Who’ll land a knockout blow in the fight over Islington Boxing Club?
From the ring to the courtroom, bitter row over rent looks set to go the distance
Published: 8 October, 2010
by STEVE BARNETT
A POUND-for-pound legal fight is set to break out between the founder of a top amateur boxing club and the men who have been helping to run it.
Islington Boxing Club in Hazellville Road, Upper Holloway, has become a hub of the community, helping get troubled boys off the streets and into the ring since it opened in 1974.
Earlier this year it received Club Mark Accreditation from the Amateur Boxing Association (ABA) and the Mayor’s Civic Award. Honorary secretary Ron Hagland was also named Volunteer of the Year at the recent Sport Islington Awards.
But now Mr Hagland and his son Lenny, who took over as club chairman four months ago, are being taken to court by a private fitness-based boxing company that rents the premises in Archway.
The dispute broke out after Islington Boys’ Club tried to put up the rent paid by Left Hook Ltd, trading as Boxing London, claiming that the classes were taking away potential club members.
Owners Oner Avara and Enzo Giordano, both former members and coaches at the Islington club, have been accused of “hijacking” the club to the detriment of the youngsters and amateur boxers who train there.
Mr Hagland, 79, said: “I knew both lads as youngsters, they were very well looked after by this club. How can they repay us like this?
“I even wrote letters on Oner’s behalf to the Home Office pleading for his acceptance into the UK when he was an immigrant from Turkey.
“Oner and Enzo were offered reasonable terms to extend their lease despite their abuse of my trust and this boxing club. However, they wanted to continue to offer a pittance of rent, whilst charging exorbitant training fees to their clients.
“We’ve never been a greedy club, if anything we’ve been too relaxed. We had been charging them £8 an hour for 10 years and that was without including bills. So we approached them regarding a fair increase of £40 an hour, fully expecting a compromise that would see that figure drop to about £25 an hour. But you can’t negotiate with people who are unwilling to talk to you.
“Everyone knows that the people who come into a boxing gym are usually from the poorer classes, so we only charge our senior members £5 a week and our juniors £3. We found out that Oner was charging £50 membership and then £8 a session. They were certainly getting all the gravy.”
Mr Avara has angrily hit back at the claims, saying that he has no intention of destroying Islington Boys’ Club and that it’s Mr Hagland and his son that he is taking legal action against – not the club. “They tried upping the rent from £9,600 a year to almost £50,000 a year, which is ridiculous,” said Mr Avara. “We don’t have that kind of money, and when we protested they told us we had to leave.
“The club means so much to me, which is why I have been putting in 12-hour days as a volunteer. Over the years the club has helped me make great friendships and given me new business opportunities, so why would I want to damage it?
“I’ve always felt that I owe the club something in return for what it has given me, which is why I have dedicated the last 10 years of my life to making it bigger and better. I even helped raise over £110,000 towards a new building, and this is how it’s being recognised.
“Any claims that we’re trying to damage the club are nonsense. We’re not taking legal action against the club, we’re taking it against Ron and Lenny personally.
“We were running the club perfectly, and then Lenny turned up and wanted to run things his way, and suddenly our rent was being put up. They just want to get rid of us so that Lenny can take over.”
Comments
Support Ronny and Lenny - Don't let greed win
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2010-10-12 16:35.Having grown up in the area I know loads of friends who have boxed for Islington Boys club Butch Lesley, Grant McMeekin, Tommy Doherty, Johnny Reidy & many more. I am saddened by the present situation involving 'the sitting tenants' Boxercise class. I was a British Boxing Board of Control official for a number of years, thus know what Boys clubs such as Islington bring to the professional game. Ronny Hagland ia 'salt of the earth' and to name him in litigation is nothing short of national disgrace. Greed is a cancer that eats away at things, let us not let Islington Boys club suffer this fate! Support Lenny & Ronny - evict the 'sitting tenants' or SQUATTERS more like. I am surprised that a local law firm such as Wilson Barca (based at the Archway) would attack such a local institution, as it's hardly good for business.......... Greg Hue
Response to this article
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2010-10-12 12:32.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.
Islington Boy's Club Statement
Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 2010-10-10 17:42.Dear Sirs,
I am writing to reply to the assertions that Oner Avara has made in response to your enquires about islington Boxing Club.
Oner has not raised £110,000 for the club this is quite clear from our published accounts, our net assets the year that he joined were already £79,000 and this reserve alone over the 10 years has generated interest of around £25,000 which already gives us a total of £105,000 before you take into account the boxers’ subscriptions that have added to our overall reserve total of around £115,000; it is therefore very unclear how he asserts to have achieved this! Other long standing committee members other than Oner have been instrumental in securing additional grant funding which has been spent on the upkeep and replacement of equipment. All of this is documented and clearly auditable.
In many ways Oner has profited from the Club, his building Company having been paid £26,000 for a variety of works carried out to the premises and obviously the excessive profit he has made whilst exploiting his position as Chairman to continue paying a well below market rate for hire of the club for the boxercise classes.
The club acknowledge that Oner Avara has done a good service to the club in the 10 years he has been with us, but so have many other longer term committee members and volunteers who have been with the club twice that length of time!! Each volunteer of the club is held in great esteem for their services.
Following on from this point, we agree that the proposed rent increase is sizeable, but it is simply an increase to the going market rate (Approx £40 ph) for a facility of our kind (A fully equipped boxing gymnasium of around 7000 sq ft) which is easy to prove if a simple comparison is made with other local venues or other boxing gyms offering similar square footage. Currently the pay only £8 ph, whilst generating considerable profits in excess of this. This is surely pure exploitation of a charity set up to provide for young people in this disadvantaged area and since it happened whilst Oner Avara was still Chairman a direct conflict of interest with the moral ethos of the club. As a charity our first responsibility is to those we serve and getting the best deal for them, not Oner and Enzo’s business.
We are fully aware that this forms part of Enzo’s livelihood but Left Hook also have another premise where they run classes from so it wouldn’t stop Enzo earning a living.
They have even refused to negotiate favourable terms despite genuine offers from us to do so from July, opting instead to bring a solicitor to one of the committee meetings unannounced! This catalogue of bullying and exploitative behaviour towards people who unlike Oner and Enzo give their time for free to the club is what has led us to issue them with 30 days notice as we can see no alternative, without the club and the good work it does with over 300 young people in this area being destroyed.
The strength of this club has always been its local roots so we would ask people to register their support at a face book site set up for this purpose and fight off an attack on what is a much loved local institution.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-Islington-Boxing-Club-against-Boxi...
Yours Sincerely
Ron Hagland
daylight robbery
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2010-10-08 23:48.I know all the parties in this dispute. Yes, Ron is the co-founder of the club and has done a lot of work for the youth of Islington, but sadly this is a real case of blood being thicker than water. If this does go to court, the judge will decide and the truth will prevail.
Response to Article ' Who'll land a knockout blow in the fight..
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2010-10-08 22:36.Having read the above article it is both sad and laughable that two individuals who claim that 'the club means so much to me' could even consider doing what they are doing. Firstly, the club exists to serve the local community and over the past 30 odd years in which it has existed in it's current location, it has done an outstanding job of helping young men & women to gain a sense of purpose, discipline and increased self-esteem. Secondly, the club will continue to exist long after Mr Ovara and Mr Giordano move on. It is fair to say that both Mr Ovara and Mr Giordano do not have the club's interest at heart. From the article, they claim to be coaches of the club, and yet, neither has ever coached a single amateur boxer. And as for Mr Ovara's claim to have worked 12 hours a day as a volunteer for the club......well, no comment to say the least!! Mr Ovara's former capacity as chairman and also a director of Left Hook Ltd, the recreational boxing company clearly caused a clear conflict of interest. One only had to view the Islington Boxing Club website to see that. Both men had and still have only their own interests at heart and not the club. They should be both be very ashamed of dragging a club (who gave Mr Giodano his start in boxing and helped to get Mr Ovara residency to be able to remain in the UK) through the courts. Somehow I suspect that is not the case.....
lefthook
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2010-10-08 22:23.They should just hold there hands up and say fare cop we are leaving, but no they want islington to pay them to leave how can they say they love the club
Who’ll land a knockout blow in the fight over Islington Boxing C
Submitted by Artful Dodger on Fri, 2010-10-08 20:51.Let me start by saying that the claim by Oner and Enzo that they are taking legal action against two of the clubs officers and not "the club" per se, is a nonsense. The legal system may allow the distinction, however, we are not dealing with a faceless corporate company. We are dealing with real lives, real personalities and the backbone of a community based club. So please dont try to exempt yourselves from causing further damage.
It seems that messers Oner and Enzo, have enjoyed a peppercorn rent for many years, this seems to have allowed them to use the facilites of the club to build up their own commercial business. IBC charge a £30 registration, London Boxing charge £50, IBC charge £5 for adults per week, London Boxing charge £8 per session. Its exactly the same facilities, if the club is used just once a week, thats a massive hike of over 60% straight into the London Boxing business.
Oner and Enzo's claim that "they were running the club perfectly" beggars the question, Perfectly for whom ? Perfectly to build a commercial business on the back of a charitable organisation?
To try acting like "the victim" by shouting out "unfair rent increases" and acting like the little man versus the big bad landlord, sorry lads, dont insult my intelligence. You could walk away from this with the respect of everyone within the club and the community at large, instead you insist on continuing to drain their hard earned resources.
Shake hands and walk away now, keep your dignity, drop this stupid legal case.
Artful Dodger
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