Cllr Adje should read report, repent - and then resign

CLLR Charles Adje (Board's inaction led to Firoka walking away from Alexandra Palace deal, H&H letters October 2) states that Ally Pally board members were informed of key decisions - but in fact the trustees were denied the correct information to make the right decision by events orchestrated by him, as the Walklate report makes clear.

Nor did the trustees ever see the final licence, with its outrageously favourable terms. And everyone interviewed for the Walklate report, apart from Cllr Adje, makes clear that it was he who was driving the process forward with ill-advised haste.

Cllr Adje also says he had no dealings with the affairs of the Palace since his departure as Chair. This is untrue. He remained chair of the Ally Pally Trading Company, despite the obvious conflict of interest, given his new role as council finance boss.

He was also questioned frequently in his new council role, to explain how the taxpayer was being short-changed. I personally pressed the issue in the council cabinet, in full council itself, and in correspondence.

Cllr Adje attacks his own colleagues on the trust for failing to terminate the licence, but in reality, as the ultimate holder of the purse strings, and the only person who was allowed to know what was going on, the slightest lead from him should have brought matters to a head. This is buck-passing of the highest order.

On the Ally Pally Board itself, my colleague Cllr Bob Hare, as a Palace trustee, repeatedly tried to get to the bottom of the licence fiasco, but was refused any information. He was told he would have to take this to the Palace trading company, or put in a Freedom Of Information request to his own board.

He then asked Cllr Adje to convene a meeting of the trading company in order to have these questions answered. He refused. He also resisted my calls to have him removed as the company's chair, as did the leader of the council, George Meehan. It took a motion at full council to force him to step down.

Cllr Adje claims that he does not know how the Westlake report was commissioned. This is extremely odd, as it was commissioned not by the Palace trustees, but by the council's finance department when they realised with horror the extent to which the Haringey taxpayer was having to fork out for this multi-million pound disaster.

If Cllr Adje's objective was to 'lift the burden' from taxpayer, by his own standards he has abjectly failed.

He demonstrates no understanding of the financial or legal issues, the enormously damaging role he played, or any grasp of the huge conflicts of interest involved.

He should read the Walklate report properly. He must go back to basics, with a lesson in the three Rs all of his own:

Read. Repent. Resign.

Cllr Neil Williams,

(Lib Dem) Haringey Council