David “Lunch” Lunts, the Mr Creosote of the GLA

Posted on by thisisnorthkensington

Part 2 of our “London Trilogy”

David Lunts is the interim head of paid service and the executive director of housing and land at the GLA. He really should be called “David Lunch” because he does appear to spend rather a lot of his time having lunches and dinners with property lobbyists and developers.

A look through the register of gifts and hospitality shows that he he has had engagements with Peter Bingle and Terrapin Communications five times, Savills four times, Berkeley Homes four times, VIP dinner with Knight Dragon, lunch with the Manor House Development trust (social cleansing in North London), lunch and dinner with Lovells five times and – oh we could be here all day – have a look here:

https://www.london.gov.uk/about-us/governance-and-spending/good-governance/our-corporate-management-team/david-lunts/gifts-hospitality

Also three engagements with Pocket Living – who are clients of Cratus:

https://thisisnorthkensington.wordpress.com/2018/09/06/cratus-communications-creeping-out-from-under-the-curtains/

Perhaps when Mr Lunts is knocking back the Château Lafite with Pinnacle over lunch he might want to see this from the Grenfell Action Group (which was reposted on THINK with their kind permission) :

https://thisisnorthkensington.wordpress.com/2018/03/28/grenfell-action-group-post-lying-down-with-dogs-rbkc-and-pinnacle-housing/

Or perhaps he might care to know that Pinnacle are the useless RBKC contractors responsible for out of hours services at nights, weekends and holiday times who left residents of Dixon House in North Kensington stuck in a 20 storey block of flats (around the corner from Grenfell) with no working lifts back in March?

https://thisisnorthkensington.wordpress.com/2018/03/02/down-the-road-from-grenfell-lifts-in-20-storey-tower-block-not-working/

David Lunch also dines with Rydon who were, of course, the contractors involved with the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower and we all know what happened there…..

David Lunch also has visited MIPIM, the luxury property fair in Cannes (of course!)

He must be absolutely stuffed- pass the brown envelopes and wafer-thin mints!

In May this year Lunts also had dinner with the Urban Redevelopment Authority from Singapore provided by LendLease THINK believe that if his priorities are for investment for the citizens of Singapore, instead of the needs of Londoners then he should go and live and work there.

He has dined with many housing associations too, including L & Q, Notting Hill Genesis, Peabody, Circle, One Housing and notably Catalyst who were partners in the regeneration of Wornington Green in North Kensington (now known as “Portobello Square”) . Here is a picture of Lunts from the Catalyst promotional video;

We will not post the Catalyst video on here as it is full of Piglet-Pies.

Instead, we will share some posts from our Labour MP for Kensington and local Golborne councillor Emma Dent Coad’s blog when she was documenting the regeneration at the time:

http://emmadentcoad.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-sheet-of-shame-wornington-green.html?m=1

http://emmadentcoad.blogspot.com/2017/01/and-filthy-new-year-from-catalyst.html?m=1

http://emmadentcoad.blogspot.com/2017/03/catalyst-housing-development-portobello.html?m=1

Anyway, THINK are surprised to see that after all those lunches and dinners, David “Lunch” isn’t actually the size of a house by now – but we are also not surprised to see the GLA doing next to nothing to make sure that Londoners can have more and better social and genuinely affordable housing provided in their localities. In fact it appears to us that some at the GLA, just like some councils and councillors, appear to be complicit in the destruction of communities in many parts of our city – shame on them.