Islington Leaseholders Association21 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
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
Audit Committee
(today)
Tuesday 22 March 2011
Room 4
Islington Town Hall
at 7.30pm
Published: 11 March, 2011
by PETER GRUNER
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.
Partners Leaseholders will be subject to a major works & decoration cycle of 7 years which is intended to provide well maintained homes to the availability Standards. More…
Islington Tribune letters page was full of comments and questions about the potential joint chief exec position for Islington and Camden. Our own Dr Potter kicked off the questions with “Will ‘superchief’ be able to run two housing regimes?” more.…
The BBC is making a short documentary to mark the 30th anniversary of Thatcher’s “Right to buy” policy. We’re looking for leaseholders who have bought ex-local authority flats and want to hear about their experiences – positive and negative. Have you recently had bills for huge repair costs on your property that you couldn’t afford and didn’t want? Do you feel that these costs for home improvements are justified?
If you’re happy to be contacted by the BBC then please get in touch with Victoria either by email at victoria.holden@bbc.co.uk or by phone Tel 0207 765 5985 or 07790 903213
if you do contact the BBC, could you copy any emails sent, to Dr Brian Potter (his email address is “Brian Potter” islington.leaseholders@hotmail.co.uk).
We will update you all when the programme is being shown.
23 August 2010 | By Carl Brown
An arm’s-length management organisation has cancelled a £7 million repairs contract with struggling contractor Connaught.
Barnet Homes, which manages Barnet council’s 15,000 homes, will end the contract next February.
A Barnet Homes spokesperson said: ‘We would like to assure residents that we are implementing transition plans as a matter of urgency, and we are seeking to minimise any disruption to our repairs service.
‘We will provide further updates on our website.’
Connaught, which earlier this year issued two profit warnings and was forced to take out a £15 million emergency loan, is continuing talks with lenders as it attempts to avoid collapse.
Note: Connaught is Homes For Islingtons (HFI) preferred option for a long term maintenance for Islingtons social Housing!