently to everyone are illogical and arbitrarily apportioned prices to the benefit of a few and the detriment of many.
Essentially, the council is fairly and consistently applying unfair and inconsistent offer prices. The legal challenge is ongoing.
DALE BARTER
Amwell Veterinary Surgery
Amwell Street, EC1
• THE council has been asked to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act with regard to the sell-off of 220 retail properties.
The council will not disclose the information requested because it believes the public interest in withholding the information outweighs the public interest in disclosing it. It says the documents requested contain information that is commercially sensitive or personal data.
The council did not consider this a problem prior to exposing the personal and commercial details of the 220 retailers in a generally available portfolio sales document.
MARGARET LAMONT
Great Percy Street, WC1
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