Expected by Cabinet, restricted by contract: how the Cowley Meeting Hall lease raises questions about an £18,000-a-year arrangement.

Hillingdon Council’s own records appear to show a simple but serious contradiction at the heart of the Cowley Meeting Hall lease.

In March 2022, Cabinet approved a heavily discounted lease for the Hillingdon Foster Carers Association, with the public report referring to expected additional income from subletting. But when the lease was signed in January 2023, it appears to have prohibited subletting or parting with possession of the premises, except for limited hall-hire arrangements.

The issue is not just technical. The association named in the lease had, according to the Council’s own FOI response, already ceased to operate. The building was later occupied by Theo’s Café under a separate private agreement worth £1500 a month, totalling £18,000 a year.

That raises a straightforward question: how did a lease that appears to prohibit subletting lead to a private occupation arrangement of this kind – and did the Council receive any of the income it expected?

This article sets out the documentary trail: what Cabinet approved, what the lease actually said, and what the Council has (and has not) explained.

The inactive organisation and the questionable eligibility for a discounted lease

In March 2022, Hillingdon Council’s Cabinet agreed to a lease renewal for the Hillingdon Foster Carers Association (HFCA) for Cowley Meeting Hall.  This decision allowed the HFCA to benefit from a heavily discounted rent as part of the Council’s Voluntary Sector Leasing Policy (VSLP).

However, an official Council response to a recent FOI request states that the HFCA was “inactive throughout 2021” after the Chair (Councillor Alan Deville) resigned that March.  The Council confirmed that because no members were willing to take on the leadership role, the association “ceased to operate” by January 2022, though it had effectively been defunct since the previous March.

Despite the organisation being inactive for a full year, on 10 January 2023, a five-year lease was executed.  The tenant on the contract was Alan Deville, who signed specifically as the trustee of the HFCA.  This secured the property at a rate of £5,655 per year.

The Council’s own published Voluntary Sector Leasing Policy (VSLP) gives a standard 80% rent discount for qualifying voluntary-sector organisations. It also requires organisations receiving a subsidy to provide reports of their activities and accounts, and explains that subletting will generate additional rent for the Council.  That makes the Council’s FOI response especially significant: by the time the lease was executed, the organisation named in the lease had already ceased to operate.

Over the five-year term, MyLondon has reported that the discount was worth £113,100. The more immediate governance question is simpler: why was any voluntary-sector discount granted to an organisation the Council now says had already ceased to operate?

The Cabinet Contradiction

Councillor Peter Smallwood OBE, a current Ruislip ward councillor, attested the Council’s seal on the lease in January 2023 (and Councillor Darran Davies, a current Charville ward councillor, witnessed Alan Deville’s signature).

When we asked why backbench councillors were signing property leases, Daniel Toohey, the Council’s Director of Legal & Governance and Monitoring Officer, defended the action.  Mr. Toohey stated that

“Cllr Smallwood signed against the seal with the authorised officer, as is required under the sealing procedure for property matters. Any available member may so do upon the request of the authorised officer acting in relation to a proper approval. In this case the decision to enter into the lease is the subject of a Cabinet Decision available on the Council’s website, and accords to the requirements of the Constitution.”

The decision to enter into the lease was the Cabinet’s, not Cllr Smallwood’s

However, documented evidence reveals a significant discrepancy between the lease document executed under the Council’s seal and what the Cabinet approved.

During the March 2022 Cabinet meeting, Councillor Jonathan Bianco explicitly noted the “expected additional income from the sub-letting of the premises” as part of the justification for granting the heavily discounted lease.  Under the VSLP, when a voluntary organisation sublets a property, the Council is entitled to receive a minimum 25% cut of that subletting income, with no subsidy applied.

Yet, the final lease signed in January 2023 included a strict alienation clause.  The tenant was forbidden to sublet or part with possession of the premises, barring limited hall hire arrangements.

This raises a serious governance question: How was the Cabinet’s recorded expectation of subletting income reconciled with a final lease that appears to prohibit subletting?  Specifically, why did the final lease prohibit subletting when the Cabinet minutes recorded an explicit expectation of additional income from it?

And if the property was later occupied under a separate private arrangement, was the Council ever able to realise any of the additional income it appeared to anticipate?

To uncover the true cost of this discrepancy, we have formally asked the Council (via FOI Question 4) to produce the receipts.  We have demanded to know whether the Council ever collected the 25% share of subletting income that the Cabinet minutes clearly anticipated.

The Scrutiny Paradox

The involvement of Councillor Smallwood adds a layer of public-interest concern to the situation.  In November 2025, Cllr Smallwood was promoted to Chair of the Residents’ Services Select Committee.  The very purpose of this committee is to scrutinise the work of the Cabinet, monitor Council services, and ensure public money is used effectively.

Yet, just last month, during a March 2026 meeting of his scrutiny committee, Cllr Smallwood suggested reviewing the attendance of the Council’s finance officers at monthly budget monitoring sessions.  Claiming that it would make the “best use of officer time,” he argued that his committee’s focus was on “service facing stuff” and not “necessarily about the nitty-gritty of the numbers.”

The published minutes present this as a routine discussion about officer time and committee balance. The transcript shows a clearer emphasis on reducing finance officer attendance and moving away from detailed financial questioning. That difference is subtle, but material.

In response, residents wrote to Cllr Smallwood, pointing out that maintaining a strong finance presence (including the Section 151 Officer who holds personal liability for the Council’s budget) is “vital for this committee’s transparency“.

This raises a clear question of consistency that one of the Councillors now responsible for scrutinising the Council’s delivery and savings is suggesting a reduced finance presence at scrutiny meetings – especially when he attested the Council’s seal on a lease whose final terms appear difficult to reconcile with the Cabinet decision that authorised it. That is precisely why the “nitty-gritty of the numbers” matters

Ruislip Residents’ Association holds a Committee meeting every month and is usually joined by multiple Councillors from across Ruislip and Ruislip Manor.  Councillor Smallwood often, if not always, attends.  However, since we began asking questions about this subject in mid-February, he has not attended any meetings: sending apologies for both our 4th March and 1st April meetings.  Residents will already know that he sent apologies for the Public Meeting and AGM on 25th March too.

No Councillors joined us at all for April’s meeting. Councillor Corthorne apologised that he had a clashing Mayoral event, Councillors O’Brien and Smallwood sent generic apologies, Councillor Riley implied that Pre-Election “Purdah” means he couldn’t attend (although pre-election restrictions do not prevent councillors from attending residents’ association meetings), and Councillor Mills continuing his standard practice of neither attending nor sending apologies.

The sound of silence

While the Council’s signed lease explicitly forbade subletting, documents circulating locally show a very different reality on the ground.

On 14 June 2024, Alan Deville entered into a separate three-year “rolling contract” with Erhan Sahin, the operator of Theo’s Café.  In his lease Erhan Sahin agreed to pay £1,500 per month – totalling £18,000 per year – to occupy the Cowley Meeting Hall.

Press reporting and Council documents discussed publicly indicate that Alan Deville was in arrears on the Council lease while the café operator was paying £1,500 a month under the private arrangement.  Through FOI Questions 7 and 8, we have challenged the Council to reveal the exact sum of rent arrears owed on the Cowley Meeting Hall, and to produce any internal documents proving whether they considered writing off this public debt.

Furthermore, this £18,000-a-year commercial arrangement raises another alarming financial question: local taxation.  We have submitted FOI Question 5 to find out  if Theo’s Café is paying commercial Business Rates, or if this private enterprise has been allowed to operate under the inactive charity’s tax-exempt status – effectively securing a public subsidy.

The “commercial” stonewall, the missing paper trail, and broken deadlines

Where elected councillors ignore questions, residents expect the Council’s senior officers to ensure transparency.  On 6 March, we wrote directly to Tony Zaman (Chief Executive) and Daniel Toohey (Monitoring Officer).  We posed 14 specific questions regarding the £18,000 unauthorised sublet, the rent arrears, the lack of enforcement, and the exact scope of the Council’s so-called “investigation“.

Mr. Toohey replied on 13 March.  While he was quick to defend Councillor Smallwood’s signature on the lease, he did not answer a single question about the public subsidy, the rent arrears, or the £18,000 private sublet

Instead, the Monitoring Officer characterised the lease arrangements as merely “a commercial matter between the parties” and used the vague promise of a review to avoid providing answers, stating: “All matters you are referring to have been looked into or are being reviewed in the appropriate manner“.

That response answered the narrow question of whether the lease was validly executed. It did not answer the wider questions: why was the lease granted to an inactive organisation, whether subletting was authorised, whether the Council received any share of the income, or why enforcement was not pursued earlier.

The pattern did not end there. It extends beyond unanswered questions to gaps in the public record itself.

The Council formally acknowledged our Freedom of Information request on 30 March 2026, setting a statutory deadline of 27 April 2026.

That deadline passed without the requested information being provided and without a refusal notice being issued under the Act. Instead, the Council sent a brief email citing a “slight delay”, without identifying any legal basis for extending the statutory timeframe.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, authorities are required to respond within 20 working days unless a specific exemption applies.  We have now requested an internal review of the Council’s handling of the request.

The Bianco deflection

The contrast in how the Council’s leadership has responded to this situation is stark.  In 2022, as Cabinet Member for Property, Cllr Jonathan Bianco justified granting the 80% lease discount by explicitly highlighting the “expected additional income” the Council would make from subletting.

Four years later, faced with an inactive charity and an unauthorised £18,000-a-year private sublet, his priorities appear to have shifted entirely.

When challenged at a Full Council meeting on 22 January 2026 over whether writing off the former Conservative councillor’s rent arrears was a special favour, Cllr Bianco pivoted.  Rather than addressing the £18,000 anomaly, he complained that it was a “serious breach” of the Code of Conduct that the press had seen the confidential report detailing the debt write-off.

Instead of announcing an investigation into the mismanaged lease, he declared that the Chief Executive and Monitoring Officer would be deployed to investigate the leak!

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service on 1st April 2026, Cllr Bianco went further.  Refusing to address the substantive financial and governance failings, he told the press that the legitimate questions surrounding the lease were being raised for “purely political purposes, linked no doubt to the forthcoming elections”.

It may be inconvenient to both Cllrs Bianco and Smallwood to answer questions about their actions just before democratic elections, but the electoral cycle does not affect either the press, or the residents’ associations – and our questions are just as valid now as at any other time – and before an election, arguably more so. In any case, these questions were first raised in the press in December 2025 and in the full Council meeting in January 2026.

Escalation to the Police

The issue has now escalated beyond scrutiny and into potential legal territory.  Speaking at a public election hustings, Labour councillor Sital Punja confirmed that the matter has been formally referred to the police, stating:

“The problem with Cowley Meeting Hall is the peppercorn rent that was granted to a former councillor. I was at the Cabinet meeting on 23 December where the Cabinet decided to write off that councillor’s debts.

If that isn’t cronyism — and what could be called corruption — then I don’t know what is.  Labour have asked for full reports from the Council. They have failed to provide them, citing GDPR and legal issues.

Hillingdon Labour have now reported this to the police because we do not feel this is being taken seriously enough by the Council.”

This marks the first time that concerns surrounding the Cowley Meeting Hall lease have moved from questions of governance and financial oversight into allegations serious enough to warrant potential criminal investigation.

At the time of publication, no details of any police investigation have been made public.

The Freedom of Information Challenge

Instead of accepting political deflections and being stonewalled by “internal reviews,” we have submitted a comprehensive Freedom of Information request demanding the Council release the raw data by next week.  We are asking them under the Freedom of Information Act to answer on the record:

• Authority (FOI Q9): We asked for the official record showing what authority was relied upon when the January 2023 lease was executed on behalf of the Council.
• Enforcement (FOI Q3 & Q7): Did the Council ever formally authorise the £18k cafe deal, and if not, why did they sit back and do nothing to stop it for over a year?
• The Missing Cut (FOI Q4): The Cabinet was promised a 25% cut of any subletting income.  We asked if the Council ever actually tried to collect it.
• Tax & Arrears (FOI Q5, Q7, Q8): Exactly how much unpaid rent  money is owed, did the Council quietly try to write it off, and is the cafe paying Business Rates?

Residents deserve answers and, through these FOI requests, the Council will be required either to provide the recorded information it holds, or to explain clearly which exemptions it relies upon for withholding it.

What we still do not know

The documents and public reporting now establish the contradiction. What remains missing is the Council’s explanation.  Residents still need clear answers to the following questions:

• Was any subletting or third-party occupation of Cowley Meeting Hall formally authorised?
• Did the Council receive any share of the £18,000-a-year private occupation income?
• If the Council did not receive that income, why not?
• Why was a VSLP lease executed for an association the Council now says had ceased to operate before the lease was signed?
• Were annual accounts or activity reports ever requested or supplied by HFCA after January 2022?
• What arrears are outstanding, and what recovery action has been taken?
• Why did the public Cabinet record refer to expected subletting income when the executed lease appears to prohibit subletting?

At the time of publication, the Council has not yet provided the information requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

The documents now raise clear questions. The Council’s response will determine whether they can be answered – with the matter now reportedly referred to the police, the need for clear answers has only increased.