Grenfell Tower residents pleas fall on deaf Tory ears

At the most recent Full Council Meeting held on Wednesday 2nd December Cllr Feilding-Mellen had the cheek  to inform his fellow Councillors that he considered that he was fully aware of the situation facing tenants and leaseholders in Grenfell Tower. If there is one thing in the world that we can be sure about it is the fact that Cllr Feilding-Mellen has not got the foggiest idea concerning the abuse and ill-treatment experienced by Grenfell Tower residents as a result of the Kensington Aldridge Academy construction and the improvement works to Grenfell Tower itself. We can be equally sure that even if Cllr Feilding-Mellen knew full well of the plight of Grenfell Tower residents he would do nothing to help us as he appears to despise poor people and, especially, those who have the temerity to live in Council housing.

Our roving reporter, Sredni Vashtar, was present in the Public Gallery at Hornton Street on 2nd December and below is an account of the exchange between Cllr Blakeman and Cllr Atkinson from the RBKC Labour Group and the heartless Tory Councillors.

Cllr Blakeman opened proceedings by arguing that when people are “decanted” for regeneration and refurbishment, they receive a statutory disturbance allowance of £4,900. People who remain in residence are entitled to nothing, so RBKC should use its discretion to pay an appropriate and acceptable “works in residence allowance” to compensate for the damage, disruption, stress, loss of amenity etc. suffered by these residents. She went on to highlight that coupled with the Academy and Leisure Centre building works, Grenfell Tower residents will have endured non-stop building works right on top of them for almost four years by the time the project is finished. Cllr Blakeman went on to point out that if Grenfell Tower had been demolished, even without demolition costs, paying disturbance allowances and re-providing 120 homes would cost the Council more than £24 million. By spending £11 million on the Grenfell Tower refurbishment, residents were helping RBKC to save at least £15 million. Cllr Blakeman then went on to list some of the problems experienced by residents since the Grenfell Tower Improvment Works had commenced. She highlighted that many Grenfell Tower residents are already out of pocket and are suffering extreme stress and the examples she gave included:

• a new born baby whose whole life has been spent in an unhealthy environment with hammering, pounding, dust, etc. causing possible damage to hearing etc.
• no suitable respite arrangements for babies or small children, so parents have to take them to friends or family every day, costing fares etc.
• the cost of making good Rydon works, including buying materials and taking time off work
• the cost of paint, materials and labour to make good around new windows and radiators and the cost of new blinds or curtains which make the offer of £50  compensation derisory and insulting,
• having to replace property completely destroyed during the works.

Cllr Blakeman then stated that the Tory amendment offering only to “rehang curtains or blinds or find a solution to help put up new window fittings” just rubs salt into an open wound. It became very obvious to everyone in the Public Gallery that the vast majority of the assembled Tory Councillors have no idea what is going on at Grenfell Tower despite the fact that Grenfell Tower may well set the precedent for the regeneration of other tower blocks in North Kensington. She said that the wheels are already coming off the Grenfell Tower programme and that RBKC must learn from this.

Cllr Blakeman concluded her speech by by stating that Grenfell Tower residents have been exploited for far too long and that while no one can restore the quiet enjoyment of our homes lost when the first sod was turned for the Academy and Leisure Centre development RBKC should at least acknowledge what we have had to endure.

Cllr Robert Atkinson then joined the fray and described visiting Grenfell Tower to deliver leaflets first thing in the morning when people were going to work and parents were taking their children to school. He said:

• There were big queues for lifts on each floor because the workers were using both of them.
• The condition of the lifts at the start of the day were unacceptable; they were in the state that would be expected by the end of the day.
• Cllr Atkinson stated that he had seen sad notes on front doors asking Rydon workers at least to knock before entering flats.
• People were begging him for help to sort out the conditions they were experiencing.
• The floor numbering issue was illogical and was a risk to residents in the event of fire.
• From Cllr Atkinson’s perspective, conditions in Grenfell Tower were a “living hell”.

The Tory speeches and responses were quite unbelievable and show clearly that the neo-cons in Hornton Street have not got a clue about what Grenfell Tower residents have been put through and that they do not really care. For example, the architect of social cleansing in North Kendsington, Cllr Feilding-Mellen, said he was insulted when Cllr Blakeman said the Tories did not know what was happening at Grenfell Tower and that he knew exactly what was happening as he had visited and spoken to Rydon and TMO. He claimed that he had also spoken to residents before the works began.

Cllr Blakeman then floored him by pointing out that this comment proved that he had no idea what residents were really enduring; an observation which made Feilding-Mellen very angry and he went on to say that TMO and Rydon will visit every resident after the works are complete to calculate how much compensation they are entitled to.  Cllr Blakeman interjected to say that there is an issue here as residents may not have kept receipts so would therefore not be reimbursed.  She went on to question whether residents had been asked to keep receipts? (Of course not!)

Cllr Fielding-Mellen then went on to say that it was irresponsible for Cllr Blakeman to argue that everyone should receive £5,000 [although Cllr Blakeman had not asked for £5,000 but for an appropriate and acceptable amount.) He went on to state that  it was nonsense to suggest that residents had saved the Council money as the Council was spending a significant sum of money on these works. To prove that he really didn’t have a clue what he was talking about he concluded his defense of TMO/Rydon by stating that at the end of the day Grenfell Tower residents will have lovely flats in a lovely renovated building and they will be very pleased.

Cllr James Husband also from the Ruling Party who, most likely, does not even know where Grenfell Tower is, and has certainly never been seen within a mile of the Improvement Works, stated that it was an exaggeration to say that lives had been made “intolerable” or that residents’ experiences were “harrowing”. He said their experiences could best be described as  “very inconvenient”. He mumbled on that the Council had kindly found the extra money to do up Grenfell Tower and argued that otherwise the refurbishment programme would not have happened so quickly. [This is not true, given that the old heating system is on its last legs and would probably not have lasted another year and that the only reason Lancaster West got any investment at all was through the pressure applied by the Grenfell Action Group and other local stakeholders.]

Cllr Sam Mackover must have been smoking something funny as he took his turn to inform the meeting that he and other Councillors are planning a scrutiny visit to Grenfell Tower, so that the petition presented to the Council by aggrieved Grenfell Tower residents begging for help was unnecessary. Cllr Makover went on to say that residents have had to endure building works for only just over a year and unbelievably, that as the Council has already built for the residents a new Academy at £32 million and a new Leisure Centre at £17 million, it could be argued that RBKC had spent the equivalent of at least £100,000 on each flat and that Grenfell Tower residents will be really appreciative of the Council when the flats are finished.

So that’s about the size of it. Never has the gap in compassion, empathy and understanding been so obvious between the overprivileged Feilding-Mellen’s of this world and the underprivileged inhabitants of the Council’s housing estates over which Feilding-Mellen and his ilk wield such power.

A change has got to come!

Grenfell Tower residents react to TMO/Rydon bullying

Video Interview – The Housing Crisis in RBKC

The link below connects to a u-tube video interview produced recently by the ‘Westway23’ action group, who have been battling plans by the Westway Trust to cash in by redeveloping and selling off much of the property under the westway flyover which has hitherto housed a variety of community resources, including the Maxilla Childrens Centre and the Westway Stables.

The interview features our own Edward Daffarn, of the Grenfell Action Group, who exposes in detail the dynamics of the current housing crisis in RBKC, particulary the ‘regeneration’ of the social housing estates of North Kensington, and how they connect to the proposed sell-off and redevelopment of the Ladbroke Grove Library, the Isaac Newton Centre and the 23 Acres supposedly held in trust for the community by the now notorious profiteers and turncoats of the Westway Trust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLAFv_HdU88

The Trust held its AGM recently which appears to have been a very lively and interesting affair. Many angry local residents attended, prominent among whom were Westway23 activists, and most were calling for a serious rethink of the development plans for the Westway area, and giving the Trust leadership a very hard time. You can read about this in more detail on the Hornet’s Nest blog at the following link:

http://fromthehornetsnest.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/westway-trust-agmcalls-for-angela.html

We would also strongly recommend another recent post on the Hornet site supporting a recent blog by the Grenfell Action Group which called for a thorough new independent investigation of the KCTMO. That particular post on the Hornet site has so far attracted more than 160 comments, almost exclusively supportive of the position taken by GAG, and indicating a widespread and deep dissatisfaction with the TMO throughout the entire Rotten Borough:

http://fromthehornetsnest.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/grenfell-action-group-calls-for.html

Although the Hornet’s Nest blog is based in the south of the borough, and its readership tends to reflect grassroots local tory opinion, the editors of the blog have been strongly supportive of the left wing Grenfell Action Group and, more recently of the Westway23 movement, and we would recommend the Hornet to any of our readers or supporters.

IS IT TIME TO RESURRECT THE EMB?

The residents of Lancaster West Estate have had enough of seeing our homes and community run into the ground by the RBKC and their quislings at KCTMO. Many of our readers will be familiar with the underhand and duplicitous manner in which the Council and the TMO closed down the Lancaster West Estate Management Board in 2013 and, in so doing, seized from local residents what little control they had previously exercised over homes and services at Lancaster West.

Now residents are fighting back and there has been a recent call for local tenants and leaseholders to come together to re-establish the Estate Management Board in order to hold our abusers to account and, ultimately, secure real control for residents. We have recently written to Laura Johnson, Director of Housing at RBKC, and one of the architects of the EMB’s demise, to inform her that Lancaster West residents wish to reassert our “right to manage” and we include a copy of the correspondence below:

Dear Ms Johnson,

I am writing to you on behalf of a group of Lancaster West Estate residents who wish to pursue their legal right to re-establish the Lancaster West Estate Management Board in order to return some control and power to our community.

Many residents were disappointed that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea did not offer any support to the Lancaster West Management Association and chose instead to work with the TMO to end local resident representation in 2013.

According to the National Federation of Tenant Management Organisations “A Tenants Guide to the Right to Manage” our community is required to wait a period of two years before we can apply to reinstate the EMB.

According to our records, this time period is about to expire and we believe that Lancaster West residents should now be legally permitted to apply to RBKC to re-instate the EMB.

Please can you confirm the official date that the RBKC consider the Lancaster West EMB to have been formally terminated and provide us with information about who to contact at the Council with regards serving a formal Right to Manage Notice in order to set up a new Lancaster West EMB?

Thank you for your assistance with this matter and we hope that both the RBKC and the TMO will show a level of professionalism and respect that will allow local residents to re-establish the EMB and bring some self determination and control back to our Estate.
If we have made any errors in our understanding of how the process of re-establishing the EMB functions maybe you would be kind enough to explain how the proper procedure should run and how residents can reassert our right to manage?

At present, many residents are completely dissatisfied with how Lancaster West Estate is being run into the ground by our landlord, the TMO, which we consider to be lazy, negligent and incompetent. We wish this to change.

Regards,
*******
On behalf of Lancaster West residents.

We believe that it is crucial for Lancaster West residents to understand that The Royal Borough and its agents, KCTMO, blatantly and systematically discriminated against Lancaster West EMB and the several thousand residents it represented, for many years, during which time the right to mange was illegally witheld, and treated with complete contempt, by both RBKC and KCTMO. Although the Management Agreement signed in 1993 empowered the EMB to manage Lancaster West Estate on behalf of the Council, that agreement was never honoured by the Council, who chose instead to delegate all management powers to KCTMO instead. The TMO made virtually all decisions affecting Lancaster West and provided all essential services via their own contractors.

Under this arrangement the EMB was left virtually powerless and could only exercise a very limited scrutiny function, invariably in the face of constant obstruction and opposition from TMO officers who held all the power. Under such circumstances it is no wonder that, having struggled courageously for many years against a TMO bureaucracy that had no respect for the EMB’s right to manage, nor for its  right to scrutinise and challenge, EMB members eventually became so demoralised and disorganised that the RBKC and TMO could successfully collude to deliver the final coup-de-grace that destroyed the EMB.

It is worth noting also that the Kensington and Chelsea TMO is the exception rather than the rule as far as TMO’s are concerned. KCTMO is a monster – a single monolithic TMO that controls all council housing throughout the borough. Council housing in Islington, which is a much more typical example of tenant/resident management, is divided into a combination of no less than twenty two TMO’s and EMB’s which manage individual estates locally on behalf of Islington Council.

http://www.islington.gov.uk/involved/consultation-engagement/tenant-homeowner-involvement/tenant-management-organisations/Pages/tmo-offices.aspx

The uniquely atypical arrangement between RBKC and KCTMO is a fundamentally anti-democratic and authoritarian arrangement which concentrates all power in the hands of a single monolithic and unrepresentative so-called ‘Tenant Management Organisation’ (ie it is a Tenant Managment Organisation in name only). KCTMO is, in reality, a house of cards which serves only to create a false sense of separation of powers, responibility and accountability from the Council itself. This is also, of course, entirely consistent with the authoritarian instincts attitudes and culture of the neo-con Tory leadership of the Rotten Borough.

The demise of Lancaster West EMB is now ‘old news’, as the saying goes, and the question now facing Lancaster West residents is what will the future hold? Once we have received a response from Laura Johnson we can hopefully begin the search for residents who would be willing (and able) to serve their community by joining a newly formed EMB – perhaps even a local TMO like one of the many in Islington – and wresting control from the mini-mafia at KCTMO. Until then, we will have to tolerate the likes of the TMO’s Kiran Singh (Area Manager North) and Siobhan Rumble (Lancaster West Estate Manager and boroughwide rent arrears collector) enforcing reckless and heavy handed TMO policies at Lancaster West which display a callous indifference, if not an active hostility, to the best interests of the residents of the estate.

Remembering Lancaster Green

Most Lancaster West residents who visit this blog will probably recognise that the title banner is a view of Lancaster Green, as it used to look, seen from the corner of Station Walk. It is a sad fact that this beautiful space was bulldozed out of existence to make way for the Kensington Academy and Leisure Centre development. In our view the destruction of this precious greenspace can only be described as an act of wanton environmental vandalism.

Before it was threatened with destruction most local residents took Lancaster Green more or less for granted, and it was only when we realized that we were going to lose it that we began to see, and to realise, what a beautiful island sanctuary of green it was, and what a valuable and irreplaceable asset to the Lancaster West community. In this blog we have therefore created a photo array, to remind ourselves and our readers of how Lancaster Green used to be, before the machine logic juggernaut of ‘regeneration’ destroyed it forever.

But before we proceed to our picture gallery of Lancaster Green, let’s take a moment to view the result of the so-called Kensington Academy development  which replaced it – an exercise in so-called ‘regeneration’ which we didn’t want on this site, and which we resisted tooth and nail in a futile attempt to reason with the neo-con fanatics at RBKC.  This first picture is a view of the academy campus as it looks today – a sterile alienated and alienating landscape, where many young students can be seen idling between classes. Is this really an example of the brave new world of ‘progress’ which we must all now inhabit, whether we like it or not?

Readers should note also that the destruction of Lancaster Green flies in the face of the greenspace policies of both the GLA London Plan and the RBKC Core Strategy, both of which recognise that London is deficient in green and/or open space and strongly oppose any further loss of such amenity, insisting instead that all new development should preserve existing green space and include the provision of additional green and/or open space to help remedy this deficiency. Hollow deceitful meaningless words indeed!

Please note that this feature was posted in our archive some time ago and can be accessed anytime via the links beneath the heading banner at the top of the blog.

Grenfell Action Group Demands New KCTMO Investigation

The Grenfell Action Group has a clear message for members of ‘West London Citizens’ who have recently parachuted themselves into meddling with North Kensington’s housing issues.

Viewed from Lancaster West Estate, and from the perspective of the Grenfell Action Group, ‘West London Citizens’ appears at best as an assortment of mere cultural tourists, and at worst as cynical and self-interested opportunists. If they want to change this impression then they need to change their actions and abandon their cosy relationship with RBKC and the Kensington TMO.  If they really want to help the communities living in KCTMO properties then they should demand that the RBKC immediately commission an independent investigation into the KCTMO, similar to the devastating Memoli Investigation, and the resulting report published in 2009, that highlighted the many abuses and failings of the KCTMO at that time.

https://grenfellactiongroup.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/memoli-report.pdf

The Grenfell Action Group believes that this course of action is the only way that the negligence, incompetence and systemic failings of the KCTMO can be exposed and meaningful change brought about. Many local residents believe that the TMO is little better than a mini-mafia  which treats its residents with contempt and never misses an opportunity to bully, intimidate, disrespect and belittle them. Complaining or mounting resistance to this dysfunctional organisation is futile as the TMO seems completely unable or unwilling to respond sympathetically to the legitimate concerns of residents.

Complaints are often sidetracked, ignored or simply responded to with brazen lies and falsehoods. KCTMO staff are frequently just plain rude and unhelpful and any individual who risks putting their head above the parapet to expose wrongdoings or shortcomings can expect malicious persecution by those in power within the KCTMO.

The Memoli Report highlighted a similar range of unacceptable practices and behaviour in 2009 and many local residents believe that the TMO failed to improve significantly following the Memoli scandal and has since reverted completely to type. Most of the failings identified by Memoli are as prevalent today as they were when the original report was published. This treatment of residents by the KCTMO is totally unacceptable and the Grenfell Action Group is demanding change.

We urge our readers to examine the contents of the Memoli Report and then approach  local Resident Associations, local councillors, or your local MP, urging them to pressurise the RBKC to launch another independent investigation into how the KCTMO operates today and to explain why they have failed so dismally to respond to the recommendations made by Memoli in 2009.

It is a shame that we ourselves cannot approach RBKC directly to demand a new and fully independent investigation into the TMO, but it is a well known fact that both RBKC and the TMO are extremely hostile to the Grenfell Action Group and are highly unlikely to respond positively to any approach from us. It is also well known that collusion between RBKC and the KCTMO is endemic and ongoing and has led directly to the long-term managed decline of many social housing estates in North Kensington.

The Grenfell Action Group believes that the RBKC will have no appetite to ruffle the feathers of their co-conspirators in the social cleansing of North Kensington, and as the sordid and protracted undermining, disempowerment and ultimate dissolution of Lancaster West EMB proved, the RBKC and KCTMO are as thick as thieves.

We are therefore calling for an open and independent investigation into the conduct of the KCTMO, and we strongly urge all local resident groups  to join us in this call. We also call on ‘West London Citizens’ to support this campaign. They certainly appear to have more power and influence than any local resident groups have in the corridors of power at Hornton Street, and if they have any integrity they should use that influence to help bring real benefit to local communities by using their voice to demand that justice is served on this issue.

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2015/08/10/west-london-citizens-and-kctmo/

We believe that justice can only be served by an open and independent investigation into the continued failings of the KCTMO and we strongly urge all local residents associations and other local action groups – including ‘West London Citizens’ – to support us in demanding this essential investigation.