MAXILLA 3 – MORE DECEIT AND BETRAYAL

There is an old adage that “timing is everything”. We at the Grenfell Action Group believe that the current action of the TMO in depriving local residents of the Lancaster West Community Rooms without any consultation or warning, or offer of replacement premises, at the same time that the Lancaster West Residents Association has been re-constituted and the Grenfell Tower Residents Association has been newly formed, tells us all we need to know about the  duplicity of our landlords, how little they can be trusted, and their propensity to trample with impunity over residents rights.

There simply could not have been a worse time to remove the only property left on Lancaster West Estate that allowed residents to pursue our right to meet and commune together and we believe that the message the TMO are sending is that they are incapable of empathising with the needs of our community and are incapable of responding to the concerns of tenants and leaseholders.

Residents of Lancaster West Estate have now lost free and unrestricted access to the only place left in our community that was suitable to facilitate group meetings and we believe that this is totally unacceptable. The Grenfell Action Group are demanding that the TMO return this invaluable resource back to residents without delay.

The first blow to democracy on Lancaster West came without any consultation or warning as the community was deprived of our old EMB Community Rooms back in 2014. This occurred as a result of the TMO moving staff out of Grenfell Tower to facilitate the Improvement Works. The EMB Rooms were then converted to office space for staff, newly decorated and made to look nice with the addition of flower pots, etc. This was after years of the TMO forcing residents to use the same premises while in a state of neglect.

Around the same time the Lancaster West community lost access to our Resouce Centre as this property was also commandeered by the TMO as a temporary venue for the Grenfell Under 3 Creche. Again, no warning or consultation between the TMO and local residents before the Resource Centre was simply taken away from us.

Finally, a few weeks ago, again without so much as a polite warning and total absence of any consultation, our community was told that we would be losing the only remaining space left on the estate for residents to meet.

We were told that the Maxilla Nursery and Childrens Centre would be taking over our last refuge in the old caretakers office beside Grenfell Tower, and that we would have to find an alternative venue, away from Lancaster West Estate, if we wanted to continue to hold regular residents’ meetings.

This latest outrage was particularly galling as we had received correspondence in response to concerns that we had raised with our MP, Lady Borwick, that gave assurances that the Goldborne Childrens Centre would be finished on time and led us to believe that the Community Rooms would be spared.

We received the email below from Lady Borwick’s parliamentary private secretary John Sweeney on 27th August;

“Further to our email conversation, Lady Borwick has been informed…that the school will be ready for 8th September, so the children will be going back on time. Lady Borwick had been told there would be a delay, but she is delighted to hear that this will not now be the case.”

However questions subsequently addressed to the relevant RBKC Scrutiny committee by Councillor Blakeman received the following response on 16th September which she immediately copied to us;

“We have secured these rooms until 2017 and shall review the use and suitability of this location at the end of the academic year. This will include a consultation with users about their views on the site (July 2016). If the review suggests that the rooms are not suitable we will seek alternative provision. Following the refurbishment of the building and feedback from parents who have begun to use the site, we are hopeful that the community rooms will become a community hub with an increased offer for local families.”

We have no doubt that Lady Borwick’s reassurances were offered by her in good faith, which leads us to conclude that she also was misled and deceived by RBKC officers, just as we were, indicating that they have no more respect for her office as Member of Parliament than they have for the rights and needs of the less privileged communities of North Kensington.

In addition to the above, which clearly indicates that the Council’s use of our meeting room as a nursery is anything but ‘temporary’, as previously claimed, the Grenfell Action Group does not believe that these premises are suitable for use as a childrens’ nursery, a view clearly shared by Councillor Blakeman, who in her submission to the Scrutiny Committee also said;

“Can you advise why these premises were deemed suitable for use as a crèche? These rooms are subterranean, situated directly beside the vehicular access to Baseline Studios and the garages beneath Hurstway Walk. The siting of the entrance is dangerous as this service road is in perpetual use. The rooms have no daylight, so the children will be permanently in artificial light. What outside space will be available for the children…and what provision will be made for their toileting? At the moment there are only two adult lavatories available.”

The Grenfell Action Group believes that the seizure of our meeting rooms is a direct threat to democracy on Lancaster West. The rooms in question are also totally inappropriate for a children’s nursery, failing to meet the ‘Statutory Framework For Early Years’ standard, despite Council claims to the contrary. We therefore challenge the Council and the TMO to justify their treatment of these local children, and of our local community groups which have been unfairly penalized by the seizure of our much valued and much needed meeting rooms.

Statutory Framework For Early Years Care

HAPPY DAYS!

The Grenfell Action Group is extremely happy, proud and very relieved, to at last be able to welcome and congratulate Jeremy Corbyn as the first radical leftist leader of the Labour Party for many years. We hope for and expect significant change in the way this country is governed as a result of the pressure that will inevitably be brought to bear on the current right-wing government from a truly left-wing opposition, and we look forward with renewed hope to the day when the people of Britain will again elect a left-wing Labour government in the UK.

Mr Corbyn overwhelmingly won the endorsement of the Kensington Labour Party in his bid to become Labour leader. Unfortunately the malign influence of Blairism has for too long allowed our local Councillors to mould the labour Group at Hornton Street into a machine that has worked in seamless collusion with the neo-cons in the Tory majority rather than against them. Hopefully, Corbyn’s election will force out the old guard from the RBKC Labour Group who should look to find local canditates to replace them who truly understand and embrace the left wing Corbyn ideology.

No doubt the local members of RBKC Labour Group will claim that they have always been part of the more radical left and that they welcome Corbyn’s appointment.

Shame they have kept so quite about this over the past 20 years or so……

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 disrespected 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 obstructivism 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 resident management via TMO’s and EMB’s, 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 unique 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’. This is all smoke and mirrors. KCTMO is in reality a house of cards which is entirely consistent with the authoritarian instincts 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 currently 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 (Estate Manager) treating our community with both hideous contempt and brazen impunity.

 

FOCUS E15 – MARCH AGAINST EVICTIONS

We in the Grenfell Action Group are proud to be among the supporters of the FocusE15 Campaign. To celebrate their second anniversary the Focus E15 mothers have scheduled;

A March Against Evictions And For Decent Housing
on Saturday 19th September at 12.00pm.

Meet at Stratford Park, West Ham Lane E15 4PT

https://www.facebook.com/events/463931240434645/

Get Angry! Get Active! Get Involved!
Make it noisy. Bring your pots, pans and other instruments!

Across the country, the eviction rate has never been so high with 126 families being evicted every day. The housing crisis is escalating and none of the major political parties are offering convincing solutions.

Newham Council is led by Labour Mayor Robin Wales, an unashamed advocate of gentrification, supporter of sanctioning and kicking out the poor and most vulnerable.

Under his rule, 400 homes on the Carpenters Estate remain empty while homeless people, whom the council has a statutory duty to house, are forced to move out of London.

Focus E15 will be marching to highlight these issues.

All welcome. Bring friends, colleagues and family – let’s make our voices heard! Homes for people not investors! Repopulate the Carpenters Estate!

Nearest tube: Stratford Stn/Stratford Int.
Buses: 25, 86, 69, 104, 262, 238

The march will be supported by other groups and campaigns including:
Boleyn Dev 100, Revolutionary Communist Group, Newham Monitoring Project, Action East End, Streets Kitchen, Reclaim Hackney, Reclaim Tower Hamlets, Eviction Resistance Network, Left Unity, People Before Profit, Lewisham Housing Action Group, Grenfell Action Group, South Essex Heckler, Basildon and Southend Housing Action, National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, Clapton Ultras, (London) Radical Assembly, Disabled People Against Cuts, Movement for Justice, Freedom Without Fear Platform, The Trewps, United Voices of the World, Brick Lane Debates, Architects for Social Housing (ASH) Fuel Poverty Action, Camden Resists, Digs, The Fourth Wave: London Feminist Activists, Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth, National Bargee Traveller’s Association, Sweets Way Resists, Advisory Service for Squatters (ASS), Our West Hendon, Newham Peoples Alliance, Anarchist Federation, Friends of the Joiners Arms, 999 Call For NHS, Class War, Tower Hamlets Green Party, Radical Housing Network, Sisters Uncut, Feminist Fightback, Friends of Queens Market

 

 

Grenfell Tower Freedom Of Information Update

Regular readers will recall our recent post concerning a request we made, under the Freedom of Information Act, for copies of minutes of monthly meetings between KCTMO, their contractors Rydons, and the project architects Studio E, at which issues concerning the Grenfell Tower Improvement Works are regularly discussed.

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/kctmo-versus-freedom-of-information-act/

In that earlier post we reproduced the key section of the TMO’s refusal notice we had received in December 2014 from Company Secretary Fola Kafidya, which stated;

“We are not releasing this information because it is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as it is not information held on behalf of a public authority or by the TMO on behalf of a public authority. The Freedom of Information Act 2000 relates to information held on behalf of public authorities.”

This statement immediately raises the question of how Ms Kafidya would determine whether or not specific information held by the TMO is, or is not, held on behalf of the local authority. The logical implication of classifying this particular information as exempt on such grounds is that she could classify any or all information that the TMO holds as exempt on the same basis, which means by extension that the TMO could consider itself to be totally exempt from the provisions of the Act, despite the fact that, as the Local Authority’s managing agent for all Council owned housing, it can be convincingly argued that all information it holds is held on behalf of the Local Authority.

Strangely, the original refusal notice then went on to invoke one of the few exemptions allowed under the Act (section 43 subsection 2), claiming that;

” the TMO’s commercial communications with its contractors are sensitive and the disclosure of such commercial communication would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of the contractor.”

From this the following question immediately arises: if the TMO truly believed that the information in question was not held on behalf of the Local Authority, and was therefore exempt from the Freedom of Infomation Act, then why would they find it necessary to claim also that the information requested was exempt under a subsection of the Act, clearly implying that it was in fact subject to the requirements of the Act?

We wrote back challenging the transparently absurd and contradictory basis of their decision and pointing out that the TMO, as the housing managment agent of the Local Authority, cannot therefore be exempt from the Act, and requesting a revision (ie a reversal) of their decision on this basis.

In our earlier blog we had provided documentary evidence from the TMO website showing beyond doubt that the TMO has accepted since 2005 that it is subject to the Freedom of Information Act and promising our readers that we would provide an update as soon as we had received a revised final decision from Ms Kafidya.

To our great surprise we received that final decision, another refusal, within a couple of days. This hardly seems to have been an adequate timeframe within which to conduct a proper and comprehensive review of such a decision, but at least we weren’t forced to wait, as is usual, the full month allowed by law for the TMO to reconsider their refusal.

To our even greater surprise, Ms Kafidya had now abandoned the pretense that the information in question, and therefore the TMO, was exempt from the Act. The sole reason given for the revised and final refusal was as follows;

“ I note your challenge and your point of view on my response in December 2014…
Although Rydons is providing a service in the public interest, the TMO’s commercial communications with its contractors are sensitive and the disclosure of such commercial communication would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of the contractor. By virtue of section 43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, such information is exempt from disclosure. As a result, we are unable to disclose the information you have requested. In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 this email acts as a Refusal Notice.”

Readers should note that section 43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act is just about the only exemption that can be invoked in these circumstances and is, in our opinion, the most misused section of the Act, being routinely invoked as a cloak of secrecy by local authorities countrywide to discourage requests for information and to avoid any possible embarrassment that might arise from disclosure of the detail of even the most mundane local authority business. Indeed we have previously complained, in November 2013, about just such behaviour by a senior TMO manager, Peter Maddison. Although our complaint was fully upheld by the TMO’s Policy and Improvement Manager, Janet Seward, we gained very little from this as Maddison subsequently surrendered a document so heavily redacted that it was effectively useless;

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/tmos-maddison-on-the-naughty-step/

In any case such a complete abandonment of Ms Kafidya’s reason for refusal and the fundamental contradiction of that reason inherent in her new position is astonishing. How does a professional Company Secretary move, without explanation, from implying that the TMO might be completely exempt from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, to a refusal notice which relies instead solely on one of the few exemptions allowed under the Act? Furthermore, this contradiction between the reasons offered for witholding the requested documents strongly suggests that neither reason is legitimate and that the decision to withold was taken first, and the reasons offered for the decision were cynically, and opportunistically, conjured up afterwards based on the limited wiggle rooom allowed under the Act.

For the sake of clarity, please note that we have no interest in compromising the legitimate internal finances or commercial interests of the contractor Rydons. Our interest is solely in the disposal of the public money provided by the Council to the TMO to fund the works and whether this money was used competently, correctly and efficiently. We believe we have good reason to doubt whether all was as it should have been in the planning of the Grenfell Tower works, in the process by which the contract was awarded, and in the consequences for Grenfell Tower residents of how all of this was handled, and continues to be handled, by the Council and the TMO.

It is a matter of record that the budget for these works was set by the Council at £9.7 million in 2013 and the contract was offered initially to Leadbitters, the company who already held the contract for the Kensington Academy and Leisure Centre development. Leadbitters independent analysis at that time costed the works at more than £11 million. The two parties were subsequently unable to reach an accommodation over the £1.6 million difference in their costing analyses. At this point Leadbitters concluded they could not deliver the project within the Council’s budget and so they refused the contract. A competitive tendering process was then initiated and the contract was subsequently awarded to Rydons.

However, since the start of the actual works Grenfell Tower residents have complained repeatedly about poor design and workmanship and an apparent indifference on the part of the contractor’s and their workforce to the concerns of residents in general, and the more vulnerable residents in particular. This leads us to strongly suspect that the contract may have been inappropriately awarded to the cheapest bidder in the tendering process regardless of the quality of the works that would subsequently be delivered and the consequences for Grenfell Tower residents.

Based on the inconsistent and mutually contradictory refusal notices issued by the TMO Company Secretary we can’t help but wonder suspect that either she is incompetent, with a poor understanding of the Freedom of Information Act and its fundamental presumption in favour of disclosure of information, or a cynical opportunist prepared to misuse the few exemptions allowed under the Act to frustrate those requesting information, or to protect the RBKC and TMO from potential embarrassment or scandal, rather than to protect the contractor Rydons from any actual harm. Her attempt to claim that information held by the TMO is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, because it is not held on behalf of a public authority, is particularly disturbing because it is a complete travesty of the relationship of the TMO to the Local Authority, and to the social housing residents whose interests it is supposed to serve on behalf of the Local Authority. This suggests a dangerously totalitarian mindset in the higher echelons of TMO management which we would consider to be entirely unacceptable.

Finally, the recipient of a legitimate request for information under the Freedom of Information Act is required to conduct a ‘public interest test’. This means that they must decide whether the public interest is best served by disclosure of the information requested, or by witholding it. We believe that in this case the public interest can only be served by disclosure of this information via the requested documents, redacted only where absolutely necessary to protect the legitimate business concerns of Rydons. We also note that nowhere in Ms Kafidya’s refusal notices is there any mention of the public interest, or of the ‘public interest test’ required under the Act.

Having completed the rather complicated process required by the Act in our dealings with the TMO, and having been refused on both occasions by them, we are now free to appeal to the Information Commissioner’s Office to investigate the TMO’s responses and adjudicate this matter independently. We intend to do so without further delay. It is likely that we will have to wait several more months for the Commissioner’s decision but we are prepared to do so if that’s what it takes to achieve a just and reasonable outcome for the residents we represent.

PETITION RBKC TO OFFER HOMES TO REFUGEES

REFUGEES WELCOME IN THE ROYAL BOROUGH OF KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA

TO: ROYAL BOROUGH OF KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA

Offer to home 50 refugee families

Why is this important?

Aylan, the toddler who drowned fleeing Syria, was just three years old. His town was under attack by Isis. His five year old brother and his mum also died trying to reach safety.

Yet our prime minister said ‘we won’t take any more refugees’. He thinks that most of us don’t care. But 38 Degrees members do care. We don’t want Britain to be the kind of country that turns its back as people drown in their desperation to flee places like Syria.

So let’s stand up for Britain’s long tradition of helping refugees fleeing war. Let’s show the Prime Minister that we, the people of the UK, are proud to do our part and provide refuge to people in their hour of need.

Please sign our RBKC petition;

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/refugees-welcome-in-the-royal-borough-of-kensington-and-chelsea

or start your own petition for your town or city;

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/efforts/refugees-welcome