Update

Programmed Estate Inspection by Quality Officer Leif Law, July 2009

This was initiated by Lewisham Homes after our June 2009 meeting with them. Promises at that meeting by senior officers present to 'look into' various issues remain unfulfilled. The Programmed Estate Inspection came on the back of our disatisfaction with a Regular Estate Inspection in May. It was left to us to pursue anomalies in service charge figures.

Mr Law’s report was a detailed and accurate record of our walkabout and noted that the attending residents (us) wanted all the issues raised resolved and would like a full review of the Caretaking & Repairs Services to be conducted. Many items were recorded as needing attention without further charge to leaseholders, and this indeed did feel like progress. However, most issues raised have remained unanswered, or answered inadequately, and the ongoing process appears to have been abandoned by LH. The report has recently been returned to Lewisham Homes with a request that the remaining unresolved items are attended to. One item (poorly laid paving) was also revisited recently by Mr Law to observe that repairs of repairs of repairs had been inadequately dealt with.

Joan Ruddock MP writes to the CEO Andrew Potter on our behalf, August 2009

This resulted in a reply from Lesley Seary (the council's Public Relations CEO) that contained an Appendix of answers furnished by Lewisham Homes. The reply illustrated the council’s continued abdication of responsibility in its reliance on the responses of Head of Leasehold Services Sandra Canham and Head of Resources Adam Barrett, who have stuck steadfastly to the same story they hurriedly concocted together after our first complaint last year. There has been nothing from Andrew Potter.

Scrutiny Committee Review into the Council's Obligations to Leaseholders

Due to a large number of complaints all over the borough, surveying took place during the summer and a report was delivered in January 2010. Details of this can be found on the main posting page.

No more meetings

At the June 2009 meeting we ‘declined’ an invitation to go to the LH offices to ‘examine information on repairs and have a demonstration on how communal repairs are calculated’. Why should we take time off from our work to do their job for them? All that was required was for the Leasehold Team to re-examine all the figures themselves, starting with the mistakes we had alerted them to. There have been no further meetings, although we requested one in October 2009. In the Appendix of Ms Seary’s reply to Ms Ruddock it was stated that Sandra Canham would contact us ‘to arrange a suitable time should (we) wish to discuss how these charges have been calculated’. This invitation never arrived, although referred to in Leif Law’s report as having been ‘repeated in various correspondence’ which it was not.

In October 2009 we wrote to Ms Canham requesting another leaseholders meeting with them, and although Sandra Canham replied that she would arrange a date, this never materialised. Recently they wrote to say they would be coming to discuss leasehold charges at our next TRA meeting ‘as requested by us’ at our last meeting, but no such request was made at the last meeting. Our Chair felt the inclusion on the agenda of what would probably be a lengthy discussion on service charges at a meeting shared with tenants would be inappropriate. Indeed much of the meeting turned out to be taken up with responses to a resident who reported that she had recently been mugged on the estate.

Accounting Errors

Our queries on selective sets of figures were submitted over the course of the summer by email and were attended to in due course, which has resulted in the promise of a refund to one block for both an obscene overcharge in one case and the removal of another charge for work that wasn’t done. We did not pick up on everything, since we did not have the time to identify and contest them all. Therefore those bills remain unexamined in full, and anomalies in communal charges such as caretaking remained unaddressed. (See in addition Note 1 below)

Phantom Major Works

During this period we also received letters indicating that Major Works to install Security Doors were due to commence. Like all Major Works notices, this caused great panic and distress, especially since most of us do not want security doors. The letters invited us to view plans at the Holbeach office. Three of us took time off work to take up this invitation but when we got there no one, both frontline and senior staff, knew of any such plans! The notice was later retracted as an ‘error’.

Resident-Led Programme

Crossfields TRA put in for the Resident-Led Programme and won a bid that they were led to understand was a grant. When work finally began to build a ball court, some residents were led by Customer Services to believe that leaseholders would have to pay for it. When this was queried by the TRA, it was eventually confirmed we would not. In some cases, on other estates where a bid has been won, leaseholders have been required to contribute to the works, retrospectively to their bid.

Antisocial Behaviour

Leaseholders strongly resented this charge being made in addition to Council Tax, which pays for most of the services used to combat antisocial behaviour. The only additional benefit might be that antisocial tenants are evicted more quickly, but this has not been the case. An ASB complaint against a tenant that began in March 2009 has still not been resolved. Those who have made statements and asked to go to court as witnesses have not been kept up to date with the progress of this case. The tenant continues to be drunk and noisy and sometimes threatening, his visitors have urinated and defecated on the stairs, he has been arrested for attacking another tenant with a hatchet, has broken his own windows, uses and sells drugs in his flat, and yet he is still there some 9 months after the ASB service took the case, despite breaching the terms of his tenancy many times – and causing his neighbours to make full use of services paid for through Council Tax.

One resident lost a much loved pet as a result of another tenant’s dangerous dog. Most of the estate’s bicycle sheds were broken into on one night by a tenant. A drug dealer from outside the estate, openly dealing on the ball court, was driven away by residents, caretakers and – up until then – rarely seen patrolling wardens. A resident who witnessed and photographed this was asked to supply the photograph to the Antisocial Behaviour Team 'in case the perpetrator was a tenant' and was not once contacted by the police. Any fool knows that any drug dealing on the estate goes on behind closed doors.

Other residents have been almost driven mad by the noise from their immediate neighbour. Young women have been mugged by youths from outside the estate (thankfully only one or twice). None of these was preventable or saved by the Antisocial Behaviour team. In the more serious cases, neither the TRA or residents in general were informed or updated by the police or the ASB Team.

The Scrutiny Committee has recommended the extra charge to Leaseholders for the Lewisham Homes ASB team be removed. The charge has been reduced in this year's (2010-2011) bills by £8 (26%), but £8 has been added to Resident Involvement which has increased by 66%.

Actual Statements, January 2010

We received our Actual Statements that detail the charges for 08/09 that will be payable in April 2010 in January 2010. These were supplied four months late. We thought this might be because they were fully auditing these accounts, and when we queried their absence in January, Sandra Canham wrote ‘we have been investigating the communal lighting charges that were incurred for the various blocks on Crossfield, this delayed us sending them out. The costs do vary between the blocks but we have re-checked these figures to ensure that leaseholders are not overcharged. I apologise for this delay.’

Residents in two blocks found that their communal lighting charges had risen by 889% and have since been refunded. Surely the Leasehold Team should have noticed the irregularity when they were 'investigating' the communal lighting charges? See Latest News here. 

Repair Breakdowns, January 2010

We are currently examining these for work that appears not to have been done or done badly. See Latest News here.

Estimated Service Charges (the main bill), April 2010

The anomalies continue. Mistakes are being made, figures are plucked from thin air, and it is up to the leaseholder to spot them – with very little information to go on.



NOTES:

1. More Accounting Errors

The querying of two particular items resulted in the promise of a refund to an excessively overcharged block (Bin Chamber Doors) and to the same block a refund on charges for work that was never done (Replacement/repair of Roof Access Door), but only after the evidence was presented in our class action. Another query on a charge for work that never took place (Refurbishment of Bin Chute and Hopper Heads on the same block again) has still not been answered because it occurred in the year before and they have no record of it. Furthermore, with the Bin Chamber Doors, the contractors have been blamed for the miscalculations, and new charges have been based on ball park figures which still show errors in calculation on two blocks. The response to another queried item (Security Lighting) was that there was a typing error in the breakdowns, with the insistence that leaseholders were not mischarged. In which case, what use are the breakdowns?