The Representation of the People
In order to vote in an election you have to be registered to vote at an address that is your permanent (or sometimes, temporary) home. It is an offence to mislead or falsely declare your residence.
The Newham Council website includes a Notice of Poll. In the entry for Forest Gate South, we see that two of the Labour candidates (Vaughan and Pontin) are nominated by Rokhsana Fiaz and Farhaan Rashid Patel.
From this it is safe to assert that R Fiaz and F H R Patel both claim to live in Forest Gate South Ward. If they didn’t, they would appear to have committed an offence under the Representation of the People Act. It is reasonably safe to assume that she is claiming to live at the home of her parents, who do indeed live in Forest Gate South ward. The reason we have assumed this will become apparent.
We also see that Ms Fiaz is registered at an “address in Newham” for the purposes of her candidacy for mayor.
As is increasingly common, the address that she used was withheld from the public. We have assumed that this is the same address that she used for the nomination of the two Forest Gate South councillors.
This may sound minor in its importance, but it is a matter that may be of some concern to Her Majesty’s Constabulary and to the Returning Officer.
The Electoral Commission give some clear guidance on the qualifications for registering as an elector.
A person must be resident, on the relevant date, at the address at which they want to be registered. Residence has a particular meaning in electoral law and is not equivalent to residence for other purposes such as income tax or council tax.
Normally a person is resident at an address for electoral purposes if it is their permanent home address. (Our emphasis)
There are exceptions, when a person is temporarily living elsewhere, when living abroad, when they are in prison or in a mental hospital.
In her 2022 entry under the Register of Interests, Ms Fiaz has had details of her residence withheld. She does not appear to have any other interests in land within the borough, so we have assumed that the address she used was that of her parents in Forest Gate South.
She lists no further interests in land, nor does she list interests in land owned by a husband or partner. For most councillors, it is possible to trace previous entries on the register. However, when one looks for the previous entries for Ms Fiaz, the following appears.
There are, it seems, no previous entries for Ms Fiaz. Or they have been removed. Or withheld. Ditto for the period 2014-2018 when she was a councillor.
Thus, we are led to assume that Ms Fiaz used her parents’ address
as a qualifying address from which to stand for election, and
as an address from which to register to vote, and
as an address from which to nominate two candidates for council.
Councillors routinely note the employment and property interests of partners, wives and husbands. Not so Mayor Fiaz, it seems.
Cllr Zulfiqar Ali
Cllr Rohit Dasgupta
Cllr Joshua Garfield
Cllr Mumtaz Khan
The Lee-Phakoe Family Councillors
Cllr Anthony McAlmont
Cllr Terry Paul
Cllr Lakmini Shah
Cllr Rachel Tripp
It’s all fairly standard stuff. But in the case of Mayor Fiaz, there is an absence of any reference to spouse or partner, which is puzzling.
For several years Ms Fiaz has apparently been in a relationship and has introduced her partner as her husband. We are told that he has a property in the Stratford area, though from her declarations it would appear that this successful young couple neither own nor lease any property in the borough. We think that this must be an omission.
Here are several questions that we believe need to be answered:
Is Ms Fiaz married to Asjad Nazir?
Did Rokhsana Fiaz live at the address in Forest Gate when she signed the nomination forms for Winston Vaughan and Madeline Pontin in 2022?
If not, where did she live?
Has the Mayor, Rokhsana Fiaz made a ‘false declaration’ and thereby committed an offence under the Representation of the People Act?
And, was the nomination of the two Forest Gate South candidates therefore valid?
Has Ms Fiaz failed to fully declare her interests in land as required of elected members?
We’d be interested to know.
If Mayor Fiaz would like to get in touch and respond to the questions above or to correct any wrongful statements, we’d be delighted to hear from her. If she is in fact, unmarried and has lived all of her period in office in a house in Forest Gate with her parents, we’d be happy to amend our story to that effect and make a modest donation to a charity of her choosing.