BEXLEY: Legal challenge over council house sell-off report (From News Shopper)

BEXLEY: Legal challenge over council house sell-off report

9:50am Wednesday 10th March 2010

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A GROUP of people who own the leaseholds of former Bexley Council flats are fighting to see a legal report on the council house sell-off.

Orbit leaseholders, the OBHA Independent Leaseholders Group, are battling the council over the terms of the sell-off in 1998, of all its council housing to two housing associations, Orbit and London and Quadrant (L&Q).

They claim the sale should not have included pockets of what they consider to be public property, such as footpaths, car parks and playgrounds.

The leaseholders say they are obliged to pay maintenance and repair charges for the upkeep of the spaces, even though the public has free and unhindered use of them.

The charges include paying for the resurfacing of footpaths, grass cutting, and the creation and maintenance of play areas, all of which they claim are Bexley Council’s responsibility.

And they say this is unfair.

The group claims Bexley had no right to sell off these public facilities when they sold the homes.

It claims the Gulliksen v Pembrokeshire County Council case in 2002 established the principle that pathways or land which a council owned and maintained, and to which there has been unhindered public access for more than 20 years, remains the responsibility of the local authority to maintain.

The leaseholders applied under the Freedom of Information Act to see a report commissioned by the council from a lawyer.

This re-examined the stock transfer agreement, which netted Bexley £80m, in the light of the leaseholders’ claims.

But their request was refused under a section 42 exemption which claims legal professional privilege over confidential communications between lawyers and clients.

Group chairman Stephen West said the exemption was outrageous because leaseholders were also council taxpayers whose council tax had paid for the report.

He said: “We feel it is an infringement of our civil liberties and basic human rights, to be charged (through the council tax) by Bexley Council for a report commissioned by the council, which we are then denied the right to see.”

He added: “This makes a complete mockery of the right, under the Freedom of Information Act, to see public records held by local authorities and it does not serve the democratic principle enshrined in the Act.”

The leaseholders now plan to appeal the Information Commission’s decision to withold access to the report.

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