My Letter To The Guardian In Response To Barney Ronay's Latest Guardian Article

For months your journalist, Barney Ronay, has been writing about the New Bermondsey development, feeding the rumour mill that has been rumbling darkly about alleged misdeeds and inappropriate relationships between the developer, Renewal, Council Officers and Councillors past and present. In many of his 30 odd articles on this topic, he implied that all of these people were coming together in some underhand way to pursue their own interests at the expense of those of Millwall football club, whose ground is at the centre of the site. So it was gratifying to read his climb-down yesterday. In his article, Mr Ronay, a self-declared Millwall fan, not once but twice stated that there was no corruption involved here. 

This has come as no surprise. The Charity Commission recently published a report dismissing the allegations he made that Renewal were falsely claiming that Sport England had pledged funding to the Surrey Canal Sports Foundation, the Charity set up to deliver New Bermondsey’s planned Sports Village. I hear that claims made by Millwall concerning this proposed development did not impress at the Tribunal that is examining Lewisham Council’s decision not to disclose sensitive information concerning the regeneration plan. Mr Ronay and the Guardian’s lawyers have made submissions to Lord Dyson, who is conducting an inquiry into this matter. They must now anticipate that he will conclude that there is no basis to the claims they have made and that the Council has acted properly. How else can one explain Mr Ronay’s attempt to rubbish the inquiry before it has been published? It is clearly an attempt to get his retaliation in first. I can only hope that at some point someone senior at your newspaper will feel that they have a moral duty to examine why so much time has been spent seeking to derail such a large redevelopment project that is so clearly in the public interest.