Archive | September, 2023

Moaning Mirza

25 Sep

Cllr Mehmood Mirza was none to happy about my previous post. He took to Twitter to tell me to 

get a life man, do you have anything better to do?

And yet here he is in May last year, encouraging his followers to check the registers of interest to see how many ‘additional homes’ councillors owned:

Mehmood Mirza on Twitter

Which was a bit rich, given he had just stood for council – unsuccessfully on that occasion – while owning multiple ‘additional homes’ himself.

Anyway, he’s a councillor now and subject to the exact same levels of scrutiny he wanted for others.

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Matters of interest

20 Sep

Cllr Mehmood Mirza

The recently elected councillor for Boleyn ward, Mehmood Mirza, has published his register of interests.

And it is, to say the least, interesting given his personal brand as a Corbynite man of the people.

In the section on land, he declares that he owns eight properties, either directly or through his company Phoenix M Properties Limited. Addresses for seven are provided: 

  • 79B Selsdon Road E13 9BZ 
  • 28 Eversleigh Road E6 1HQ 
  • 29 Patrick Road E13 9QA 
  • 11 St Martin’s Avenue E6 3DU 
  • 47 Central Park Road E6 3DZ 
  • 24 Orwell Road London E13 9DH 
  • 76 Strone Road London E7 8EU

The location of the eighth is withheld as

The Monitoring Officer has agreed the disclosure of the Member’s home address is a sensitive interest under s.32 of the Localism Act 2011.

While declaring eight properties in the borough might meet the legal requirement, Cllr Mirza is being modest about the extent of his rental empire. Three of the houses are sub-divided into flats on which he either currently or has in the past had selective (which is to say landlord) licenses. These are 76 Strone Road, 24 Orwell Road and 28 Eversleigh Road. 

Cllr Mirza was granted a selective licence for the ground floor flat at 76 Stone Road on 3 August 2023, after he was elected; Phoenix M Properties was granted a licence for the first floor flat on 22 June. The contact address for both applications was First Floor Flat, 24 Orwell Road. In 2010 Mirza was granted a “Certificate of Lawfulness for an Existing Use as 2 x 1 bedroom flats” at Orwell Road.

At 28 Eversleigh Road, Mirza has held a selective license since December 2020 for Flat 2 at that address. And documents publicly available on the Companies House website show that Phoenix M Properties has two mortgages on the house – one for 28 and another for 28A.

This extensive portfolio of rental units puts Mirza top of the league of Newham councillor-landlords. No mean achievement given the number of competitors.

Elsewhere in Mirza’s declaration, Labour officials will raise an eyebrow at section 2. This is where councillors declare who has made donations to, among other things, their election expenses. Mirza lists Unite the Union and the GMB. As both unions are affiliated to Labour it is unlikely that either would contribute to a candidate running against the party. I suspect that Mirza has simply filled the form out incorrectly. His union memberships should appear in section 8 – other interests. Though quite why a company director and landlord should be a member of two trade unions is a bit of a mystery.

Companies House records show that Cllr Mirza is the sole director and company secretary of Phoenix M Properties Limited. He is the sole ‘person with significant control’, owning more than 75% of the shares and voting rights in the business. His occupation is given as ‘Property Management’. However the section on his register of interests where he is asked to “state any employment, office, trade, profession or vocation carried on for profit or gain” he doesn’t mention being either a company director or property manager; he says he is a legal advisor.

Now that the extent of his property holdings is public it will be entertaining to see how his supporters square this with the idea he is a left-wing hero.

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