Following Lewisham Council’s response to our Freedom of Information request (Ref 33066881), The Big Retort has discovered a clear contradiction in the Council’s own data regarding its refusal to allow an HMO due to the "one household only" policy in its leases.

The Council stated that since launching its Additional HMO Licensing Scheme on 5 April 2022, no licences have been refused on the basis of the “one household only” clause. Yet The Big Retort holds a copy of a refusal letter dated 17 September 2025, which explicitly cites that same clause.

Lewisham also admitted that it has no policy, no legal guidance, and no Equality Impact Assessment for applying the clause in licensing decisions. Despite this, it has warned or advised 119 leaseholders that their leases prevent licensing, and issued two Temporary Exemption Notices on that basis.

What happened to the other 117 households? The Council has provided no information on outcomes or enforcement, leaving open the possibility that leaseholders were informally discouraged from completing applications — a practice without written policy or accountability.

The Big Retort has filed a follow-up FOI asking Lewisham to explain how its refusal was recorded, what became of the 119 warned leaseholders, and whether any enforcement, fines, or Rent Repayment Orders followed.

Link to follow once the request is published on WhatDoTheyKnow.

The Liverpool Chronicles: a short trip in the capital of intoxication

 

Euston, scene one. Picture, if you will, Bedlam on steroids. Travellers huddle on the concourse like pelicans, necks craned at the departure board. The platform flashes up; the herd bolts. “Reserved” on the London–Liverpool line is not a promise, merely a polite suggestion — hence the sprint.

Lime Street arrives early. We stroll fifteen minutes to our home-from-home, the excellent Hope Street Hotel. 

It’s a perfect spot: near the action, not in it.The corner studios on or above the third floor are the most sort-after parts of the hotel. It’s not just the views!

Colin Corin

Warm greeting from Colin, practical tips on where to eat, drink and (if you must) dance. Americans abound, museums and Beatles tours are a wander away, and the Philharmonic Hall glows around the corner. 

The corner suite came with a gorgeous blonde

A brief origin story. The building (The London Carriage Works, 1869) was meant to be apartments until the numbers said “hotel.” Early guests included Condoleezza Rice; later came a gutsy engineering stitch-up of old and new — cleverly done so it still feels like a boutique, not a bolt-on. Corner suites offer views to the Liver Birds; below the old haunts of the ’70s and ’80s have vanished. Liverpool hasn’t. The city hums — jokes, music, football, parties. If that’s not your thing, the hotel bar pours a quiet pint very nicely. 

First stop: Barnacle, just round the corner. Ideal for beers, martinis and fast Scouse patter. The setting — a modern brasserie inside the Grade II-listed former School for the Blind — is handsome and calm; the staff have stories for days. Have two drinks, hear four tales. That’s the exchange rate. (24 Hardman Street, L1 9AS.)

Dinner at NORD (100 Old Hall Street). A bit of a stretch on foot, so take a taxi — or stop for culture on the way. 

Nord

Room: gorgeous. Service: extremely warm. Wine: lovely. Food: a mixed bag. Our “T-bone” turned out to be… enthusiastic chops. One waiter, trying to preserve the illusion, insisted “It’s T-bone!” Another quietly confirmed the truth. 

T-bone or delicious chops, you decide.

Management wobbled: Richard denied being the manager — a manager in denial.

What the fig! Couldn't get my mouth around this dish.

Verdict: ambience 10; food: 4 for the strange cheese biscuits on a napkin, and same for the tartare (8–10 for the lamb chops at £38, cod £28, wine BTL sense cap? £41. Staff mostly terrific.  £220.55 for two is on the steep side for me...  But then, we’d try again — preferably on the night the manager isn’t really there.

Nord

Back on Hope Street, the city’s pulse carries on long after you don’t. Liverpool today is Bacchus with a diary: you can party ’til you drop, stand up, and ask what’s next. We opted for the nightcap and the walk home, city lights folding into the Mersey.

In the morning try the breakfast in the Hope Street Hotel's 1931 Restaurant.  Great value for money and good to get you in the right mood for the day or journey ahead. Great staff too.

We give Hope Street Hotel a 9-10, in the hope you won’t rush there - and then there’s no room at the inn for us.

Next in The Big Retort Liverpool Chronicles: coming soon.

LEWISHAM POCA SCANDAL: PARLIAMENT STRIKES BACK

Lewisham Council’s use of the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) against the Gök brothers of Meze Mangal has sparked a public backlash, a £20,000 fundraiser, and now questions in Parliament. The Big Retort... 

Brenda Dacres

What began as a fight for fairness in the Gök/POCA case has become a bit of a movement.  In the prosecution of Meze Mangal, brought under the authority of Lewisham mayor Brenda Dacres, two hardworking Turkish restaurant owners have been criminalised, had their passports seized, and now face the loss of decades of work. But people power — through a GoFundMe page — is saying, with one voice: enough. 

Since we first exposed Lewisham Council’s potential misuse of the Proceeds of Crime Act against Ahmet and Şahin Gök, the response has been an overwhelming 500 plus donations.  The fund is closing in on £20,000, needed to meet the eye-watering legal costs driven up not by the brothers but by a public body using a draconian law to refill its own coffers.

Every donation — from a fiver to four figures — carries the same message: not on our watch.

Across social media, the story has reached hundreds of thousands.

Chefs, small-business owners and locals are united in disbelief:

“You don’t treat good people like this.” “This isn’t a crime.” "What the fu-"

The council's response: silence.

What many don’t realise that once a council secures a conviction — even for a technical planning breach — it can then pursue confiscation under POCA. 

Not on profit: but turnover.

THE LADY'S NOT FOR TURNING

The Mayor of Lewisham has dined at Meze Mangal with her entourage. Yet, today, the council she leads presses on with POCA. A route that risks destroying the very family business that helped put Lewisham’s food scene on the map. 

After a chance encounter following local canvassing in Lewisham, the Mayor told me she could not discuss the “ongoing prosecution” — a mantra I’d already heard.

I suggested we meet to talk not about the case, but about POCA policy in general. 

“After the Labour conference,” came the reply.

After that conference came and went, I followed up by email. 

“The Mayor’s position remains unchanged. It would be inappropriate to intervene in a case currently before the Courts. The Mayor will not be meeting with you on this matter.” (Charlie Hughes, Head of the Mayor’s Office.)

When I clarified that the proposed meeting concerned policy, not the case. (Hughes, again):

“A meeting hasn’t been offered to you on any subject.”

Promises made in pubs, denied in emails — the silence grows.

"POCA: Right law. Wrong target.  Can local authorities weaponise criminal law to pursue planning disputes?"

Simon Hoare MP

WESTMINSTER IS WATCHING💪

As a direct result of the media campaign following The Big Retort and the national attention surrounding this case, the matter reached the Despatch Boxes in the House of Commons.

Simon Hoare MP, Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (and former Local Government Minister), rose in defence of Commons Sense — quite literally:

“Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Proceeds of Crime Act was never intended to be used by local authorities as an addendum to planning enforcement. The Secretary of State may very well have seen recent media reporting around this issue. Would he undertake to look into it, and to issue guidance to local authorities that, while they have many tools at their disposal, the Proceeds of Crime Act is not one of them?”

The Secretary of State replied:

“He raises an important point. I’m happy to arrange a meeting with him and the appropriate Minister so that he can share his concerns and we can come to a resolution.”

From the back kitchen of Meze Mangal in Lewisham to the floor of Parliament, raised by The Big Retort — the question has gone national.

It’s a question the current Mayor of Lewisham, Brenda Dacres, continues to meet with silence. Meanwhile... we have been summoned to Parliament and will report on this soon.

— Coming soon in The Big Retort: Mission Creep: Impossible — The POCA Hunters.

LEWISHAM COUNCIL AND MEZE MANGAL: NOTICE WITHDRAWN DISCOVERY

 

From extractor fan to existential fight.

How Lewisham Council’s prosecution of Meze Mangal spiralled from a planning notice into a multimillion-pound Proceeds of Crime case — and how our discovery of one forgotten court document may change everything for the Gök brothers.
The Big Retort…

In chess, a pawn captures by moving diagonally one square into the space the enemy piece once held. In this analogy, Lewisham Council is the queen: powerful, overreaching, convinced of its own invincibility. We — the citizens, the pawns — advance carefully, one square at a time, playing by the rules. But when the board is blocked and process bends, there remains one move the powerful in their Catford tower never anticipate: The quiet capture. 

We recently reported the Meze Mangal case — following two Turkish brothers, Ahmet and Sahin, hard-working British citizens, whose passports have been seized. Persecuted by officialdom and juggling day-to-day restaurant life under a white-hot media glare, the phone at Meze now rings off the hook with bookings… from journalists.

While cameras flash on the faces of Ahmet and Şahin Gök, we in Room 300 have kept digging — quietly, methodically. What we found made us exhale — long and hard.

How did we get here?

It begins, absurdly enough, with a fan — an extractor fan.  Installed at Meze Mangal to disperse cooking odours after a single complaint, it should have been a straightforward planning issue.

Instead, it became the opening move in an escalation that turned two restaurateurs into criminal defendants: passports seized, livelihoods frozen, reputations ground through the bureaucratic machinery of what some now call the Soviet state of Lewisham.

At every turn, the council appeared less interested in resolving a minor planning breach than in testing the outer limits of its enforcement powers.

What began as a question of ventilation became, over time, a test case in how far a local authority might stretch the Proceeds of Crime Act — POCA — a law written to catch gangsters, not grill chefs.

Then, long buried among the files of successive lawyers, we uncovered a document that had lain undiscovered — until now. A Notification of Withdrawn Offences, issued by Bromley Magistrates’ Court on 10 January 2020.

It helps explain why the Gök brothers reasonably believed the matter had been concluded — until Lewisham later revived enforcement and escalated it into confiscation proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

What follows is the paper trail that turned a withdrawn case into a criminal prosecution — a bureaucratic sleight of hand spanning years, a sequence of notices and letters, and one devastating misunderstanding. This is disturbing evidence of neglect and misinformation by council officers.

Extract from Bromley Magistrates’ Court “Notification of Withdrawn Offences”, dated 10 January 2020 — confirming four enforcement charges were withdrawn and that “no further action will be taken.”

That single court notice — never clarified, then forgotten, became the foundation of a misunderstanding with life-changing consequences for Ahmet and Şahin Gök. Pursued by a council machine apparently determined to test POCA on a planning dispute, they found themselves caught in a net meant for sharks — when they were, at most, small fry.

Whether this crucial document will find its way into open court remains to be seen.

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Legal note

The confiscation proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act remain before Woolwich Crown Court.
Nothing here comments on the merits of that ongoing case or seeks to influence its outcome.
The Notification of Withdrawn Offences is a historic court document that formally states four earlier charges were withdrawn and that “no further action will be taken.”
This evidence — photographed directly by The Big Retort — goes solely to questions of procedure, transparency, and accountability, not guilt or innocence in any pending matter.

THE BIG RETORT

Lewisham Council POCA Prosecution: Job Ad Reveals Mandate To 'Maximise Income'

From Borough of Sanctuary to dystopian world — Lewisham Council places landmark restaurant on the POCA grill. THE BIG RETORT…

Some days, when I pass the grimy windows at Laurence House in Catford, I swear I can hear the sound of someone desperately singing from the floors above: “You’ve gotta pick a POCA or two, boys…”

Lewisham once styled itself a Borough of Sanctuary. But today it feels more like a borough for bounty hunters — where local businesses and good neighbours aren’t nurtured, but criminalised for profit. The game is called POCA.

In plain English, the Proceeds of Crime Act works like this: after a criminal conviction is secured, a prosecuting authority can ask the court to treat unexplained money or assets as “criminal benefit” unless proved otherwise. 

The trawl through the person’s past can prove costly, both mentally and financially, as it stretches back six years from when proceedings commence. 

The court then sets a “benefit” figure and an amount it says the person must pay; if you can’t pay (or won’t), a default prison term awaits. 

A powerful tool against drug barons — but misused, it seems, against a much-loved local family restaurant for having a new flue at the rear of the premises without the benefit of planning permission.

This time Ahmet and Şahin Gök, the brothers behind Meze Mangal — the award-winning, much-loved Turkish restaurant at 245 Lewisham Way — are in the council’s crosshairs. 

Their so-called “crime”? Installing an extractor fan to deal with cooking odours after a single alleged complaint. What should have been a routine planning matter has escalated into persecution and harassment of two long-standing British citizens born in Turkey.

Somehow, Lewisham secured a conviction against the Gök brothers — in their absence.
Now the council has escalated the case to Crown Court and, at the last count, is demanding more than £2.5 million under the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA).

The question you may ask is this: wasn’t POCA introduced to seize the ill-gotten gains of drug barons, money launderers and corrupt officials — not to crush a family restaurant over a flue?

Yet Lewisham Council, working with Brent Council, is deploying this draconian tool against two highly respected restaurateurs. Even if the figure is reduced, the accumulated legal costs and risk of confiscation could bankrupt the Gök family and erase a community institution. 

The message to the public is clear: stay silent while power is over-applied.

But silence isn’t an option. This is just one example of a wider enforcement culture — telegraphed even in Lewisham Council’s own job adverts — that prioritises prosecution over proportion. It's very telling.

"...to ensure prosecutions are successful and maximise income for the borough in respect of proceeds of crime."

As if that weren’t enough, at the request of Lewisham’s prosecutor, the Gok brothers’ passports have been seized - treating them as 'immigrant' flight risks. It's truly unbelievable! It is also racist. 

The Gok brothers have lived here for decades, have family and property here, and take pride in both nations that they love. They are NOT flight risks. 

However, if they can’t pay, they face the terrifying threat of up to 14 years in prison. All for an extractor fan.

The legal bills and mental pressure are mounting! 

But then, in the red corner, it’s only public money - your hard-earned money - being spent with wild abandon on expensive outsourced lawyers favoured by the council’s officers. 

And, in the immigrant corner of this Borough of Sanctuary, a Turkish family is penalised and placed in eternal penury, watching the profits of a lifetime swirl down the very streets left uncleaned by misspent tax revenues — misspent on what? Costly lawyers in the red corner.

In one shocking move, a Brent Council financial investigator (yes, Brent) — working on Lewisham’s behalf — even inadvertently (we hope) caused the banks to return Meze Mangal’s takings for an entire week to diners. 

Only one customer reportedly repaid their bill.

But this case isn’t about an  extractor. It’s about profit and precedent over decent Turkish people. Şahin Gök and his brother Ahmet and family. 

How many locals have experienced the “Şahin hug” and welcome?

Speaking with Şahin Gök this week, one thing became clear. The brothers are not asking for sympathy or financial rescue — that is our initiative, not theirs. What they want is simple and dignified: to stand up to a bullying council, and to have their passports returned - immediately.

“We’re not begging,” Şahin said. “We just want to be treated fairly — and to hold our heads high again. We also needed to attend the funerals of our family in Turkey, but that's too late now. That  means more to us than anything.”

Why this matters to you

If Lewisham Council succeeds, it sets a dangerous Orwellian example for others. They come for Meze Mangal today; tomorrow they come for you. 

These are the cards these faceless and heartless and unchecked officials hold:

• Planning disputes treated as criminal enterprises.

• POCA turned into a revenue stream against immigrants, used by councils to balance their nearly bankrupt books. Without your elected members' oversight.

• Ordinary people — immigrants, shopkeepers, carers, foster parents, restaurateurs — crushed with costs, stigma, and even 14-years prison. How outrageous!

Questions for the forthcoming ballot box

Would this happen in a council with real political balance? We think not.

Would it happen in a borough led by elected councillors, not faceless bureaucrats? We think not.

Would the Gök prosecution (and persecution) have happened with strong leadership that values fairness and proportionality? Well, evidently we think not.

A campaign to SAVE MEZE MANGAL

The Big Retort says: enough.

Councils cannot operate in darkness and so we must shine a light on this. NOW. 

Also, they cannot target proud British-Turks  in the hope that they will pay a POCA bounty because they do not seek the glare of publicity. It is this we seek to highlight.

How you can help — right now

• Make a donation — the Gok brothers' costs are already in the tens of thousands. This is not their request, but The Big Retort's. 

• Show your support — write “I support Meze Mangal” in the comments section below or directly to the Mayor and CEO.

• Pop into Meze Mangal and give them a hug in support, or dine there.

• Share this post with friends, neighbours, and anyone who has enjoyed Meze Mangal.

• Tell your story — have you been criminalised, threatened with POCA, or forced toward bankruptcy by Lewisham enforcement? Add your voice below.

Together we saved KJ. Together we can save Meze Mangal.  [Reported here in The Daily Mail.]

This isn’t just about one community restaurant. It’s about justice, fairness, and community in the face of a council that too often forgets its people — and why its members were elected in the first place.

Ask not what your council can do to you — but what you will do to this council at the next election.

Keep comments polite — this is not the judge’s doing but the faceless officials who drove this and the elected members who are too scared to control them. We will be doing more on this later.

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Court details (open to the public)

The first hearing on 24 October is what’s called a mention hearing. It isn’t the full trial. Instead, it’s when the judge checks in on the case, hears from both sides, and sets out the next steps in the court timetable.

If needed — full confiscation hearing: Woolwich Crown Court, 19–20 March 2026.

Lewisham Council: “One household” clause puts rentals at risk

The HMO trap: tenants in the crossfire

How a dormant lease clause, licensing whiplash and POCA risk are squeezing homes out of the market. The Big Retort…

An email from Lewisham’s Private Sector Housing Agency about an Additional HMO licence landed like a brick. More than a year after the council invited me to apply, it now says my application is rejected. It’s the freeholder’s doing. But—who’s the freeholder?

“Lewisham Council… have confirmed that renting your property as an HMO would put you in breach of your lease and therefore put your lease at risk which can lead to forfeiture.”

Then came the Hobson’s “choices”:

Option 1: Withdraw and apply for a Temporary Exemption Notice (TEN) to “regularise” matters—i.e., kick out the sharers—avoiding enforcement for an unlicensed HMO.

Option 2: Press on and risk forfeiture of the lease.

Wait—what? This is the same council that extended licensing to my area and invited me to pay £1,500 to license three sharers—whose only offence was being unrelated. Now I’m asked to evict good tenants or gamble the lease. Either route funnels landlords toward criminalisation risks and tenants toward homelessness.

A trap with two springs

Strip away the jargon and you see the trap. Withdraw, and the council can assert you operated without a licence—triggering a civil penalty of up to £30,000 and a Rent Repayment Order (RRO) for up to 12 months’ rent. Proceed, and you’re allegedly in breach of a “single household only” lease covenant—opening the door to forfeiture. Heads, the tenants go. Tails, the lease goes. In both scenarios, the council gets leverage.

This isn’t about fire safety, overcrowding or poor conditions. It’s about legal whiplash: one arm invites landlord licensing; another cites a lease clause to torpedo it. If that clause is now being applied across Lewisham’s portfolio—not just against me—it could obstruct licences for ordinary shared living, even a resident owner with two lodgers. That’s not sensible regulation; it’s a rental supply–shrinking machine.

Legal hindsight, retrofitted

When these leases were drafted, three sharers on one AST were commonly treated as one household for lease purposes. No one suggested that a shared kitchen and bathroom breached the covenant. The Housing Act 2004 later defined unrelated sharers as multiple “households” for public law licensing—rightly, to raise standards. Lewisham now appears to retrofit that public-law definition back into a private lease clause. The result is a hybrid: a licensing regime that lures you in, and a lease interpretation that pushes you back out—and all by the same body.

The rights implications aren’t theoretical. There’s Article 8 ECHR (respect for home), Article 14 (non-discrimination), and the Equality Act 2010 (indirect discrimination), because a neutral “single household only” rule bites hardest on those who rely on shared living—young workers, students, carers, low-income renters, new arrivals. Call it social cleansing by lease clause or, in my view, targeted leasing by Lewisham for reasons that need daylight.

A bigger market consequence

If Lewisham’s reading spreads, the shockwaves won’t stop at my front door. Since 1980, more than 2 million homes have been sold under Right to Buy. England has 4.77 million leasehold dwellings; about 1.82 million are in the private rented sector; and roughly 41% of ex-Right-to-Buy homes are now owned by private landlords. Apply “single household only” rigidly, and you strip out a chunk of shared housing overnight—the segment that props up affordability in high-cost cities. It deepens the very shortage licensing was meant to manage. (Let’s call it SHOO—Single Household Only: Out.)

From licensing and lease dispute to POCA

Here’s where it gets truly perverse. If enforcement is routed through the criminal courts—say for operating an unlicensed HMO or breaching a notice—a conviction can unlock the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA). The numbers then pivot from fines to the “benefit” alleged from the offence. Prosecutors often argue that all rent received during the relevant period counts as “proceeds of crime.” Courts can impose confiscation orders up to the lower of that “benefit” or the defendant’s available assets. Fail to pay and you face further enforcement—even a default prison term.

So a technical licensing dispute mutates into asset and liberty risk. Not because the property is unsafe or overcrowded, but because criminalisation opens a lucrative recovery route. In my view, that’s a dangerous incentive structure: regulation by POCA, not by proportionality. It’s not the case of finding criminality, but making it criminal in order to profit.

The council’s two voices

One arm says “licence sharers.” Another says the lease forbids more than a single household and hints at forfeiture if you continue. The public message: “we’re bringing HMOs up to standard.” The private message: “we’ll refuse the licence and say you’re in breach.” Two huskies pulling in opposite directions—and the sled is the tenant’s home and the leaseholder’s asset.

If this is policy, it deserves an honest public justification. If it’s an error, fix it—and confirm publicly that lawful shared living (including lodgers and carefully managed HMOs) will not be retro-cast as a lease breach. Anything less caves in the very middle of the market we rely on to house working people—especially in London, where rents are through the roof.

What this looks like on the ground

I did what the council asked: applied, paid, cooperated, hosted three good tenants. Safety and standards were not the issue. Instead, I’m served a Hobson’s choice: evict to dodge criminal penalties, or carry on and face forfeiture—and, downstream, POCA exposure. That’s not regulation; it’s a pincer movement.

Meanwhile, tenants—who did nothing wrong—face displacement. Some will be nudged into worse conditions or further from work, education and care networks. Others will fall out of the sector altogether. Multiply that across a borough—or across councils that copy—and you shrink the rental base and harden the crisis.

A better path home

If councils want to raise standards, they should enforce standards: timely inspections, proportionate civil penalties for genuine non-compliance, and a clear pathway for bringing properties into the licensing net. Where lease covenants conflict with modern housing needs, there should be transparent guidance and—where appropriate—consent processes with reasonable conditions. Weaponising old covenants to nullify present licensing is a policy cul-de-sac.

Where I am now—and what I’m asking

I’ve filed a public Freedom of Information request for the internal correspondence, policies and risk assessments behind this decision, and for data on how many leaseholders have been warned, threatened, or steered into TENs.

Follow the FOI: (public link here)

Good. But please don’t use this as a strategy to criminalise me. Please don’t then reach for POCA. Please don’t move to forfeit the lease. The public—in the form of my tenants—deserves a fair hearing too.

If you’re a council leaseholder—anywhere—told that “one household only” blocks a lawful HMO or lodger arrangement, I’d like to hear from you. If you’re a tenant asked to leave because of this clause, tell me your story. This isn’t just about one flat. It’s about whether we regulate to keep homes safe and available—or regulate to shrink supply and flip housing disputes into criminal cash machines.

Until Lewisham (and any council tempted to follow) can show how this approach improves safety, protects tenants, and grows supply, the message to renters and leaseholders is bleak: the rules you followed yesterday can be turned against you tomorrow. And when housing policy is rewritten by the back door, the people on the doorstep pay the price. It’s them I care about.

The Prophecy: Mysterious Lewisham mosque roof death plunge

Death scene at Albaraka Mosque

 On 4 July 2025, Adam Rae Ursell, a 38-year-old actor, choreographer, and movement artist from South-East London, plunged from the roof of Albaraka Mosque in Lewisham. Despite the desperate efforts of ambulance crews, paramedics, and London’s Air Ambulance, he died at the scene. And since that day, a veil of silence has been drawn around the tragedy. TheBigRetort...

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Silence at the Scene

It was a fine, sunny Friday afternoon when a body hit the pavement on a busy Lewisham Way. Despite the heavy police presence and paramedics battling to resuscitate the victim, it was all to no avail. 

Police officers at the scene discouraged filming of the tragedy — and bodycams, which are usually on by default, were not recording.

In the hours and days that followed, no media reported the death. The silence was almost total, as if a D-notice had been imposed.

The Metropolitan Police responded to The Big Retort:

“For clarity, we proactively announce murders so it was not an incident of this nature. We have located an incident. As this is not a criminal matter, we can’t comment.”

The London Ambulance Service:

“We were called at 2.31pm on 4 July to reports of a person who had fallen from height in Lewisham Way, SE14. Despite the best efforts of our teams to save his life, a man sadly died at the scene.”

But was that the whole story?

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Albaraka Friday rooftop prayers

A prophecy foretold

Council records obtained through Freedom of Information show concerns about the building were raised as far back as 2017:

·         The property, originally a domestic dwelling, had been converted into a mosque — apparently without the council’s knowledge.

·         Attendance was reported at “over 200” people, with one inflated estimate of 500.

·         A council fire safety officer warned that overcrowding was putting the structure “at risk of collapse.”

Most alarming were warnings about the roof. Officials noted that the “flat roof is also used on these occasions” and that “children were also climbing the ledge to look down onto the road below.” 

There were no railing around the roof.

In August 2018, the same informant wrote bluntly to the council:

“It has been a while since my last email re: overcrowded mosque and the use of the roof… This is an accident waiting to happen. Your action might save this.”

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Enforcement stalled

Lewisham Council attempted an inspection. Access was restricted by the mosque committee to narrow time slots — none of which included Friday, the main day of worship, when the roof was reportedly in use. The very day, and time, of Adam’s death.

On 30 July 2018, the council issued a Planning Contravention Notice, ordering the use of the mosque to cease by 17 December 2018.

And then — silence.

No further enforcement. No explanation in the council’s files. Nothing.

Seven years later, the very scenario repeatedly warned of by council officers tragically came to pass.

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The Albaraka Committee responded:

“While we deeply value transparency and community dialogue, we must also respect the wishes and privacy of the grieving family and the broader community impacted by this loss. For this reason, we are unable to share specific details regarding the incident… What we can assure you is that the matter has been fully handled by the appropriate authorities.”

The committee failed to name the victim.

Disturbing footage of resuscitation attempts have since circulated online. Police at the scene were filmed asking a man to stop recording out of respect. He replied that he was “media.” 

Callous though he appears, perhaps he alone documented what officers — with their own cameras switched off — chose not to.

In the days following the tragedy, new metal fencing was erected around the roof.

In the aftermath of Adam Rae Ursell’s death, vital questions remain unanswered:

• Council enforcement: Why did Lewisham Council fail to act on its own 2018 Planning Contravention Notice?

• Safety warnings: Why were repeated alerts about roof use and overcrowding not followed up?

• Police conduct: Why were officers’ bodycams not recording at the scene of such a serious incident?

• Public transparency: Why was the victim’s name withheld for so long, despite confirmation of his death from the London Ambulance Service?

An inquest is scheduled for late 2026. It may establish how Mr Ursell died. But only then will we begin to learn whether years of warnings were ignored — and why.

Until those answers are given, one fact remains clear: the tragedy on Lewisham Way has left a community searching for accountability.

THE BIG RETORT