A FLYING MALLET

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TRICK OR TREAT – THE GRENFELL TOWER PROJECT

It is a widely held view among residents of Lancaster West Estate that Councillor Blakeman and her fellow local councillors abandoned and betrayed this community by sacrificing their souls on the shiny altar of KALC. That, however is not the end of the story. Blakeman and her colleagues are well aware that the Grenfell Tower Project, which they hoped would appease some of the worst affected residents, has been repeatedly delayed while Council planners pick over the carcass of the scheme in a desperate attempt to balance the books and save money.

We know this from TMO minutes we have seen and a recent report to the Housing and Property Scrutiny Committee which has shed significant new light on the reasons for the delays and uncertainties that have caused such anxiety and frustration to residents.

Initially Cabinet approved £6 million funding for a comprehensive refurbishment of Grenfell Tower. Responsibility for the project was then dumped on the TMO, who soon realised that the £6 million budget was way short of what was required, and that they would be unable to find the additional millions needed. There is evidence in the TMO Board minute from September 2012 that they are already facing significant funding challenges that severely restrict their ability to maintain the housing stock and deliver new capital projects:

“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. Lack of investment could create problems in meeting decent homes’ targets, and consideration was being given to how to get more investment into the stock. Based on the figures in the Rand report, we need to consider how to move forward as the currently available funds would not be sufficient. RBKC and the Board had higher aspirations for investment than the minimum standard, and also for regeneration of some of the estates. Therefore, how to generate investment for the future was a fundamental issue”.

The implicatons of the above passage should not be underestimated, and there is no doubt that the TMO is in the middle of a serious funding crisis.  Reading between the lines of the report to this month’s RBKC Housing and Property Scrutiny Committee we were therefore unsurprised to see that the Grenfell Tower Project has been bedevilled by protracted squabbling among the various parties, with the TMO pressuring the Council to increase the budget, the main contractor (Leadbitter) insisting that they can’t deliver for less than £11.3 million, the Planning Department blocking the whole project, insisting on various last minute changes, and Leadbitter’s clearly out of favour and at risk of losing out completely in a new tendering process. The scrutiny report projects a start date in March 2014 with completion by March 2015. There can, however, be no certainty about these dates as they depend on the granting of planning permission at some future date, supposedly later this summer. There is no certainty either that the squabbling parties can reach agreement in the meantime, given the £1.6 million chasm between the proposed budget and Leadbitter’s best estimate.

Notwithstanding this evidence of conflict and confusion, the Notting Barns Labour Group recently saw fit to publish a Spring Newsletter in which they painted a rosy picture of the future of Lancaster West.

They claimed, for instance, that £63 million has already been invested in Lancaster West.  Of course, anyone familiar with the history of KALC will immediately realise that the £63 million was all KALC funding, NOT ONE PENNY of which was allocated for improvements to the estate.

The newsletter  went on to describe;

“…a major borough-wide refurbishment project for estates which will include the rest of the Lancaster West Estate over the next two to five years….. “

Based on the contrary evidence above we would suggest that TMO capital funding falls a long way short of what would be required for any such programme. We also know that the additional £3.7 million required to bring the Grenfell Tower Project up to the proposed £9.7 million will be spread over the next three years, and that the TMO had to go back to Cabinet for approval of even this additional spend.  So where does Councillor Blakeman think the money will come from for a major borough–wide refurbishment programme?

There is no doubt that the new heating system featured in the Grenfell Tower Project is urgently needed, but the rest of Lancaster West, which is not included in this programme, also needs urgent replacement of the remainder of the same obsolete and hugely wasteful district heating system. This is likely to cost at least another £10 million, and probably significantly more.  Where exactly is that kind of money going to come from, and how long will the local community have to wait for it?  In the light of these awkward questions and uncertainties we would suggest that Labour’s spin about major borough-wide refurbishment is wishful thinking at best, and cynical propaganda at worst.

It is noteworthy that when the Notting Barns Councillors commented in August 2012 on the KALC planning application they objected that;

“The amount of public open space that will be lost from the Lancaster West Estate includes: Lancaster Green, three five-a-side artificially turfed football pitches, a large car park, half of Station Walk, all of the green space and shrubberies adjacent to Station Walk, the garden in front of the existing Leisure Centre, the outdoor children’s playground and the secluded green beside the playground….

We have the strongest objection to the loss of informal outdoor play space. ”

In response to these comments and objections the Council planners made no concessions, and yet the same Labour councillors are now singing from the Tory hymn sheet and bragging about;

“a new and improved outdoor playground for the Grenfell Under Fives (and) a bigger and more welcoming park”

Such a shameless and cynical volte-face reveals Labour’s utter hypocricy on Lancaster West issues.  Ultimately, the promises in their newsletter are no more than shabby Tory propaganda that falsely and cynically paints a bright future for us when they know that nothing of the sort is either possible or intended. What is even more sickening is that, not only do they now celebrate what they know to be a deeply flawed development (ie KALC), but they also seek to take credit for it. Let’s not forget that this was entirely the work of the Tory planning juggernaut, mindful only of its own ambitions, and utterly oblivious of the needs of the community that stood in its way. If Labour wish to claim credit for this, they’re welcome to it, but let’s be very clear that all they did was shamelessly collude with the Tory right at Hornton Street.

Ultimately we are forced to conclude that what is actually in store for our estate is likely to be  the scorched earth ‘regeneration’ we have long expected, and which we have already witnessed at Wornington Green – with residents ‘socially cleansed’ to Manchester, Peterborough, or wherever. The formula for such ‘regeneration’ is invariably large-scale demolition followed by rebuild, typically at twice the previous population density. The point of such ‘regeneration’ is not to improve the living conditions of the existing community, but to create lots of additional housing for private sale.  Sitting tenants and leasholders are an obstacle to this process and are therefore expendable.

By the way, when push comes to shove don’t expect any help from Labour to resist this process. They have neither the power nor the inclination to help. There was a time when Labour’s ideology was fundamentally different from that of the Tories. That is no longer the case, but they continue to shamelessly trade on and profit from that traditional difference, and the trust still naively placed in them by working class communities.

Breaking News:

Representatives of the local community met with the Cabinet Member for Housing, and senior officers from the Council and TMO, last Friday 19th July.

When pressed on the issue of the urgent need to replace the entire district heating system at Lancaster West they confirmed that there are no plans to deliver these works and it is highly unlikely that the necessary funding can be allocated in the foreseeable future.

That news will go down like a lead balloon in this community

WHO KILLED BAMBI? – THE EMB CRISIS

Under intense pressure from as yet unknown forces at RBKC we have decided to remove the content of the ‘Who Killed Bambi?’ post while we consider how best to respond to a second solicitor’s letter we received from Senior Solicitor Vimal Sarna at RBKC Legal Services on 3rd August.

Some council officers are clearly very uncomfortable with the recent revelations we have been making about the current state of Lancaster West EMB and the Council’s role in undermining and disempowering it, and its’ parent body the LWMA.  Clearly there are details of the history and relationship between RBKC, the TMO and the EMB which they would rather not have known or discussed publicly, and are prepared to go to considerable lengths to suppress our freedom of speech on these issues.

You can read Ms Sarna’s letter here:     Sarna 2 Aug

Below is a copy of our initial response to this latest missive (missile?) :

Tuesday, August 06, 2013
Re: your letter of 2nd August

Dear Ms Sarna

Once again you have issued an ultimatum (4pm Tuesday) which demands an almost instantaneous response fom me. This is totally unreasonable. I would remind you that you took the best part of a week to reply to my letter of 29th July. I will respond to your five page letter of 2nd August as soon as I am ready to, and not before.

Furthermore, I don’t accept your right to issue any ultimatum to me. I have already told you that I don’t accept that I have defamed any of the persons named, and I have strong documentary evidence to support the claims I made. I offered to share that evidence with you, but you have chosen to ignore that offer. This strongly suggests to me that the real point of this exercise, from the Council’s perspective, is to bully and intimidate the Grenfell Action Group rather than to confront any notional defamation of which you have accused me.

You have demanded that I present my evidence to ‘the appropriate authorities’, but I don’t know who the appropriate authorities would be, under these circumstances, and it is proving far from easy to find out. I don’t believe this is a matter for the Metropolitan Police. I have tried on a number of occasions to persuade RBKC to act on my concerns, but was fobbed off every time. More recently I approached the Audit Commission and the Homes and Communities Agency, but they were uninterested and/or unable to act. I am now seeking legal advice.

In my letter of 29th July I asked if you would explain why RBKC Legal Services consider it appropriate to represent the interests of these individuals, who are not, as far as I am aware, Council employees, at the expense of RBKC resident taxpayers. You chose to ignore that question in your reply of 2nd August and so I repeat it now:

For whom exactly are you acting?

Do you have authority to act on behalf of non RBKC employees?

Finally, I also wish to know what you propose to do if I refuse to accede to your demands.

Yours sincerely,

Francis O’Connor

ASBESTOS SCARE AT KALC

If anybody was wondering why there was a whole lot less noise than usual coming from the leisure centre site last week we found out why a few days ago.  Leadbitters revealed in a recent email to us that they had suspended operations in the “demolition zone” because they had discovered asbestos on site. Because of this all the heavy machinery on the leisure centre site was parked up for a whole week. We wrote to Leadbitters, and one or two others, trying to get more detailed information, but without much success.

Fortunately, Camilla Horrox at the K&C Chronicle decided to cover this story, and she got a statement of sorts from the Council.  You can read her piece here.

The Council statement said only that:

“Asbestos was found in the old depot attached to the leisure centre. It has now been tested and safely removed by specialist contractors.”

As we all know, the depot is the last bit of structure still standing on the leisure centre site. It occupies just a small corner of the site, the rest of which (probably four fifths of the site) has been completely and utterly trashed and totally flattened. There is also a great mountain of pulverised rubble remaining, just behind the depot, from which dust is constantly blown around the neighbourhood.

What we still don’t understand is this:

If the asbestos contamination was confined to the interior of the depot, and posed no risk to the public, or to workers in the surrounding area, then why was it deemed necessary to stop all work on the whole site for a full week, at considerable expense?

Local residents are entitled to full and detailed information about this incident, not just vague and evasive comments from Leadbitters, and one-liners from the Council. We don’t trust either of these to tell the truth, and we are pretty sure that no-one else in this community trusts them either.

PS – Ms Horrox also wrote a piece last week on the travails of the long suffering residents of Grenfell Tower. Check it out here.

SOMETHING ROTTEN – THE EMB CRISIS

Lancaster west EMB is in crisis. Most residents of the estate know nothing about this because they‘ve been told nothing – in fact they’ve had little feedback about the activities of the EMB for several years, and it is likely that some residents have no idea what the EMB is, or what it does, for this very reason. Many of you will, however, have noticed that the EMB, which supposedly manages this estate on behalf of its’ residents, has been conspicuously silent on most of the major issues that we have faced in recent years. They’ve had nothing to say about the KALC project, nothing to say about the interminable delays to the Grenfell Tower refurbishment, nothing to say about the recent electrical problems affecting Grenfell tower, or the water supply problems etc etc etc.

The most obvious sign of the current EMB crisis is the simple fact, made public by Councillor Blakeman, that the EMB has not met since last December. This is because it has been inquorate since that time (ie has lacked the minimum number of elected members required to do business). However, this simple fact is just the tip of an iceberg that hides a multitude of other sins – the EMB is secretive to the point of paranoia, but also arrogant, incompetent and corrupt.

Corruption – The Baseline Studios Scandal

In March 2011 one of our members uncovered evidence of improper use of two office units at Baseline Studios by senior board members of the EMB.  Both the Chair and the Vice-chair had been allowed to use these units for the conduct of EMB business, and both were misusing them to run private commercial business ventures instead. These were serious breaches of the trust placed in them as EMB officers, and acts of criminal fraud perpetrated against the residents of this estate.  Despite repeated efforts by our whistleblower these matters were covered-up and were not brought to the attention of the EMB board. It took more than a year, in the face of continuous obstruction by board members, TMO managers, and RBKC officers to force an investigation. By the time of the investigation, by a team from RBKC Property Services, the Vice-chair of the EMB had already been booted off the board (for some unrelated misbehaviour), and so the investigation, when it finally happened, was confined to the activities of the Chair of the EMB, Bob Bryans. The outcome of the investigation was eventually brought before the board in October 2012, and despite strong denials of any wrongdoing by Bryans, the evidence against him was fully vindicated, and it was proved that he had for several years allowed his step-daughter, a fashion photographer, to use the office studio entrusted to him as her professional photographic studio, and as the registered address of a limited company of which she was a director, and which produced an exclusive fashion magazine of which she was the executive editor.  Despite this damning verdict the Board, perversely, voted to take no punitive action against Bryans.

Secretiveness, Arrogance and Incompetence

Unhappy with the decision of the Board our whistleblower demanded that the matter be brought to the attention of the Management Association at the AGM which was many months overdue at that time. The board refused. They had cynically decided to withold from the Management Association all information that would in any way embarrass the EMB, including and especially evidence of serious wrongdoing by the most senior officers of the Board. In our view this course of action was unjustifiable and unprincipled and we strongly believe that those who voted to withold this information were totally lacking in integrity, and arrogantly betrayed the residents who had elected them, and to whom they were supposed to be accountable for their actions as board members.

Digging deeper into the recent affairs of the Board our whistleblower discovered other disturbing irregularities. There were signs, for instance, that EMB policy was being decided, not in properly convened and minuted board meetings as it should be, but by an exclusive clique of board members who met secretly in Bryans office at Baseline Studios.

A study of the minutes of board meetings also revealed evidence of routine breaches of the EMB constitution, particularly quorum rules – for example many of the board meetings held in 2012 were inquorate. He also noted that embarrassing details, such as the resignation of several board members during 2012, and the sacking of the former Vice-chair, were not minuted at all – yet another breach of protocol. Given that the EMB had long since stopped producing newsletters, and that board minutes were the only public record of what they were doing, the net effect of this was to censor and conceal crucial information about the state of the board, and the morale of board members, and to completely isolate the EMB from the community it was supposed to represent.

Things came to a head over the issue of the botched board election and AGM in December 2012. The AGM was attended by only six EMB members, but was declared quorate, and therefore perfectly legal, by the Director of Housing at RBKC. Our whistleblower had made a series of complaints to RBKC on this and related issues. The Council’s response was at best ambivalent and at worst hostile, and was clearly biased in favour of the Bryans regime. It became abundantly clear that Bryans and his mafia enjoyed the protection and collusion of powerful forces at the TMO and RBKC who were determined to prop up the corrupt and incompetent EMB regime – presumably for their own ulterior motives. History has now shown the RBKC dismissal of our complaints to have been completely wrongheaded and unjustified, as the EMB has been inquorate since December 2012, and is incapable of functioning at all.

So Where Does This Leave Us Now?

The EMB cannot be a dictatorship. In order for it to function effectively, and to survive through time as a healthy and representative organisation, it is essential that an open, imaginative and effective system of outreach to, and engagement with, the resident community is fostered and nurtured at all times. Without this healthy and open interaction with the community the EMB inevitably becomes isolated and self-serving, the election process increasingly fails to attract the intelligent and competent new intake it needs year on year, and Lancaster West EMB soon degenerates, just as it has done, to become the Lancaster West Zombie.

The current crisis is extremely serious. If the EMB fails the alternative will be a hostile takeover by the TMO, which few here would wish or welcome. Under these circumstances the bona fides of the TMO and RBKC cannot be trusted, and there is good reason to believe that they are conspiring together, as they always have, to undermine and ultimately destroy the EMB in order to facilitate a TMO takeover. Lancaster West residents cannot afford to tolerate or accept this state of affairs and the total disempowerment that it would entail.

We must come together now, as a community, and organise to resist our enemies both within the EMB and outside of it at the TMO and the Council. In doing so we have every right (ironically) to expect the full support of the Council in reforming and resuscitating the EMB and we should demand that support in no uncertain terms.

There is no time for procrastination or delay about this. On 25th June the EMB once again sent out election nomination forms to Association Members, but the forms were sent without any additional information that would explain the function of the board, or the crisis it now faces, and the desperate need for quality candidates to step up and volunteer to serve. In other words this is just another repeat of the same negligent and incompetent botching of election and AGM arrangements that caused the current crisis and that the current EMB regime is clearly incapable of changing or improving.

It’s past time we kicked these useless bums out, but in doing so we must also lobby hard for RBKC to provide this community with a programme of information, training and real support which is needed to reform, replenish, and resusitate the EMB as a competent and truly representative body, fit to manage this estate on behalf of its’ residents, and in partnership with the TMO and RBKC.

Coming soon part two of this expose – called “WHO KILLED BAMBI” – in which we will attempt to explain the convoluted history of the EMB, and the machiavellian intrigue at the root of its’ disempowerment and demoralisation

CONSIDERATE CONSTRUCTORS

Some of us have wasted a fair bit of time and energy in recent months complaining to KALC contractors Leadbitters about such nuisances as the constant shaking and vibration of our homes caused by their heavy machinery, the noise, the dirt, and the stink of diesel exhaust fumes hanging in the air etc etc etc.

Most of these complaints have been dismissed as illegitimate, frequently by denying the obvious, and lying barefaced to the complainants.

Here’s a thought. Leadbitters are registered members of the so-called Considerate Constructors Scheme, although this membership is something of a running joke at Lancaster West these days.

Perhaps if residents were to direct all their complaints to the CCS in future, we might be able to breach the wall of denial behind which Leadbitters have been doing their dirty work. We might even be able to get them booted off the scheme. (Pigs might fly)

The CCS has a freephone number. You can call them on  0800 783 1423 and lodge your complaint. Why not give it a try?