Something is rotten in Southwark

How a mosque was even allowed to open right below residential properties

The short version

What used to be two separate Council flats on the ground floor of a building ended up becoming a mosque.

The people opening it lied on the real use they were renting the property out for.

Officially they were opening a Community Training and Advice Centre, but no services of that sort were ever offered. It was a mosque from day 1.

Some people from the Council tried to keep the tenancy agreement secret because they didn't want to disclose they knew that the use was not the one contractually agreed. And also because many terms of the lease were broken, and they were trying to let the mosque do what they wanted despite the agreeement, Council regulations, and laws.

I managed to get some excerpts of the agreement through a Councillor. All the terms I had access to had been broken.

The long version

The property currently occupied by a mosque on the ground floor of a building used to be two separate flats, used for Council housing.

They were turned into a GP surgery without the necessary planning application, but nobody complained because it was a reputable and responsible business and didn't cause problems or affect the lives of the residents.

GP surgery have need a D1 use class, which is the same that property needs to be libraries, mosques, and so on.

When the GP surgery moved, the property remained empty for many years, and those at the Council assumed that the D1 use class had been obtained after the required legal steps. Which wasn't the case.

That made the Council advertise the property as D1 use class and the mosque moved in.

Given the location ( right below residential flats ) a business in which a lot of people gather to sing at all hours, inlcuding as late as midnight and as early as 3am, a false intended use was used for the tenancy agreement: Community Training and Advice Centre.

Probably one of the reasons why people from the Property Team refused to let me have a copy of that tenancy agreement with the most ridiculous excuses.

The other reasons being the reported problems caused by the mosque, all repeatedly ignored by the Council, which were obvious breaches of that agreement.

I still haven't managed to get hold of the tenancy agreement, because the property Team refused to disclose it despite a FoI Act request.

I did however got hold of some excerpts from the contract, and all the points I was made aware of had been breached.

The Property Team tried to hide the tenancy agreement for that reason too. As soon as I will get hold of the full tenancy agreement, I am sure I will see many more breaches to their tenancy agreement which the Property Team bent over forward to overlook.