Consultation

Customer Services

Customer Service satisfaction is at an all time low, and hasn’t been surveyed since 2008. Those results are published by LH on their website and show an average 47% level of satisfaction! Whilst we welcome the Select Committee’s recommendation that LH improve their response times to correspondence, suggesting that enquiries or complaints receive a ‘meaningful response’ within 10 days, we anticipate this will still result in evasive answers and delays.

Resident Involvement

Emphasis is constantly put on Resident Involvement and last year we were charged extra for this service, when it is serving only a tiny minority. This year the amount has gone up by 66%. Lewisham Homes is proud of its achievements in Resident Involvement: ‘We are very robust and active in regards to Community Involvement and provide a range of both formal and informal opportunities for residents to get involved.’ (Seary to Ruddock Aug 09). They are constantly detailing the great many ways that residents might become involved and boast that they have 1469 residents on their informal resident involvement database. The point remains that any involvement on the part of a resident is voluntary, extremely time consuming and unpaid, and all these strategies for ‘getting involved’ are engaging less than 5% of the 24800 properties managed. The opinions of this voluntary 5% are taken to represent the other 95%, which they cannot.

Persistent claims that ‘they are listening’ is not borne out by the experience of participants in various forums. Endless mounds of paperwork are generated with 120 pages reports typed in 12pt although only a tiny percentage might be visually impaired, thus contributing to a huge waste of paper, or worse, no one ever prints them out and reads them. This is a Disability versus Sustainability issue that ought to be reviewed.

Furthermore, there is no guarantee that information disseminated in forums filters out to non-participants (see note 1 below). Crossfields also has far too many residents for its TRA to be expected to keep in touch with them all. The overburdening bureaucracy of this attempt at democracy means there are so many out of hours forums which must be attended by managers and officers that it is a wonder that they are ever at their desks. But at least they are paid, unlike residents, for whom keeping up with all these meetings could be a full time job.

Other forms of information such as newsletters and Home magazine are perceived by residents as glossy propaganda and cynical branding exercises, populated with self congratulatory claims for achievement for services that are in reality – and most residents’ experience – unimproved and deteriorating. The Scrutiny Committee’s report noted the comment that ‘Glossy magazines, branded tea towels and shopping bags etc. are not wanted – the money spent on this could be used to reduce service charge bills.’

Lewisham Homes has gone to great lengths to brand itself as distinct from the council, but the general perception is that nothing has changed, especially since residents are dealing with almost exactly the same staff as they were before. The culture hasn’t changed. For some leaseholders the only perceptible change is the LH logo which now appears everywhere. Entrances are covered in Lewisham Homes branded signs and yet noticeboards for our own use continue to remain inoperable (there are no keys to open them). A white box (branded with the LH logo) was erected on the wall of one block to dispense Homes magazine, but has never been filled. (See note 2 below)

Reported reality is not mere opinion

Continued poor services are glossed over when reported by residents, contrary to the illusion presented by Lewisham Homes of ‘consultation’ and ‘successful participation’. One form of unusual consultation developed from Leif Law’s report, where we were able to respond to the report by inserting our comments in it – probably not what was intended initially, but we were supplied with a Word document and had the skills to make additions to it. We asked that it be published online, and for obvious reasons we were denied this request: ‘The report contains a significant amount of data from a Leaseholder perspective in relation to charges/historical charging etc. Furthermore the report contains a considerable amount of opinion-based data. This type of information is not considered suitable to be placed on the Estate Inspections pages’.
We maintain that data from this 14 July 2009 inspection was based on real services, new or historical. It is not based on ‘opinion’ but on results of actual delivery of services. 

Area Panels and Special Interest Groups

The management are keen to emphasise the opportunities to ‘get involved’ at various forums, but the agendas at these meetings are set by them with very little room for manoeuvre for the few participating residents. One only has to look at the last available minutes of the Leaseholder’s Improvement Group (LIG) to observe that any leaseholders raising serious questions are asked to ‘see Ms Canham at the end of the meeting’, which results in their comments not being minuted and therefore not being made public. (See note 3 below)

We note that the Public Accounts Select Committee recommends that LH’s surveying of its leaseholders is improved and made more ‘in depth’, and we would like to see more canvassing outside of ‘focus’ and ‘special interest’ groups, or TRAs. Despite LH’s offers of training and help to improve the effectiveness of TRAs, there is little inducement for any leaseholder to take part in a TRA other than as a (somewhat ineffective) channel to monitor a persistent repair or pursue a complaint against LH.

In fact, not being in a TRA could actually prove more effective if the experience of leaseholders in Sydenham is anything to go by. Sydenham residents reported the same issues: common parts not cleaned sufficiently, bin areas neither cleaned nor sanitised (resulting in bad odours), no weeding done, grass taken over by weeds and moss, brickwork never repaired, trees overgrown, blocked guttering, asphalt cracking, concrete corroding, kerbstones uprooted, rusting railings, manholes overspilling and problems with lighting. This was their case for a rebate on a charged maintenance and repairs service that ‘was lacking, deficient and in some cases non existent’ (M Quereshi, Chair of TRA, Sydenham Hill Estate, April 09).

Complaints Procedure

Whilst Crossfields TRA have been working towards getting some improvement in services and arguing for greater accountability and transparency through Area Panel meetings, leaseholders in Sydenham followed the Complaints Procedure to the third stage of External Adjudicator and had their 2008/09 bills examined by the council’s Head of Resources, Janet Senior, which resulted in an over 50% reduction in their charges. Ironically, Janet Senior is the same person who writes the covering letters to the bills stating ‘it is my opinion that, overall, the accounts represent a reasonable summary of the costs incurred.’

It is also ironic that after Sydenham leaseholders successfully challenged Lewisham Homes for a refund of their charges via the Complaints Procedure, they were encouraged to form a TRA, the logistics of which have proved more tiresome and time consuming than acting independently. Their estate is smaller, whilst there are 365 flats on Crossfields: its TRA manages to attract hardly more than 10 people when it meets and sometimes cannot make a quorum for AGMs. With words like ‘quorum’ being bandied about it’s no wonder. It also cannot be ignored that such a group will consist of personalities who may not get on with each other.

Meanwhile, two Crossfields leaseholders complained about their excessive 08/09 Communal Lighting Charge independently of the TRA. Admittedly they were advised by the TRA to copy in Cllr Padmore, without which they would not get an answer, but nevertheless they acted without the TRA.

The Scrutiny Committee recommended that a strategy be developed to raise awareness of the complaints procedure and that data from the complaints procedure be used to monitor and improve services. We appreciate their comment that the cost of improving their surveying would be outweighed by the benefits of picking up the worst performance.

Presently, most of Lewisham Homes’ normal performance is a ‘worst performance’, as witnessed by its phenomenally low targets in almost every field and its failure to monitor most of it. Children are growing up in a filthy and neglected environment.

NOTES:

1. False claims for consultation

We originally complained that the new flat rate management charge and new charges were introduced without warning or apology. We were told ‘All Area Panels were consulted on this change in October 08, the recommended change was again reported to all Area Panels in December 08. Therefore consultation was carried out before the change was implemented.’ (Seary to Ruddock Aug 09). This insistence that there is ‘consultation’ through Area Panel meetings and Special Interest Groups does not address the problem that, for whatever reason,  the majority of leaseholders do not take part.

We were also told ‘The newsletter sent to all leaseholders in June 08 gave the dates and topics for the coming year’s Leasehold Special Interest Group (LSIG) meetings and the focus groups on leasehold issues. The newsletter invited leaseholders to attend these meetings.’ (Seary to Ruddock Aug 09). However, in the May 08 newsletter (note, not June) the subject or topic of changing to a flat rate management charge is not mentioned once. The subject or topic of introducing new charges, eg Resident Involvement, ASB and Customer Services was not mentioned at all. Had they been, there might have been a slightly more concerned response from leaseholders. Therefore consultation with the vast majority of leaseholders cannot be said to have taken place.

2. Branding and signage
Over the summer, signage of flat numbers was put up in every stairwell. We had to point out it was wrong and misleading and not required. It was eventually redone and some are still wrong (and still not required). Unnecessary branding and signage continues in the recent erection of Caution: Slippery Surface signs in every stairwell on each floor in some blocks, when one at the entrance would have sufficed. In Lief Law’s Report it was advised by Estate Services that fridge magnets with the Freefone Repairs number for tenants be issued to all properties when it was pointed out to them that despite the abundance of signs at the foot of the stairs the Freefone number did not appear there, but it was another three months before the magnets were distributed – just before Mr Law returned to check on progress with repairs.

3. Extract from the Leasehold Improvement Group January 2010 Info Pack
"A discussion followed, some residents felt that issues on the quality of service were not being addressed. AB (Adam Barrett) said that in the time since repairs had come under Lewisham Homes (under a year ago) there had been satisfaction surveys carried out. These surveys indicated an increased level of satisfaction. There will be ongoing improvements to the service. 
* Some residents from Johnstone House wished to raise complaints about the general condition of their block. They had problems with general maintenance and entryphone installation. SC (Sandra Canham) said that she would discuss these issues with them after the meeting. 
* Some residents from Sydenham Hill also wished to discuss complaints that had been going on when they were managed by Dunlop Haywards. Some of the problems were still occurring. Problems with caretaking, lighting and maintenance issues. SC said that she would discuss these issues with them at the end of the meeting.