RIP-EMB

The above letter and the publication of the “Breach Notice” contained within was sent by the Director of Housing for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and signals the final death knell for the Lancaster West Estate Management Board (EMB).
It is a well known fact that the RBKC Council and the TMO have wanted to dissolve the EMB for many years now and, in doing so, gain total control of Lancaster West and how services are delivered to it’s residents. The pathetic level of representation experienced by Lancaster West residents is now set to worsen even further. With the demise of the EMB and with the Lancaster West Residents Association in a state of disrepair the residents of our community find themselves voiceless. A consequence of this “voicelessness” is that the RBKC and the TMO will do exactly as they see fit to our Estate and any hope of proper investment in our homes will become even harder to achieve.
The Grenfell Action Group believe that the RBKC Council acted in an immoral way and took a course of action that they knew would lead to the EMB Board failing. We had previously asked for the RBKC to help support the EMB through their recent difficulties but instead of offering assistance the RBKC chose to use this opportunity to kill off the EMB.
It may be worth reflecting that prior to being served with the final Breach Notice the state of the EMB was not all of their own making and the reasons behind the failure of the current Board could be closely linked to the way Board members have been treated by both the Council and TMO who have, historically, made it their business to disempower the EMB.
We believe that the the Council knew full well that the existing Board Members of the EMB would not have had the ability to follow the Lancaster West Management Agreement’s constitution and could not get it together to hold a successful postal election ballot.
With this in mind, we wrote to Laura Johnson in October 2013 asking for assistance for the EMB to help guide them through their current difficulties and help them complete the election ballot and find ways of strengthening their representation in the future.
Instead of providing this assistance the Council chose to set the EMB up to fail by setting them a task that the RBKC Council knew full well would never be achieved.
Residents will want to know how the interests of the Lancaster West community will be represented in the future and how we can have a meaningful influence on the long-term security of our homes?
In the meantime, the RBKC Council and the TMO’s plan to disempower our community, prior to the “social cleansing” of Lancaster West Estate, continues unabated.

Pants on Fire No.3 – Joint Award. Cllr Feilding Mellen and the RBKC Decant Policy

It would have taken a shrewd eye to spot an article by the Deputy Leader of RBKC Council, Cllr Rock Feilding-Mellen (Cabinet Member for Housing, Property and Regeneration) hidden away on the back page of the 2013 Autumn Edition of the Royal Borough (aka the Royal Borer) under the headline “A Home for Everyone?“

The Grenfell Action Group believe that the question mark at the end of this headline is the most pertinent part of this article that makes very grim reading indeed for anyone with a social conscience or a wish to preserve the social/ethnic diversity of RBKC.

Of course, providing a home for anyone in genuine need in RBKC is very low down Cllr Feilding-Mellen’s priorities. Perhaps it’s his upper class breeding or maybe it is just sheer arrogance that appears to prevent him from being able to empathise with those not as fortunate in life as himself.

Cllr Feilding Mellen is reported to have described North Kensington as a “dung heap” and parades around giving the impression that he actually despises the very same poor and excluded communities whose interests he has a duty to represent.

In fact, his Royal Borer newspaper article seems to say a lot about how a Far- Right, neo-conservative section of the Ruling Party in Hornton Street view the residents of North Kensington and does not bode well for anyone who happens to live in this Rotten Borough and who also happen to be in receipt of Housing Benefit or any other forms of social security entitlement.

It appears that part of the Deputy Leader’s housing policy is an explicit aim to remove families on benefits from their homes in RBKC and to achieve this the Council is actively “trying to wean people off the expectation of being put up in prime central London locations”. We assume this is so that the Council can socially cleanse North Kensington and move more middle class people to the area.

We wonder what Cllr Feilding Mellen would say to someone who may have lived in their community in RBKC for many generations but has had to give up their job to take on the role as a full time carer and now finds themselves in receipt of benefits and face being rehoused outside of RBKC.

Or, an individual who is prevented from working by ill health and has to rely on benefits and now faces being moved out of their home by the RBKC Councils determination to attack those with benefit entitlement by “wean(ing) people off their expectation to be put up in prime central London locations”.  Cllr Feilding Mellen has been in power for two seconds and he is attempting to socially cleanse the Borough of households who may have roots going back to North Kensington for many centuries, Shame on him!

This is a fascist and hateful policy designed to rob RBKC of it’s diversity and heartbeat.

As many of our readers are aware the Grenfell Action Group are extremely concerned about the long term future of Lancaster West and other social housing Estates in the Rotten Borough after years of willful financial neglect at the hands of Kensington and Chelsea Council and their landlords the dreaded Tenant Management Organisation (TMO).

The Council seem very happy to spend £30 million on paving stones in Exhibition Road (rumoured to have been hewn from the ground by Chinese political prisoners) and £1.5 million a year propping up the elitist Holland Park Opera but are far less willing to sort out the chronic housing problems that see many residents in less affluent areas of the Borough living in near slum-like conditions.

We want decent housing and the promise of a secure future and not subsidised Opera for the nobs.

Take a walk around many of the Estate’s in North Kensington (particularly in any of Labour Wards’) and you will see plenty of evidence that the Council are pursuing a policy that celebrates the “managed decline” of social housing and signifies the final death knell for many of RBKC’s remaining working class communities. The RBKC Latimer Masterplan (obtained by the Grenfell Action Group under Freedom of Information legislation) supports the above assertion and goes further by advocating for a “scorched earth” approach to social housing in North Kensington.

So, it is not hard to believe that RBKC Council’s long term plan is to “socially cleanse” North Kensington under the banner of regeneration with a “Decant Policy” that is so brutal in nature that it will not even guarantee that families can return to their existing communities. The Decant Policy simply returns existing tenants back to the “social housing register” where they will be forced to accept a single “Direct Offer” after a period of one year.

This offer of housing could be anywhere in the UK and, if refused, will result in the tenant making themselves intentionally homeless and removed from the housing register.

This is a cruel and fascist policy designed to rob RBKC of it’s diversity and heartbeat and will cause misery to the lives of those forced to move from their existing community’s.

Oh, and if your expecting any help from your local Labour Councillors on this one – forget it. They are all comfortably housed in their own private accommodation whose prices look cosily set to rise as our own tenancies are replaced by newly built properties that will become safe investments for overseas buyers and city apartments for the super rich.

RBKC is changing at the rate of knots and the neo-cons and their quislings in Hornton Street have no intention that the poor and the excluded will have any part to play in it’s future.

Please Sir……Can we have some collective representation?‏

DON’T MENTION THE “SLUM” WORD.

For some strange reason our local Labour Councillor, Judith Blakeman, gets very upset when anyone refers disparagingly to the current state of the housing stock on Lancaster West Estate and, in particular she does not like the Estate being described as a “slum”. 

We find it strange for Councillor Blakeman to have any views about the wellbeing of residents on Lancaster West or the state of our homes as the general consensus is that the Leader of RBKC Labour Party betrayed and abandoned our community’s interests a long time ago when she sacrificed her soul at the alter of KALC and we certainly don’t think that Cllr Blakeman has the  right to ban us from describing our housing as we see fit!

Still, we thought that she might enjoy our portrayal of life in a 21st Century slum with respect to an old comedy sketch of Monty Python:

Resident 1: Hah! A torn plastic bag. We dream of living in a torn plastic bag. It would have been a palace to us.

Resident 2: You are lucky, we are forced to live in a rolled up newspaper in a sceptic tank.

Resident 3: A rolled up newspaper in a sceptic tank would be luxury to us, We dream about living in a rolled up newspaper in a sceptic tank. We live on Lancaster West Estate where residents are forced to block off the rotting wood of their door frames at night with bits of cardboard to stop vermin entering our homes.Where there has been no significant investment in our housing infrastructure for nearly forty years and our windows and heating system are no longer fit for purpose.

Where fuel poverty and financial hardship are rife. Where the Council tell us they have no money to invest in our properties but then find £30 million to spend on paving stones for Exhibition Road and a £1 million yearly subsidy of the Opera in Holland Park.

Where if you are two seconds late with your rent the TMO are on to you like a rabid pit-bull chasing their “arrears” and making tenant’s lives a misery.

Where if you require a repair service from the TMO you can expect a long and stressful wait followed by endless grief.

Where our hot water and heating are constantly not working but our landlord, the TMO, keeps demanding extortionate service charges.

Where it is only ever possible to have about 3″ of hot bath water to bathe in. 

Where residents of Grenfell Tower were recently terrified by an 18 day long power surge that could have caused a fire disaster akin to Lakanal House and had the very real potential to have burnt us all to death..

Where the seriousness of this danger to residents was hushed up by a TMO report to the Scrutiny Committee that denies fire risk and claims smoke was caused by steam rising from a hot surface! 

Where residents are refused justice and have their legitimate claims for compensation for destroyed electrical equipment denied them by an uncaring Council and a heartless TMO.

Where Lancaster West Estate has become a cash cow for outside TMO contractors and a “carcass” for them to feed and get fat on.

Where residents legitimate complaints are marginalised and those brave enough to seek justice are subject to seeming harassment from RBKC Legal

Dept.and unwarranted smears from Councillors and Council Officers.

Where our green space and residential amenity have been brutally stolen from us by the local Council and we now have nowhere to get fresh air, nowhere for our children to play and no-one who is interested in addressing these issues.

Where our long standing “rights of way” from the Estate up towards Ladbroke Grove and Portabello Rd were taken from us by the Council without care or consideration and we now have one path covered in dog excrement as you enter into our Estate and one concrete path covered in dog excrement as you leave the Estate and that is all. 

 

THIS IS SLUM LIFE THAT COUNCILLOR BLAKEMAN FORBIDS US TO MENTION WHILE SHE LIVES COMFORTABLY AWAY FROM THIS BRUTAL NEGLECT AND THE “SOCIAL APARTHEID” EXPERIENCED BY RESIDENTS ON LANCASTER WEST ESTATE.

SHAME ON HER AND ALL THOSE AT THE COUNCIL/TMO WHO THINK THAT LANCASTER WEST ESTATE RESIDENTS SHOULD SIMPLY ACCEPT THE “MANAGED DECLINE” OF OUR HOMES WITHOUT THE RIGHT TO PROTEST. 

                                                               

                                                          INVEST IN LANCASTER WEST!.

 

 

TMO’s MADDISON ON THE NAUGHTY STEP

In our recent blog “Whatever happened to Grenfell Tower – Reprised” we drew attention to the seeming inability of senior TMO management to tell the truth to our community.
We are now able to produce more evidence of how Peter Maddison, the TMO’s Director of Assests and Regeneration, feels it is appropriate to treat residents with contempt and disdain. Unfortunately for Maddison he did not count on us making an official complaint about his cavalier and grossly disrespectful behaviour and we are happy to publish the damning result of investigations into our grievance by the TMO’s Policy and Improvement Manager, Janet Seward, below.

The saga began when the Grenfell Action Group wanted to find out more about the funding gap between what the TMO have in terms of revenue set against the cost of maintaining their existing properties. We had become aware through the TMO Board minutes from September 2012 that:

 “A recent survey of the condition of the stock, the Rand report, indicated investment was required in the region of £105 million by 2017. The current allocation was £7.5 million per year for the next four years for capital works, so there was a potential shortfall between the funding needed and the funding available of £67 million by 2017.”

We wrote to Mr Maddison requesting a copy of the aforementioned Rand Study so that we could look at it’s contents and be in a better position to make informed judgements about  the TMO, and their ability to protect the future of our homes and community in the years ahead.

He replied on the 17th September and took the very bizarre decision to state that he considered that “the stock condition survey contains commercially sensitive information and therefore is not in the public domain” and refused to provide us with a full copy of the Rand Study – this despite the fact that much of the information contained in the Rand Study was already available in the public domain and could be accessed openly via the TMO website.

We wrote back to Maddison on the same day asking him where we could appeal his decision to prevent access, in response to what we considered to be an entirely legitimate request. Maddison, as is his habit, failed to reply to this query in a timely manner,  and he also failed to respond to subsequent emails on 25th September and the 4th October.
After we had contacted the TMO’s Head of Governance, Maddison finally sent us a copy of the Rand Study but he had painstakingly removed every numerical reference within it, which  had the effect of rendering the document completely unintelligible and irrelevant. Please see the ‘redacted’ report attached: – Rand Report-Redacted

Maddison could not have stuck two fingers up at us any more effectively, and we believe he knew this well.

We consider this to be an insulting and petulant action from a senior TMO manager which left us with no other choice but to refer our concerns up the TMO management chain in the hope that Maddison might be ordered to become more resident friendly, or at least to conduct himself in a professional manner in future.

He would do well to read the letter we received as a result of our complaint and the damning conclusions it reached about his unprofessional behaviour and judgements:

Complaints against Mr Maddison – Stage 2 of the Complaint Procedure‏

Dear *********
As promised, I have, as a senior manager, undertaken an investigation of how your complaints have been handled…. My investigation focused on whether or not we complied with our service standards in dealing with your concerns.  I would add that the circumstances regarding your complaint are slightly unusual in that you are a resident of Lancaster West and that office would normally deal with your complaint.  However, as the TMO took on  your complaint, I consider that we should have dealt with it according to TMO procedures.

1.    Our response to your complaint
Your complaint is upheld.  I would advise you that complaints that have not been resolved to the complainant’s satisfaction are discussed (anonymously) at twice-yearly staff groups and steps are taken to ensure that a similar situation does not happen again.  In addition Joanne Burke, the Complaints Manager and I discuss issues as they occur and I will discuss your concerns with her when she returns from leave next week.

2.    We do not adhere to our service standards
Your complaint is upheld.  I would advise you that staff are regularly given both enquiry/complaint-handling information and Freedom of Information advice is available from the Company Secretary and the Head of Governance.

3.    Your request regarding the Rand Survey was not dealt with appropriately or within the required timescales
Your complaint is upheld.  I would expect the action taken in 1 & 2 above will ensure that this situation does not happen again.

4.    The version of the Rand Survey received was made meaningless by the redactions
The Company Secretary and Head of Govenance has written to you separately on this matter.

In conclusion, I would say that the way in which your enquiry was dealt with, falls below the standard expected at the TMO.  We will be taking the steps that I have outlined above to ensure that this does not happen again.  Please accept my sincere apologies and do contact me if you require any further information.

Janet Seward

KCTMO Policy & Improvement Manager

We have since written back to the Ms Seward to enquire what specific disciplinary action they intend to take against Mr Maddison to ensure that he improves his performance and learns that he needs to treat residents with respect.

In the meantime, we think that Maddison should spend a little time on the naughty step and try, in future, to behave with the professionalism that his position as a Senior Manager warrants.

THERE IS NO PLACE FOR CHILDISH PETULANCE OR COMPTEMPTUOUS ATTITUDES WHEN THE HOMES AND FUTURE WELL-BEING OF RESIDENTS IS AT STAKE.

LAST WORDS(?) ON THE UPCOMING EMB ELECTION

When the long awaited official list of candidates for the upcoming EMB election was finally published, and hopefully circulated to all eligible households on Lancaster West Estate, the names of at least two prominent Grenfell Action Group activists were conspicuously absent from it. These two had correctly submitted their self nomination forms indicating their wish to stand for election, and their absence from the list of candidates has yet to be explained, let alone remedied. Both complained in writing to the Director of Housing at RBKC.

Rather than tax our readers patience and/or energy by publishing the associated correspondence in full, we have decided instead to publish just the two most recent extracts below, which we believe fully articulate the situation as it now stands.

FROM THE DIRECTOR OF HOUSING:

“I recently wrote to residents on the estate advising them that we have now served a supervision notice on the EMB Board. The supervision notice provided the Board with an improvement plan and details of support the Council  and TMO can provide to them during the supervision period.

The Council has provided the Board with support, including a step by step process for completing and election. The Board need to evidence to the Council during the supervision period that they are capable of running their own affairs, particularly in relation to issues associated with  how their own constitution works. You will therefore need to direct any queries about how the election is being run to the Board themselves. They will have to advise you why some of the names were missed off the nominations. They will also have to  let you know how they intend to remedy this issue. We are not of the view that the EMB constitution prohibits postal voting, but again, this would be something you would have to take up with the Board if you have concerns about this.

The Council will be monitoring the Boards progress in meeting the requirements of the improvement plan. This will be done via progress reports that the Board will send us on a monthly basis, checks we will do on the election process, and specifically arranged monitoring meetings with the Board. We will be monitoring how they have managed the election process, and information that is provided by yourself and others will be taken into account when we do this.

Failure to meet the requirement of the improvement plan will result in the ending of the agreement the Council has with the EMB to manage the estate.”

RESPONSE FROM THE GRENFELL ACTION GROUP:

“Dear Ms Johnson,

Please can you inform me whom I should contact at the EMB with regards my concerns about the current elections and would you kindly be able to supply me with their email address?

It is a widely held opinion amongst those in the know on Lancaster West Estate that the EMB has not been functioning properly for a longish period of time now and that RBKC Council know this fact very well.

With this in mind, the current plan by RBKC Council that the remnants of the existing Board would have the ability to follow the LWMA constitution and hold a successful postal election ballot is entirely questionable and it could appear that the EMB are simply being “set up-to fail”.

As you are well aware the state of the EMB is not all of their own making and the reasons behind the failure of the current Board can be closely linked to the way Board members have been treated by both the Council and TMO who have, historically, made it their business to disempower the EMB.

Would it not be more appropriate for RBKC Council to assist the EMB with the current election process and judge the future of the LMWA and the EMB on the performance of a newly elected Board rather than condemn them for the actions of a few EMB members already acknowledged as being part of a non functioning organisation? Please can you address this point directly for me.

Thank you for your continued assistance with this matter and I shall look forward to hearing back from you in due course with the Council’s response.”

‘NUFF SAID?