An article in Property Week reports that the officer responsible for Westminster City Council’s investment properties has been suspended pending an internal investigation – for legal reasons the details of the allegations are not reported, although the officer is named as Alistair Rudd, one of the council’s most senior employees.
Rudd has been responsible for several significant property and lease disposals for the council:
The sale process for North Wharf Gardens, the former site of North Westminster Community School, under offer to Zog Group for around £120m.
Westminster council’s car parks disposals, which included the sale of Chiltern Street Car Park in Marylebone.
Deciding on an occupier for Old Marylebone Town Hall.
Clearly the news is of major import, and will attract much attention over the coming weeks.
For two months in the summer, 23 July to 3 October 2011, visitors have the chance to look round Buckingham Palace and admire the interiors of this principal royal residence. Visitors for the Summer Opening tour are permitted access to the nineteen State Rooms decorated in paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and Canaletto, Sevres porcelain and some of the finest English and French furniture in the world.
The special exhibition Royal Fabergé and the display featuring The Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding dress are included as part of a visit to the State Rooms.
Buckingham Palace is a short walk from Pimlico Flats and we offer a 1 bedroom serviced apartment for tourists for £600/week
During 2007 & 2008 someone claiming to be Joanne Pier/Zoe Fletcher claimed that her father had made money in property and the diamond trade, and that her grandfather had built South Africa’s Sun City development – she approached Ashdown Lyons Chartered Surveyors asking for valuations on a large number of residential properties including Belvedere House, Pimlico.
Mary-Jane Rathie, a senior surveyor at Ashdown Lyons, allegedly overvalued these top London properties in return for £900,000 plus a Bentley Continental and a Range Rover Sport, together worth nearly £200,000 which were both registered in the name of her husband David, 47, a Metropolitan Police officer with the central London traffic unit.
Ms Pier obtained more than £10 million of loans, based on valuations by Rathie, and has since left the country and cannot be found.
In February 2009 Ashdown Lyons was placed into adminstration with all staff made redundant, in total 60 staff lost their jobs, 35 surveyors and 25 administrative staff.
What lessons do you think we can draw from this sad & sorry tale?
I wouldn’t normally alert you about something so far in advance, but as these walking tours are free they are booking up very fast.
The garden squares are not open to the general public, so it really is a rare opportunity to explore and enjoy these hidden green spaces – so these garden walks are very highly recommended indeed.
Garden Walk: Chester Square
FULLY BOOKED – I only included this to ram home the point that if you would like to go on one of the other walks you need to book up well in advance.
Garden Walk: Eaton Square
The walk will be centred upon Eaton Square’s Fountain Garden. Managed by Grosvenor since its creation in the 1820’s a significant period for this particular garden is that of the Second World War. A cannon shell from a German aircraft was found embedded in tree limbs during pruning work as recently as the 1970s. Walkers will learn about Belgravia and this famous square’s history as well as the garden and the several species of trees that have been cultivated here.
Thursday 5 May (ONLY A FEW PLACES LEFT) 12pm to 1pm
Garden Walk: Eccleston Square
This extended 75 minute walk will start with a brief history of Victoria whilst making your way to Eccleston Square. The tour will demonstrate how over the years more and more tender trees and shrubs have become viable in our changing environment within the City micro climate.
The garden now has the largest collection of Californian Lilacs (Ceanothus) in the world. There are also a substantial number of plants that originate from Australasia. The garden has won awards continuously over the last ten years and has the distinction of being the only garden square that has made it into the National Garden Scheme.
Wednesday 25 May & Thursday 26 May Extended walk 12.00pm to 1.15pm on both days
Victoria’s Hidden Past
Nothing is quite what it seems: the Bluecoat School was built in 1709 and was in use until 1926. The building of this charitable school was funded by a brewer, who also used the school as a storage place for beer. It is now a National Trust gift shop. Another seemingly contradictory story involves Caxton Hall, a meeting place for the suffragette movement, which became renowned for celebrity marriages. There is a burial ground where the first black man to get the vote in Westminster is buried.
You can also browse round the modern day store, which supplied the needs of the British Empire; find mansions that housed the mistresses of the military; imagine the Church turning a prison into a cathedral and up market accommodation and learn about a prisoner who was not actually kept locked up in a prison. You will also find out about current and future development opportunities for Victoria and much more.
Wednesday 1 June, 6 July, 3 August 12pm to 1pm
Belgravia & Victoria
Right in the heart of Victoria between the boundary wall of Buckingham Palace and Lower Grosvenor Gardens is the little known Victoria Square with a connection to Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond and a statue of the young Queen Victoria. As the walking route takes you into Belgravia you will be amongst larger squares with fine houses inhabited by the wealthy and well-heeled celebrities, past and present.
It is an area originally developed and built by the Grosvenor family and designed by architects like Thomas Cubitt. It is made up of elegant terraces divided by fine squares, many of them with private gardens at their centre. Many of the terraces have smaller mews houses behind them. The Grosvenor Estate is still very much involved in the area’s management and continual improvement today. It has become the location for many foreign embassies and consuls, encompassing some of the most desirable addresses in the UK, like Eaton Square and Belgrave Square.
Wednesday 8 June, 20 July, 10 August 12pm to 1pm
Pimlico
In one of the side streets adjacent to Westminster Cathedral lived Sir Winston Churchill and a Cardinal. Beneath the paving runs the hidden King’s Scholars’ Pond Sewer winding its way to the Thames. Close by on the west side of Vauxhall Bridge Road is the recently revived Tachbrook Street Market with its fresh produce and food stalls and Warwick Way with a traditional high street smattering of neighbourhood restaurants, cafés and charity shops.
Wednesday 15 June, 27 July, 17 August 12pm to 1pm
Palaces of Power
Victoria has an important role in the direction of national politics by virtue of its proximity to the Palace of Westminster and the seat of British government. It is also a place of entertainment. The walk will start with the first of our Palaces, the Victoria Palace where we will learn about its association with Ballerina, Anna Pavlova. We will also learn more about the architecture of Buckingham Palace and talk about the builder of one of the wings, whose present day ancestor is due to occupy the Palace. Emphasis will then swap as we stroll to the Palace of Westminster, looking as we go at the fascinating involvement of the suffragettes and how they shaped twentieth century politics.
Thursday 7 July and 4 August 5.30pm to 7.00pm
Rich and Poor
The walk will follow a route through the centre of Victoria to the far side of Pimlico, via Belgravia. We will look at the homes of the rich and famous in Eaton and Chester Square. We will visit where Mozart lived for a short period, where Chopin gave a famous recital. We will be visiting a house that featured in Upstairs, Downstairs, the classic TV series. Towards the end of the walk by contrast, we will see housing for the industrious poor and the delights of Orange Square. The walk will finish near to Sloane Square tube station.
Thursday 21 July and 11 August 5.30pm to 7.00pm
To book a free walking tour call inSW1 on 020 3004 0786 or email NICKI PALMER
For full details of these tours and to enlarge the map please click on it (takes you to the inSW1 website).
Two articles from The London Informer illustrate that the wealthy quiet leafy streets of The Pimlico Conservation Area (where Pimlico FLats is based) do not tell the whole story of life in Central London.
The charity Save the Children defines poverty as a single parent family with one child under 14 living on an income of less than £7,000 or a couple with two children under 14 living on less than £12,500 and on this basis 24 per cent of Westminster’s young people face severe levels of deprivation, making it the fifth worst affected local authority in the country. This surprising figure is almost twice the national average, of 13 per cent, and with increasing unemployment and cuts in welfare payments, Save the Children fears that even more children will be forced into poverty in the coming months.
The Catholic Church and The Salvation Army are two Charities at the forefront of the fight against poverty in Westminster, with Westminster Cathedral and it’s refuge “The Passage” the spearhead in the fight to make the lives of Central London’s homeless easier, however our local authority Westminster City Council cannot be counted amongst their supporters.
Westminster Council is seeking to pass a byelaw which would prohibit soup runs from operating on the open space outside the cathedral. The local authority claims that food handouts serve to keep people on the streets longer, damaging their health and life chances. I have to confess that having seen WCC employees who deal with the poor at work, I am somewhat cynical about the Council’s motives, and I suspect that the real motivation is to clean up one of London’s prime shopping and tourist areas. I am sure that with the Royal Wedding and the Olympics coming up this year and next Westminster City Council are desperate to move the problem of the homeless out of sight.
A consultation has been launched with residents, businesses, day centres, hostels and the voluntary sector for their thoughts on the proposals, Westminster Council will then to seek provisional permission from the Department for Communities and Local Government to pass a byelaw which could be in place by October.
Westminster Council’s cabinet member for society, families and adult services, defended the proposal saying it was “wrong and undignified” for people to be fed on the streets. He said:
“Our priority must be to get people off the streets altogether.”
“There is no need for anyone to sleep rough in Westminster as we have a range of services that can help them off the streets to make the first steps towards getting their lives back on track.”
I have had some personal experience of trying to get Westminster Council to house homeless people who are old and ill, and I can state that in my personal experience this is simply not true. I was told that “it is not the Council’s responsibility to rehouse homeless people”, which left me rather speechless, so I asked for a written cofirmation which was duely provided. Westminster Council’s cabinet member for society, families and adult services is delusional about the services that his council provides, don’t take my word for it – ask a homeless person in Westminster.
The services that Westminster Council is seeking to outlaw are just a contact point, the charities that reach out to those living outside mainstream society offer a range of help, treatment for addiction, rehousing, relocation outside Westminster – ban the soup and you cut the vulnerable off from a path back into society. It’s more than just providing hot soup.
But with a Royal Wedding around the corner that’s not the sort of thing that we want to see on the streets of London is it?
I Was Totally Wrong About Flat Prices – there, I said it. I’m always Mr. Doom & Gloom predicting disaster & Flat price crash, I’ve been out of step for 2 years now, arguing against the crowd that now isn’t the time to buy, that the crash wasn’t the real one, that the worst is yet to come. So now is the time to hold my hands up & say I was wrong.
I was wrong that it doesn’t matter
I’ve often said that Flat Prices don’t really matter:
If you are a home owner it really doesn’t matter what value your home has unless you are either a first time buyer, or you are dead. The rest of the time you just swap one home for another at whatever the the going price is.
If you are Property Investor the what, where and how of what you buy are far more important than the when. I have demonstrated time and again that that investing in the wrong part of the country (recently Scotland), or the wrong type of property (recently non-London city centre flats), has far more effect on the price that you pay than whether you time the market.
The reason that I am wrong about it not mattering is a simple word – insolvency. If you lose your job you can’t pay the mortgage. If you have a Property Portfolio which relies on the rent to pay the mortgage interest, and your tenant loses their job, and you have to sell at below the mortgage price ……..
These are unusual financial circumstances, but we are entering unusual financial times.
I was wrong that you can’t predict the Market
I’ve always had the view that media articles and predictions look at the past. I based this view on the fact that I always know which direction rents are going to go – I am fairly unique in having a large number of similar flats in one location, this gives me a unique view of the Central London Rental Market and prices movements that I see often get reported in the media 2 months later. Consequently I have learned to value my own opinion above what I read in the media. However the RICS survey is also that kind of view writ large. It’s a Nationwide report of the “gut feel” of Estate Agents. Frankly I’ve always ignored it as something that is opinion not fact, however Moneyweek have completely changed my attitude on the basis of this graph:
RICS & Nationwide House Prices
Clearly the RICS survey has value, and most importantly it has predictive value. Anyone can tell you what Flat prices have done, what we all need to know is what are they going to do? This graph gives us all a very clear picture as to where House Prices will be in 6 months time.
I was wrong. Flat Prices DO matter and we CAN tell what they are going to be.
If you have a view please express it at Property Price Predictions Week where expert views are summarised, but YOUR view is valued.
