Islington Leaseholders AssociationDear Islington Leaseholders
Make your voices heard; demand that all residents of Islington’s PFI contracts (PFI1 and PFI2) are included in the selection of the “Independent Tenant Adviser”. Register your complaint by email to both the Islington Tribune and Gazette and demand that your Councilors’ and MP’s, intercede with the council straight away to ensure your voice is not ignored.
Click here for Dr Potters letter to the papers: –
Directors required
Enthusiastic Leaseholder(s) required to be volunteer ILA Directors, helping to improve the situation of Islington leaseholders – duties would include attending monthly Directors meetings, occasionally attending monthly ILA Forum meetings, gathering neighbouring leasehold information on an ad hoc basis to pass on to other leaseholders.
Volunteers wanted for ILA
The ILA is looking for a volunteer to be co-opted to the ILA Board of Directors to assist with the monthly leaseholder meetings. This would include taking monthly minutes, typing up and distributing to all Directors, recording attendance and other administration tasks.
We are also looking for community minded volunteers with various skills for occasional projects e.g, professional experience in law, accounting, surveying, occasional investigation work, as well as people with skills in social networking, promotion, DTP, a sponsorship and advertising manager (for newsletter & website), journalist to improve ILA image and/or contribute to newsletter and/or website, contributors to write to press/contact media re: Leaseholder concerns.
If interested please:
email: islington.leaseholders@hotmail.co.uk or
write to : ILA, Po Box 66633 , London N1 1AA
Helen Cagnoni (ILA director) letter to the tribune on Council broken promises to return Council Housing back to Islington Councils’ direct responsibility at the completion of ‘Decent Homes’ work,, expensive delays in advertising for a so-called ‘independent tenants’ advisor’, and avoiding responsibility for their full statutory duties, and ILA preventing leaseholders from being overcharged..more
21 April 2011 | By Carl Brown
Islington Council is asking tenants to contribute to a review of its housing management services.
The London authority is to appoint a residents’ panel to inform the review and to appoint an independent tenant advisor to seek residents’ views. More..
From: Islington Tribnune 1.4.11
Contractors working on behalf of Homes for Islington (HfI) carried out the repairs in 2006 over three months on the Blenheim estate at Marlborough Road, replacing windows with double glazing, repairing the roof and other common areas. Yara Spinelly, 56, had threatened to go to court rather than pay the full £28,000 for her share of the work on her estate because she had never received a final bill. more….
more local stories here
Bemerton leaseholders could lose their homes if estate is demolished
By ROB BLEANEY, islington Gazzette Wednesday, March 30, 2011
MORE than 250 leaseholders on an estate earmarked for demolition could be forced to give up their homes or face being saddled with huge mortgages for flats in the swanky new blocks. more…
more local stories here
A- Short answer “as many as necessary”. Long answer here.
Audit committee 22.3.11 report
Various ILA members & leaseholders attended the Audit committee (AC) meeting reviewing reports on HFI’s “Quality of PFI Refurbishment Works” & and the “quality of Partners’ assessments of challenges made by leaseholders’ to their final bills for refurbishment works to their homes.”(LCR).
The meeting heard that in the AC’s opinion, everything was mostly fine, and considered Partners work in general as passing the council approved standard (availability standard) despite the fact that HFI inspectors only inspected 10% of the properties in the PFI2 contract and identified on average issues with all the properties they inspected (271 issue on 216 properties).
HFI also said that they could not inspect any more of the 4000 PFI2 properties, and refused to allocate any more of their 800 staff to property inspection and monitoring the availability standard on this PFI2 £426million contract. The report also says its impossible to judge whether Partners represent Value for money. This was accepted as fine by the AC.
Another (LCR) report said that 26 out of the 30 challanges made by leaseholders were successful with an average reduction in bills being £.1.4k and concluded that Partners treatment of challenges was fair, and made some recomendations to improve and speed up the process. ( full details in report via weblink below)
ILA Chair Dr Brian Potter called “the report a white wash” and invited the chair “Cllr Kelly” to attend the next leaseholders meeting—the invitation was not accepted—instead he asked if I would attend a HFI surgery!
Dr Potter said he was happy to attend any meeting with our councilors but without HFI present—since these meeting were at policy level—and HFI did not set the policy for Islington—The council did…!!!
you can download these reports ( all approved by the Audit committee) here
Partners have created a new “Leaseholder Service Charge Challenge” leaflet that specifically deals with service charge disputes, and is in addition to the ”Service Alerts & Formal Complaints” procedure
A leaseholder member of the partners residents forum will be discussing these with Partners next week and hope to get some amendments made, to clarify and improve the position for Partners leaseholders.
Copies are enclosed on following page, if any (Partners) Leaseholders have any comments on the leaflets or proposed amendments could you please add them to following form (click ‘more’ & scroll down) by next wednesday 23.3.11- sorry for short notice. And these will be passed on. Thanks. more…
‘Proposed Repair/Maintenance etc. work list 2011-2012’ spreadsheet which Leaseholders may wish to check.
The Partners / PFI Compensation procedure – What it is & How it works. It’s different from the HFI procedure below.