Labour’s candidate in the Shooters Hill by-election has made “demonstrably untrue” claims about asbestos in a building Greenwich Council plans to sell, according to a community association that wants to take on the site.
Jummy Dawodu claimed in a letter to residents that Green Garth, an empty bungalow next to the Shrewsbury House community centre, was “full of asbestos” and that it would cost £250,000 to bring the building back into use.
But The Greenwich Wire has seen a survey from March 2019 that gave the building a clean bill of health – with the only asbestos found in a summer house next door, which remains in use and was recently refurbished. The report advised that the risk was “very low” and the council should “manage and monitor” the situation.
A second survey, from June 2019, put the cost of refurbishing Green Garth at just £33,050, while the building was in good enough condition to be used last year as a base for council contractors working on a new roof for Shrewsbury House.
“While we recognise that costs have risen in the intervening five years, we would be surprised if they have risen by £220,000,” the board of Shrewsbury House Community Association said after failing to get an explanation from Dawodu or Greenwich Labour as to where the figure came from.
The row is the latest twist in an unusually bitter by-election that has seen reports of Labour canvassers – including one sitting councillor – arguing with residents on the doorstep over the resignation of the previous councillor, Ivis Williams. Polling will take place on Thursday.
The poll was prompted by the departure of Williams, who was threatened with suspension for publicly asking council leader Anthony Okereke to pause the sale of Green Garth and the nearby Greenwich Equestrian Centre so that residents could make their own bids – a process known as a community asset transfer. The council wants to sell them to fill a £33 million budget gap.
Greenwich Labour responded by putting Williams under investigation, and then threatening her with suspension for speaking against agreed party policy, which she denies. She walked out of the council, and then the party after she discovered that she still faced disciplinary action. Williams’ co-councillor in Shooters Hill, Raja Zeeshan, gave evidence in the investigation. She is now backing the Green candidate in Thursday’s election, Tamasin Rhymes.
Dawodu, meanwhile, has boycotted hustings and criticised the local campaigns over Green Garth and the equestrian centre in a letter sent to voters earlier this month.
Shrewsbury House was in talks with the council about taking on Green Garth – a former air-raid wardens’ base which has been empty since its last resident, Beatrice Horsley-Williams, died in 2016. It hopes to turn it into a base for local Scouts and a community food-growing garden.
The circumstances of the election, and Dawodu’s criticism of its campaign, has put Shrewsbury House in an awkward position – it is a tenant of the council and also a charity, so cannot take part in party politics.
However, it decided to speak out after not getting a response from Dawodu or her campaign over where they got the figures from.
“We are now making these concerns public in order that voters in the by-election can make their own decisions, based on full, properly sourced, information,” the board said.
“There’s no way you can read that report and say Green Garth was full of asbestos,” a source familiar with discussions about the future of the building told The Greenwich Wire. “Whoever wrote that letter had not read the report. It looks like an attempt to close down the issue.”
Dawodu’s letter also said the council had spent £1.7 million in maintenance and repairs to Shrewsbury House, but the board said it had never asked for the outlay on a new roof, which formed the bulk of the costs – and that the disruption nearly left it out of pocket from lost income. The house is a popular location for weddings. A report from August 2020 seen by this website recommended that the council replaced the roof in the following five to ten years.
“Part of the work was to restore the summer house, which the council had allowed to get into such poor condition that it was placed on Historic England’s national, listed buildings at risk register,” it added.
“Clearly the community association has ultimately benefited from the work. However, the project and timings were not discussed with us and in fact we would have lost a significant amount of income due to the works, had it not been for the contingency top up of £20,000 awarded after interventions from our then local Labour councillors Danny Thorpe and Ivis Williams, supported by our then Labour MP Clive Efford.”
Dawodu has also angered former users of the nearby Greenwich Equestrian Centre by branding the facility – which was opened by Princess Anne in 2013 as an Olympic legacy project – as “empty stables”. They say she is also misrepresenting their campaign.
“The stables have been mostly empty for years,” Dawodu claimed – even though the centre only closed in July last year when the operator, North Kent College, pulled out of the project. Okereke has suggested that flats could be built on the land.
“The council has been told there is no way of running them to an acceptable level of welfare without significant cost to council taxpayers. When open, few people used them, mostly from outside Shooters Hill,” Dawodu said in her letter.
“We are not asking the council to keep that facility open as a lossmaker and use taxpayers’ money,” said Susan Ward, who used to use the centre. “We are asking them to sell it to us as a community asset transfer, so we can run it and create benefits for the community.”
Tao Baker, who is one of the leading campaigners to save the centre, said she waited 16 months to get a place for riding lessons on a list for borough residents only.
Shooters Hill residents who are angry about Williams’ resignation have reported Labour canvassers arguing with them on the doorstep about the party’s treatment of her – including a current Greenwich councillor, whose identity The Greenwich Wire has verified via doorbell camera images.
The resident, who did not wish to be named and did not recognise the councillor, said: “I politely said I didn’t want a flyer about Jummy Dawodu as I said I supported Ivis and was shocked about how Greenwich Labour had treated her. That set her off and she started pointing her finger angrily at me and aggressively saying that there’s two sides to a story and I’d only heard one side.”
Another resident raised Labour’s boycotting of local hustings and said a male canvasser “didn’t listen and just spoke over me”.
Greenwich Council said it could not comment on the contents of Dawodu’s letter or the land sales because of the by-election. London Labour has been contacted for comment.
The candidates for Thursday’s election are: Paul Banks (Reform UK), Jummy Dawodu (Labour), Tamasin Rhymes (Green Party), Kirstie Shedden (Liberal Democrats), Arnold Tarling (Independent), Nazia Tingay (Independent), Tim Waters (Conservative).
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