The Westminster City councillor Robert Davis received gifts or hospitality from property firms involved in half of the planning applications his committee ruled on in 2016, an investigation reveals.

Davis stood aside from his council roles on Wednesday night after the Guardian reported that he had been entertained or received gifts almost 900 times, often from property industry figures, between 2012 and 2017 while in charge of planning in the London borough.

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The Conservative councillor chaired the planning committee for 17 years but a detailed analysis of the 120 planning applications he considered in 2016 showed he was entertained by the applicant or their agents in 63 cases, and his committee granted permission on all but five of those occasions.

Gifts included a silver trowel from a developer whom the committee later awarded planning consent for 650 mostly luxury apartments and meals in the south of France and at many of London’s finest restaurants, including at the Ivy paid for by developers and their planning consultants.

In one case Davis met Robert De Niro, in New York, and was entertained by the actor’s development partner and the firm’s planning consultant. Davis’s committee later granted De Niro’s company approval for a 83-room boutique hotel in Covent Garden, London. Davis then lauded it as “one of the finest schemes we have considered for Covent Garden in years”.

A spokeswoman for Capital and Counties Properties, the developer working with De Niro, said “we regularly engage with all stakeholders to ensure they understand our strategy” and that “all such work is conducted through appropriate professional engagement”. She said the consent was granted unanimously by a cross-party planning committee and following “due process”.

Davis has strongly denied any wrongdoing. He said: “Any suggestion or implication that I have done anything other than to further the interests of the city and its residents, are baseless and strenuously denied.”



Davis, who was the deputy leader of the council, had held meetings prior to planning committee hearings with 74 applicants in 120 cases that the committee considered in 2016. As he stepped down, he said he had acted at all times with “independence and probity”.

Westminster City council leader, Nickie Allen, announced an investigation into the council’s planning system saying: “Our residents need reassurance that the planning process is not only impartial, but is seen to be impartial.”

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The borough’s legal director is also seeing if Davis breached the council’s code of conduct. The council has appointed James Goudie QC, an independent barrister, to assist the investigation.

The leader of the council’s Labour group, Adam Hug, said: “Taking hospitality from developers and then ruling on their applications shortly afterwards was business as usual for far too long in Conservative-run Westminster. Even now councillor Davis remains a candidate for the May election, which makes it clear, on the basis of everything that is known and not disputed about his activities, that Westminster Tories don’t see his behaviour as inappropriate. We do. And if elected Labour will take action to repair the broken culture at the heart of Westminster council’s approach to planning.”

A You Gov poll last month put Labour on course to take Westminster City council in May’s local elections, after 54 years of Tory control.

One Tory councillor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “Developers treated Davis like Louis XVIth when he walked in the room. They gave him platforms to speak on and introduced him to their most famous friends. They treated him like a god.”

But developers insisted their interactions with Davis were professional and were intended to share information about the aspirations of both the council and the property owners, for the wider public benefit.

The Guardian’s analysis shows that in 2016 Davis granted approval to Berkeley Homes for 652 apartments after he had been entertained three times by Turley’s, a consultancy hired by Berkeley to help it get consent, and once by Four Communications, a public relations firm hired by Berkeley. The entertainment took place at the Cinnamon Club restaurant, the Ivy, and in Cannes, in the south of France.

Davis had also been entertained by Berkeley Group directors at a charity gala dinner, receiving a silver trowel from the company whose directors also bid for prizes at an auction arranged by Davis to benefit a charity that he founded in the name of his late partner, Sir Simon Milton. Berkeley’s chairman, Tony Pidgley, is also a trustee of the charity and built a statue of Milton in his memory at another one of Berkeley’s developments.

The consent included a demand that 19% of the new homes should be affordable, which was short of Westminster City council’s target of 35%. Berkeley declined to comment.

Davis declined to answer a series of detailed questions from the Guardian on the overlap between his dealings with people in the property industry and his work as planning committee chairman. The Guardian asked for comment on its finding that he held meetings prior to planning committee hearings with 74 applicants out of 120 in 2016 and granted consent in all but five of these cases.

He was asked to comment on an internal memo, released under the Freedom of Information Act, suggesting he personally selected the cases his particular planning sub-committee would hear. He also declined to comment on whether the hospitality from companies who stood to benefit financially from his decisions, risked corrupting his independence as the planning chairman and meant he was less likely to act in the interests of Westminster’s residents.

He replied there had been “wrongful assertions regarding my time as chairman of planning”.