Colin also likes to use Mishcon de Reya, the £800 an hour soliciting firm.
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| Mishcon's offices Vulgar, Vulgar, Vulgar |
To fight the Council our Colin has bought the Labour Party' favourite lawyer, Mishcon, on board
It looks as if it goes to be bonanza time for the men in wigs and who will end up picking the bill?
Yep...the poor bloody taxpayer!
Read all about it HERE
What a pickle!
ReplyDeleteThe pragmatic solution is for the Academey to pick up the bill. They are well funded and are on a collision course with public life. The Borough is very short of cash and is having to cut back on the Social Care and Children's budgets, in addition to heavy spending of Council Tax money (more than £30 million so far) on the Grenfell recovery programme. In contrast the Headmaster at Holland Park school is awash with money - he spends £6,000 on Joe Malone Candles, £15,000 on Home Counties Farrow and Ball Paint, Designer Furniture and more. All to help create the feel good factor for the Headmaster and friend David.
You could not make it up!
Grenfell recovery spending already exceeds £250 million. The £30 million mark was passed many months ago. All of the Council reserves have been blown away. Grenfell residents took a battering and council tax payers are taking a caning.
DeleteHolland Park School is a regime that is not to be trusted. One of the conditions of planning approval for the new school (which cost £100million and was paid for by Council Tax) is the provision for local residents to use the swimming pool. This is a condition precedent.
ReplyDeleteTen years on the Chairman of the Campden Hill Residents Association, David White, is now on his 38th meeting with the Council and school, and 364th email to the Council and school, to honour the commitment. Resident Association members are stunned by the perseverance of the Chairman.
The Condition Precedent has been obstructed by Headmaster Hall who does not want residents in his school using the swimming pool. He has told friend David Chappel - "over my dead body"
All of this is very rich. Disgraced ex Leader Cllr Cockle created the idea of rebuilding Holland Park School, a Council owned and run secondary school, and promoted the project as a huge Public Relations exercise to boost his image in pursuit of a place in the House of Lords. After years of opposition from local residents who were not happy about selling off the school playground to property developers for £100 million so that they could build more "buy to leave" expensive apartments for foreigners with hot money, the project was forced through. Cllr Mary Weale (Cabinet Member for Education) was in the vanguard. Overheard at one "consultation" meeting Cllr Weale was heard saying to her fellow Councillor John Cox (Chairman of the Education Scrutiny Committee) "we agreed to listen but not to hear". Power crazed Weale felt very pleased with herself and was chuffed. Cllr Cox felt the part, in the middle of great excitement - an experience that had long since passed him by.
ReplyDeleteNo sooner was the school built at huge cost to Kensington and Chelsea council tax payers, than ambitious Headmaster Hall made a bid for freedom and applied for Academy status for the new school. He could not bear the idea of more meddling by Hornton Street Officers and Councillors. Hall of course got his way and the new Academy charity got a free school.
Hornton Street was furious. One less train set to play with.
Not content with the biggest rip off in history for the Royal Borough, the school is now back for more. Hornton Street is being asked to pay for the leaking swimming pool while the Headmaster luxuriates with Joe Malone candles in pursuit of fantasy.
Note to Editors: the school pool is leaking because it is a deep basement pool, excavated at huge cost, and has displaced the water table. The water is leaking from the outside in, not the inside out. A new challenge for the engineers.
The new school should have cost £30 million. This is the Government benchmark for the cost of new schools. But it cost £100 million because Headmaster Hall and disgraced ex Leader Cockle specified a "magnificence" that required (hugely expensive) digging deep and building high.
DeleteThe Academy got a bargain. A stunning building for free - courtesy of Borough tax payers.
Pull the snout out of the trough guys.
Thank goodness for the Dame who spreads transparency about the workings of the Royal Borough
ReplyDeleteNot the sort of person I want to be educating my kids
ReplyDeleteThe Schools Week journalist who broke the Holland Park story is none other than Pippa Allen-Kinross. Top drawer sprog of the Scottish Earl. Friends say that Colin briefed to the aristocrat as part of his strategy to build pressure on the Royal Borough by starting a press campaign and hiring top cost lawyers Mischon de Reya. Colin took advice from a Banker parent: "Justice has nothing to do with this. Hire the best lawyers, better than the Council can afford, and you are home and dry. Including costs".
ReplyDeleteBankers of course know a thing or three. And the Headmaster's strategy is light years ahead of the footwork of the Leader from Sloane Square. This has become a big boys game. Colin against the people.
Something strange going on here. If there are faults with the school building, a new building, then these faults are covered by the builders liability and guarantee. The builder will make good. It happens all the time. The cost has nothing to do with the Council and there is no cost implication for the Council.
ReplyDeleteThere must be some other reason why the Headmaster signed a 5 year lease on the school building and is resisting a 125 lease. Could they be arguing about ground rent? Was the Academy incompetent in not closing a long term lease at the outset?
Am I missing something?
RBKC - rich pickings for all bureaucrats - all welcome
ReplyDelete//// roll up, roll up ////
Indeed. Headmaster Hall is the great rainmaker for lawyers and accountants at public expense.
ReplyDeleteThe time may be approaching for regime change at Holland Park School. Hall has become corrupted by power and it is time for him to be moved on. He now has a turnaround entry for his CV and can sell this somewhere else. He will probably need to take a pay cut because he is currently off the scale for what he does. The heartstrings will inhibit him from leaving Dave but perhaps both of them could move on and bring in some steady state teaching leadership.
ReplyDeleteHow about a failing minor public school in deepest Devon?
ReplyDeleteWhen old Kensington transferred to a celestial White's loyal old family solicitor, Quirk, gave young Kensington some sound advice, "Kensington? Never forget 'Noblesse Oblige" So it's heartening to see that Old Labour's leading lights have embraced the idea of leading the workers to the sunlit uplands of Stalinism et al.
ReplyDeleteOur MP, Emma Dent Coad educates her children privately and descends from the Medici(makes Kensingon's pedigree seem rather parvenu!) She was once an Hon too...
Young Mr Milne with the matinee idol looks and and a Winchester and Oxford education is always at the side of Pooter Corbyn making sure he's not being too thick. Milne is a scion of the Aberdeen Milne clan. And then there's another posh Scottie, Andrew Drummond -Murray of Mastrick who prefers to be called 'Andy' Murray in deference to his newly found working class roots. And his his gorgeous, pouting daughter, Laura, the great grand daughter of Lord Aberconway who is beavering away working for Pooter and the Common Cause.
Should it not be the Uncommon Cause?
They are so grand that they make poor Kensington seem rather common....