Reply to comment

ISLINGTON BOY'S CLUB
20 HAZELLVILLE ROAD LONDON N19
Registered Charity No 284805
Affiliated to The London Federation of Boy's Clubs & the Amateur Boxing Association

Dear Sirs,

As a committee we thought it was important to respond jointly to the articles that have appeared in the local papers this week. The main reason for our response was that we felt that both articles were full of assertions made by Oner Avara that we would contest completely. Listed below are the items we dispute in entirety on the basis of evidence we would be entirely willing to show journalists.

1. Legitimacy of taking action against Ron and Lenny Hagland as individuals.

The roots of this conflict have nothing to do with Lenny and Ron as individuals, and started a long time before Lenny returned to the club. Minutes from a committee meeting as far back as 2008 show that long standing coaches such as Bevis Allen and Andy Roe were very unhappy with the conduct of Mr. Avara and the way Boxercise sessions were beginning to compromise the work the club does with the disadvantaged youth of the area. We feel Mr Avara has focused on Lenny because he is our chairman and for other reasons covered in item 2 and Ron because as an elderly man they see him as an easy target. The committee has voted to indemnify both men and views any legal action taken against then as individuals to be an attack on the club; as invariably it will draw on our finances and reputation. This is again clearly minuted if any proof is needed. Ron founded the club and Lenny has been with us since he was a young boy, they are the club in a way that Mr Avara never could be.

2. Criminal record of Lenny Hagland.

We suspect that the smear campaign against Lenny is partly because they again see him as an easy target due to his criminal record. We would like to clearly state that Lenny has never tried to hide his past having served a serious prison sentence. Indeed he has declared this fact both to London Youth our umbrella body, Islington Council and is CRB checked to work with young people. Lenny regrets what he was involved in as a younger man and is striving to act both as an example and a warning to many of the young people who come into our club having started on a similar path. His experiences enable him to relate to and help develop these young people who are often unwilling to step into a formal support system. We are proud of Lenny as a Club and what he has done to both turn his life round and bring the club on; being instrumental in helping us achieve the accolade of being the only boxing club in London to be Club Mark accredited.

3. Mr Avara Fundraising.

Mr Avara claims to have raised £110,000 for the club. This is a falsehood in entirety, before he came to the club we had around £79,000 in net assets, these assets over the period he claims to have ‘helped us’ themselves generated around £25,000 in interest. The £110, 000 in our reserve fund for development that he therefore claims to have helped us raise was in fact £105,000 without him even lifting a finger!! The current sum of £115,000 ironically would be considerably larger if Mr Avara hadn’t taken advantage of his position as chairmen to set up two businesses that effectively cheated the club out of money. For years he has paid well under market rent for boxercise classes whilst he was in charge of the clubs finances (surely a conflict of interest the charity commission might be interested in?) and a builders firm that used our 2000 sq ft yard as storage and as a depot; paying as we discovered recently, no rent at any time to the club, again whilst Mr Avara was in charge of the clubs finances! This is all clearly proven by our audited accounts. Equally well documented and something that might form part of any legal case is Left Hook/ Boxing London’s improper use of our name to promote themselves, again trading on a reputation that wasn’t theirs to use; to the extent that their company telephone number was posted on the Islington Council Website as the contact for the boxing club without our knowledge!

4. Proposed rent increase.

Much has been written about the proposed rent increase, the reason for the sums given is as follows. Boxing London run 12 sessions of 2 hours each a week at the club, they charge £8 per person for each class with up to 40 people attending at any one time. Is it fair as a charity they only pay us £8 per hour for the use of this facility. Bearing in mind this is an increase in the amount they used to pay; having averaged an annual hire fee to the club of only £3,400 over the past decade, not the £9,600 (which is in itself laughable) that Mr Avara claims to have been paying. The market rate for a fully equipped boxing gymnasium of 7000sq ft is well in excess of the £40 per hour we are proposing as a starting point for negotiation, you only have to look at equivalent premises to see that. The increase may seem large but then they have a lot of time at the club and are generating huge profits; we are just asking for a fair return that is likely to average out to approx only £1 per client during busy periods. The profit margin this company had achieved at the expense of a charity is truly disgraceful. More importantly we would have been prepared to negotiate on this figure and have been trying to do so since July, but all attempts to do so have been rejected by bullying responses from Mr Avara’s solicitor. All this is clearly documented in legal correspondence we would be happy to show the press and in our audited accounts.

5. Mr Avara’s ’10 year’s service to the club’

Mr Avara came to the club as a homeless refugee in 2000, he boxed for us and acted as a caretaker in return for living in the gym for a period of time rent free; as we felt sorry for him. Members of this committee helped him set up a business, find clients, wrote references for his immigration appeal and supported him through a difficult time in his life. He boxed for us up until 2004 and started acting in an administrative role after this. He has never worked ’12 hours a day’ at the club (we are not even open that long!) and it was not until 2008 that he became chairman, taking advantage of an elderly man to engineer that. Since 2008 he rarely comes to the club, being more interested in running his businesses. His claim to have given 10 years of his life to the club is again risible. We feel that this club helped put him on his feet, provided support and friendship only to be taken advantage of by him which is what makes this all hurt even more. This club (along with many of the committee members) was here 26 years before Mr Avara and will be here a long time after.

In summary as a committee we felt it important to come together to discuss these issues and then set the record straight. Everything we have asserted is either provable by multiple witness testimony or documentary evidence. This club is a beacon of social justice and charity in an area of considerable disadvantage. The members of this committee are proud boxing people who have come from and are very much part of this community. We will not let the excellent work this club does be compromised by individuals who have put profit before the welfare and development of the young people this club was formed to serve.

Yours faithfully,

Islington Boxing Club Management Committee:

Andy Roe, John Richardson, Steve O’Neil, Sedat Sag, Bevis Allen, Paul Hammick Paul McMahon, Jerry Mitchell, Sam Hadfield, Mehenni Wasili.