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Brixton property developers Lexadon: Gerry Knight fined £175k under Proceeds of Crime Act

Same used to apply to Freshwater Group (Daejan Holdings) owners of Effra Court on Brixton Hill and The High in Streatham - or they were in the 80s.

Have the Knights got form on charitable works?

BTW Primark in the form of Garfield Weston Foundation have given £50 million + to Kings College Hospital, so next time people moan about Primark Bangladeshi slave labour, think about their hospital treatment.
So if you give a load of money to charity that makes it okay to use child labour? Perhaps if primark employed adults and paid a decent wage they wouldn't give as much to charities.
 
I don't think that kind of thing goes on anymore - I've certainly never come across it myself. I can't see how it would work on the auctions. Maybe on the bigger stuff which is tendered? I just think they don't know what they are doing a lot of the time and don't give that much of a shit. If you can get 75% of the cash for no effort - why bother working for the other 25%.
There is land been undersold to developers left right and centre (see the Heygate estate) and it's put down to incompetence on the councils behalf. I find it strange that these incompetent people then end up working for the company they signed off the land to.
 
So if you give a load of money to charity that makes it okay to use child labour? Perhaps if primark employed adults and paid a decent wage they wouldn't give as much to charities.
You are making my point.
There is a moral inconsistency in profiting from wage oppression and then giving to charity.
 
Incidentally here is Lambeths own version of events
http://lambethnews.wordpress.com/20...crime-act-powers-to-go-after-planning-cheats/
which reveals that...............
" Lexadon Ltd had applied three times to turn 48 Trent Road in Brixton into flats but failed to come to agreement with Lambeth planners. Despite having no planning permission, the property was rented as four flats"
At the end of the Lambeth Press release you are quoting is this:
" Lambeth has recently secured its first prosecution for subletting of a council property. Ahmad Nejad, 57, of Greig Terrace, Kennington was convicted of three charges under the Fraud Act 2006 after subletting a property in Paulet Road, Loughborough Junction. He was fined £1,500 and instructed to pay costs to Lambeth of £1,999."

I find this as worrying. Can it be true that this is the first prosecution for subletting council property?

Subletting is scarcely new - was rife in Lambeth since the 1980s and still continues. Can somebody please clarify?

I need hardly add that subletting - apart from being fraud - subverts the established process of housing allocation based on need and qualification.
 
This is the important point. Lambeth owned a lot of proprty in central Brixton which its sold off over the years. Its short sighted of Lambeth to sell property off. This ownership gave control over what could happen to Brixton.

They have sold off the silver. Cheap.

BTW: Did you catch the rather moving episode of BBC R4's Great Lives featuring your Italian namesake? Available as a podcast.
 
They have sold off the silver. Cheap.

BTW: Did you catch the rather moving episode of BBC R4's Great Lives featuring your Italian namesake? Available as a podcast.

warning thread derail

Yes I did. With Tom Shakespeare? Could not believe Matthew Parris had never heard of him. Wish they had gone into his ideas more. His theoretical work is of lasting importance.
 
So Knight was one of the people who trashed our streets by sub-dividing homes.

(I know this tactic was encouraged by officialdom)
As you say - it was council policy to allow subdivision of houses over 120sqm, and this was maintained because it helped deliver against national new-housing guidelines (converting one house into three flats delivers two new units). This size limit pretty well only excluded two storey houses with no more than two stories at the back so only streets with the smallest houses, e.g. Horsford Road and Trinity Gardens, still have high proportions of unconverted properties. Lambeth and HAs carried out a hefty proportion of conversions (quite possibly most) over the years - rarely with planning permission and often to a dreadful standard.

As you often point out, there are more and more people, in smaller and smaller household numbers (lots more singles), they have to go somewhere and smaller homes is the way things have been moving in cities. I don't have a problem with the principle of converting houses into multiple units as part of a plan to provide an increased number and mix of unit sizes on every street - but full size houses should also form a significant proportion of that mix. The streets under conversion stress policy has been effective at halting conversions but I think anyone would agree that it was at least 4/5 years too late. Better probably would have been a policy from the outset which required a proportion of properties in any street to remain unconverted - similar policies existed in relation to shop fronts, for instance. Whatever the plan, it can only realistically be developed and controlled by the planning department.

I'd certainly rather see Victorian streets largely converted rather than flattened and replaced with tower blocks, as was happening in the years before the subdividing began in earnest. Sadly, so many were done to a dreadful standard and no thought for the streetscape. With terraces now starting to change hands for 1.4million it might not be long until buildings start being unconverted.
 
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There is land been undersold to developers left right and centre (see the Heygate estate) and it's put down to incompetence on the councils behalf. I find it strange that these incompetent people then end up working for the company they signed off the land to.
It certainly would not surprise me if things were corrupt at that level. The intertwined economics and politics of such projects are way beyond my comprehension.
 
Rushy my mum's neighbour was considering buying the flat above her to convert the house from two flats into one house. Instead she had kids and moved to Streatham. :D
(((Streatham))))

Someone really should have tried to talk her out of it.
 
Bits of Streatham are rather lovely.
Yes - it's an old not very serious prejudice of mine.*
Actually, I broke down on Mitcham Road on Sunday and after waiting 4hrs to have car towed I walked home and was pleasantly surprised. Had a couple in The Manor Arms on the way.

* a bit like... you know.:D
 
They have sold off the silver. Cheap.

Not all of it, yet.

We can be certain that part of the gleefulness of Pickles and Co in central government is that local authority "austerity" measures imposed by central grant budget cuts will hasten not only the selling off of the rest of the silver, but will have town halls up and down the land checking their metaphorical attics, too.
 
Lexadon have now got their paws over the Clapham Police Station. That'll turn a nice fat profit.

16232088138_44a8515c23_b.jpg


Lexadon are delighted to announce the acquisition of an exciting new site. Previously home to Clapham's Police Force, 51 Union Street will soon play host to 25 contemporary new apartments.
http://www.lexadon.co.uk/projects/clapham-police-station
 
Seeing as Lexadon continue to eat up more and more of Brixton (in Coldharbour Lane alone, Knight's company owns Walton Lodge at 374, the former Angel pub at 354 (now Mamma Dough), the Viaduct block at 360-366, Clifton Mansions, and the new builds at 435-437 and 419-423) it would be nice to find out that he was giving something back to the community he's made such big fat profits from. I did ask him directly but he declined to answer.
 
It would be nice to find out that he was giving something back to the community he's made such big fat profits from. I did ask him directly but he declined to answer.
I'd imagine that most developers would consider the section 106 agreement and/or the community infrastructure levy and whatever conditions those entail as 'giving back to the community'
I don't know how, but it must be possible to find out what these were??
 
I'd imagine that most developers would consider the section 106 agreement and/or the community infrastructure levy and whatever conditions those entail as 'giving back to the community'
I don't know how, but it must be possible to find out what these were??
This lot have something of a reputation of not exactly being overly enthusiastic about fulfilling Section 106 commitments: Property developer Lexadon plans 27 new builds along Acre Lane with uncertainty over level of ‘affordable’ units

But he's a local bloke who has made many many millions out of the area (he's appeared in the Sunday Times rich list) so it does seem reasonable to wonder if he's given any thing back personally.
 
But that article isn't relevant to s106 agreements. And we had the same discussion in October on this thread. Did a google alert bring up the rich list press - don't really see you as a Sunday Times reader.
 
But that article isn't relevant to s106 agreements. And we had the same discussion in October on this thread. Did a google alert bring up the rich list press - don't really see you as a Sunday Times reader.
He was in the rich list in 2009 at ranking 1077= £50 million https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jerry-and-janet-knight-gs6wjr68wcx (the text is flashed up for a millisecond beofre the Pay Wall cuts in).

Not listed in this week's printed version - but despite all this austerity the mega rich have got a lot richer and you have to be worth £120 million to get in the current printed version.
 
But that article isn't relevant to s106 agreements. And we had the same discussion in October on this thread. Did a google alert bring up the rich list press - don't really see you as a Sunday Times reader.
Of course I don't read the Sunday Times. Why even make such a cheap shot? I use Google like everyone else.

And I don't go along with the notion that a developer being forced to reluctantly fulfil the minimum s106 commitments they can get away is "giving back to the community" in any shape of form. That's just business and many will do everything they can to circumnavigate such commitments.

Under Section 106, also known as “planning gain”, developers are required to provide a certain proportion of affordable housing in developments of more than 10 homes, ranging from 35–50% depending on the local authority in question. Developers who claim their schemes are not commercially viable, when subject to these obligations, must submit a financial viability assessment explaining precisely why the figures don’t stack up.

In simple terms, this assessment takes the total costs of a project – construction, professional fees and profit – and subtracts them from the total projected revenue from selling the homes, based on current property values. What’s left over is called the “residual land value” – the value of the site once the development has taken place, which must be high enough to represent a decent return to the landowner.

It is therefore in the developer’s interest to maximise its projected costs and minimise the projected sales values to make its plans appear less profitable. With figures that generate a residual value not much higher than the building’s current value, the developer can wave “evidence” before the council that the project simply “can’t wash its face” if it has to meet an onerous affordable housing target – while all the time safeguarding their own profit.

Revealed: how developers exploit flawed planning system to minimise affordable housing
 
Here's some rare Twitter action from Brixton's rent-squeezing landlord and multi millionaire Jerry Knight:



And here's a not-exactly palatial bedroom flat of Jerry's going for a mere £1,560 per month - or he's a got a 3 bedroom one for £2,320/month.



And this quote retweeted by Jerry takes the fucking biscuit for irony and sheer chutzpah



Five years before:



 
Business and charity isn’t charity it’s a tax dodge, at best guilt alms and performative image management

anyone demanding charity from business are selling themselves and their communities short
 
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