Shirley Porter
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Dame Shirley Porter (born November 29, 1930) is a controversial British former local government leader.
She was born Shirley Cohen, in Clapton, London, the daughter and heir of Jack Cohen, the founder of Tesco supermarkets. She married Leslie Porter in 1949. In 1974 she was elected to Westminster City Council as a Conservative councillor for Hyde Park Ward. In the early 1980s she chaired the Environment Committee, calling for strict enforcement of litter laws. In 1983 she was elected as Leader of the Council.
The Conservatives were narrowly re-elected in Westminster in the 1986 elections. Fearing that they would lose control unless there was a change in the social composition of the City, she instituted a secret policy known as "Building Stable Communities". An important part of this policy was the designation of much of the City's council housing for sale rather than re-let, should the flats become vacant. The designated housing was concentrated in wards which were the most likely to change hands in the elections.
Labour councillors and members of the public referred this policy to the District Auditor to check on its legality. In 1989 the policy was halted; however in 1990 the Conservatives were re-elected in Westminster in a landslide election victory in which they won all but one of the wards targeted by "Building Stable Communities".
Shirley Porter, who had been made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1991, stood down as Leader of the Council that year, and served as Lord Mayor of Westminster in 1991-92. In the early 1990s she was chairman of Chelverton Investments, which owned London radio station LBC. In 1993 station was unsuccessful in renewing its licences and Chelverton Investments went bankrupt in 1994. She resigned from the Council in 1993 and retired to live in Israel.
In 1996 the District Auditor concluded that the "Building Stable Communities" policy had been illegal and ordered Shirley Porter and five others to pay the cost of the illegal policy, which he calculated as £27,000,000. This judgement was upheld by the High Court in 1997 with liability reduced to Shirley Porter and her Deputy Leader, David Weeks. The Court of Appeal overturned the judgement in 1999, but the House of Lords reinstated it in 2001.
Shirley Porter transferred all substantial parts of her wealth to other members of her family and into secret trusts in an effort to avoid the charge, and claimed assets of only £300,000. On April 24, 2004, Westminster City Council and the Audit Commission announced that an agreement had been reached for a payment of £12.3 million in settlement of the debt. The Council declared that the cost of legal action for greater recovery would be greater than the amount to be recovered, while Porter maintained her innocence. The decision has since been appealed by Labour members on the Council and the District Auditor is revisiting the issue.