WEMO in the News

WEMO

Updated: 30/05/2005

The recent WEMO right-to-manage ballot has been featured in a high-profile news item on the website of the National Federation of TMOs (NFTMO).

The article contrasts the differing ballot requirements of stock transfer and right-to-manage legislation and notes how many local authorities have organised right-to-manage ballots in such a way as to ensure a low turnout and thus guarantee the failure of the estate-based TMO under development, citing World's End as a recent example of this practice. The article can be found on the NFTMO website.

The situation described in the article was recently the case on the World's End Estate. The local authority, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, organised a right-to-manage ballot without properly consulting the estate-based TMO under development, the World's End Management Organisation (WEMO). When WEMO objected to the form of the ballot being proposed by the Council its concerns were completely ignored and the Council proceeded to hold the ballot regardless.

The end result was predictable: the level of participation in the ballot was a mere 29% and completely unlike that of the initial feasibility ballot, in which over 70% of the estate's residents had participated. The local authority had managed and implemented the ballot extremely badly.

The right-to-manage legislation requires that 50% of an estate's residents must vote in favour of a right-to-manage bid for it to proceed. The extremely poor turnout produced by the Council-managed ballot therefore ensured the bid's failure irrespective of the votes cast; whilst over 75% of the votes cast were in favour of the WEMO right-to-manage bid, less than 50% of the estate's residents cast their vote.