Haringey Council to hand property deals report to Met Police

The 46-page document, compiled by an “independent investigator and auditor”, was ordered last year after a series of Ham&High reports on council property deals.

Investigator Chris Buss found Haringey had deliberately “run down” its property team, which then failed to keep proper records.

Lib Dem opposition leader Cllr Luke Cawley-Harrison said that while the report revealed “extreme incompetence”, it failed to answer key questions.

“It’s publication of what we already knew,” he said.

Mr Buss – a former finance director at Croydon Council – was unable to properly scrutinise one scheme due to an ongoing Met Police fraud investigation.

A 'damning' report on Haringey property deals will be handed to the Met Police, which is already conducting a fraud investigation (Image: Newsquest)

“Failure”

Mr Buss said problems arose when Haringey reduced its property team in the mid-2010s.

A public-private joint venture – the Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV) – was set to take over some duties.

But the HDV was then aborted, after the department had already been “run down”.

The consequences were “a loss of corporate memory”, “absence of key permanent staff”, “absence of effective governance structures” and “failure to adequately maintain records”.

Against this backdrop, concerns arose about a series of property deals.

Mr Buss looked at nine schemes in total.

For one – Gourley Triangle in Seven Sisters, where Haringey was alleged to have overpaid for some land – he found “no comprehensive audit trail to determine who authorised, decided or agreed anything”.

Mr Buss found four out of nine schemes involved one developer, codenamed “Developer A” in his report.

A council officer once noticed that Developer A knew information from a confidential document presented to cabinet members the previous night.

“There is no way of knowing how the developer received this information but it does demonstrate links between either officers or members and Developer A,” wrote Mr Buss.

When the Ham&High investigated how a council industrial yard in Wood Green became a lockdown-busting drugs den, we discovered the council had handed it to a local rapper at zero rent (Image: Polly Hancock)

Unanswered Questions

But key questions remain unanswered.

In summer 2021, the Ham&High revealed Haringey had handed an industrial yard – 141 Station Road, Wood Green – to rapper Teriy Keys (AKA Smurfie Syco) for free.

No competitive tender scoring process occurred before he was given the site in 2019, despite other bidders offering to pay for it.

Companies House records revealed Mr Keys had listed himself as an “HRH Prince”.

The company he was purportedly operating the site under had been struck off before the council even handed him the keys.

Mr Buss’s investigation did not answer who had handed the site to Mr Keys, why no tender scoring process occurred, or why no due diligence was done on Mr Keys or his company.

Another continuing mystery is Haringey’s unequal treatment of two homeowners over plans to demolish their Muswell Hill houses, to facilitate new flats on the former Cranwood care home.

The Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) found Haringey had displayed a “lack of even-handedness” by negotiating with one owner far quicker than the other.

It bought one Woodside Avenue property, valued at £850,000, for £2.15m, then ditched the scheme without buying the other.

The council later withheld evidence from the LGO's investigation.

Mr Buss wrote that due to an ongoing police investigation into the Cranwood scheme, he and the Met agreed a list of people linked to that development who he could not interview.

Council leader Peray Ahmet called for the investigation into 'potential fraud and corruption' in an extraordinary council meeting last year (Image: Archant)

Reaction

Cllr Cawley-Harrison called the report “utterly damning… painting a picture of a completely inept organisation which has wasted millions in public money”.

“The council’s failure to provide key information like audit trails or details of its property management system, which should be standard in any local authority, is at best indicative of extreme incompetence and at worse deliberate obfuscation,” he said.

But he said he was disappointed the key issues remained unresolved.

Get the latest crime investigations straight into your inbox by signing up to our new FREE weekly newsletter

Labour council leader Cllr Peray Ahmet said she commissioned the investigation because she was “extremely concerned about allegations surrounding various historic high-profile and controversial property transactions”.

She said the report “sets out comprehensive findings” and will be handed to police.

“I am determined that we use this review to learn lessons and ensure we continue to build an effective property function with strong political oversight and transparent decision-making,” she said.