WEMO Arbitration Update

WEMO

Updated: 15/12/2004

The oral hearing for the arbitration between WEMO and the Council took place at the Town Hall on the 14th of December.

Members of the WEMO board, as well as the appointed agent, gave evidence in favour of WEMO and the WEMO right-to-manage bid.

The issue at the heart of the dispute was the Council's rejection of the appointed agent's recommendation to proceed to ballot the estate's residents on the proposed WEMO right-to-manage bid. This recommendation had been made in December 2003 and the Council formally rejected the recommendation of the appointed agent in February 2004 claiming that the WEMO board was not representative of the estate population and had not sought to be representative of the estate population.

Despite having rejected the appointed agent's recommendation in February the Council did not refer the matter to arbitration until September. An arbitrator was appointed in late September and the date of the hearing had originally been scheduled for the 8th of November. Following a number of scheduling changes the hearing finally took place on the 14th of December.

The arbitrator is expected to give his verdict by the 7th of January 2005.

ABOUT WEMO: WEMO is a Tenant Management Organisation currently being developed under the auspices of the Housing (Right-to-Manage) Regulations 1994. It hopes to take over the day-to-day management of most blue-collar services (caretaking, repairs, cleaning, security and grounds maintenance) on the World's End Estate from the Council's borough-wide TMO.