Kate Hoey twists the knife into Lambeth Council and Cathy Deplessis steps down as chair of Lambeth Living

Readers affected by the ongoing saga of Lambeth Living (the Arms Length Management Company who manage all of Lambeth Council's tenancies and leaseholds) are probably now aware that Cathy Deplessis, Chief Executive of Lambeth Living stepped down two days ago on the 26th January.  Her resignation appeared to be mired in controversy, since it was denied as late as 4pm on the 26th and only confirmed during the Lambeth Living Board meeting of the same evening.  Ms Deplessis' departure follows hot on the heels of the Christmas Eve resignation of David Thompson, Lambeth Living's Officer in Charge of Major works.  I am guessing that Lambeth Living might have become unmanageable.

I refer interested readers to an excellent piece in the Streatham Guardian which reports that immediately after the resignation of Ms Deplessis' was announced, another board member, Chris Robertson, also tendered his resignation.  According to the Streatham Guardian, Mr Robertson claimed,

"I stood for election with the sole intention of representing the best interests of Lambeth residents. It has become clear in recent months that Lambeth residents are not being represented by the board and decisions are made without any reference or information to the board."

In a House of Commons debate on housing yesterday, Kate Hoey made damning remarks about Lambeth Living, and questionned whether government money might not best have been spent upon poor standard housing, rather than on Lambeth Living itself:

I would not want hon. Members to think that all ALMOs have been wonderful successes. The ALMO in Lambeth, Lambeth Living... has been pretty much of a disaster. The chief executive is leaving this weekend and the deputy left just before Christmas. The tenants in Lambeth are in a ridiculous situation. Their ALMO was going to get them a two-star rating. That did not happen, and the tenants are now left with huge amounts of very bad housing with no one wanting to do anything about it. The ALMO, therefore, was not the answer; the answer would have been to put the money directly into the estates that really needed it. Lambeth has some desperately bad estates. They need the money and I am not sure that spending money just on ALMOs made any difference.

Kate Hoey further spoke of her frustration as an MP at being constantly confronted by constituents at her surgeries, who live in over-crowded accommodation because she knows that so little can be done to resolve their issues.  Then, since the opportunity arose, she did the usual and slated Lambeth Council itself, damning its entire culture, whilst speaking out to protect the workers at the bottom of the pile:

"Lambeth is one of those boroughs in which politics change, council leadership changes and coalitions form-we have had it all during my time as a Member of Parliament -but one thing that does not seem to change is the culture and how it is run, particularly in terms of housing... 

I add my thanks to the people at the bottom of the structure-those who do the cleaning on the estates, particularly those who are in-house. Despite all the changes at the top, in which they never seem to be involved, and despite all the factors against them, they try to deliver good services, where they can. They are at the sharp end where the cuts will come, which will not affect the people on £250,000 a year-the directors and assistant directors of which we seem to have so many, who get huge amounts of money that never seems to be cut."

I'm quoting Hoey's remarks extensively, partly because I think she is right about the Council, but partly to outline how convienient a strategy it is to continually blame a whole succession of leadership in Lambeth.  I'd have thought that since this insightful and telling Hoey Report from Brian Deer in 1993, Hoey might have been able to wield some of her influence to make improvements within the Council.  The Council has been (except for the brief spell under the Lib Dems) under Labour control for years, and Hoey is a member of the Labour party.  It seems somewhat disingeuous for an MP who is known and admired for her work amongst local people, to be forever palming the institutional blame on to others.  Am I being unfair?  Is there anything Hoey could have done?  And if there isn't, then how might politics in Lambeth be fixed?

Anyhow, that's not all.  During her speech, Ms Hoey referred to an estate which is likely to be in SE11 (or possibly the western boundary of SE1) on account of it being  "a 10-minute walk from the House of Commons" in which "the windows are falling out".  Does anybody know which estate she has in mind?  In an attempt to have this blog focus on issues pertinent to all local residents, it seems only fair to record this information.  If your windows are falling out, or you know somebody whose windows are falling out, I'd be happy, with permission, to come around and photograph the damage and continually witter on about it until it is fixed.  Your local councillor should be aware of the issue, but it's worth making continuous noise about it.

Kate Hoey also took aim at local contractors, who are apparently akin to cartels:

"It is usually the same old companies that get the jobs anyway. All those people go around tendering against each other and operating cosy little cartels. It often ends up with someone getting a lot of money, and sometimes the standard of the work is not adequate."

But really, I fear that perhaps Steve Reed and Kate Hoey are actually in agreement with one another, since Hoey's strategies for fixing the mess sound a lot like the co-operative Council's.  (Remember no area will be witheld from the Co-op Coucil strategy, and much of it involves volunteers and people with initiative...)

"It upsets me that we have many empty flats and homes in Lambeth. When a tenant moves out or dies, their home is empty. Suddenly, that home cannot be let, because it is not up to decent homes standards, even though someone was living there two or three weeks ago, which is absolutely ridiculous. We should be able to allow people with a bit of nous who are on the housing waiting list to go in and do their work, like the old Greater London Council used to do. As long as the electrics and the health and safety are right, I do not see why anyone should not be allowed to go in and take the flat."

So far, so good, right.  Doesn't this sound like the return of the much vaunted volunteers, who are all going to spring out of the woodwork to form the Big Society?  Quite frankly, I'm sure we could find a team of local volunteers who'd be interested in helping redecorate empty properties from time to time.  This is certainly something that the charity Kids Company do periodically.  Unfortunately, it appears that the Council is not quite that co-operative yet and 10 properties were sold in 2009 for £1.68 million... The end of 2010 showed another £2.63 million made by Lambeth as they sold off another 13 council homes.  So maybe Hoey and Reed aren't singing from the same hymn sheet, since Hoey strongly states that this is unaccaptable. 

"Instead, we have flats sitting empty for months and even years. Then the council says, "We had better sell them off now because we cannot afford to make them good." It is absolutely scandalous, and I hope that the Minister will say that he will encourage such a route."

The coffee morning being held at St Anselm's tomorrow with Leader of Lambeth, Steve Reed and Kate Hoey both present in the same room should be rather interesting.

Political stripes revealed - will not remain neutral in face of Labour smear campaign

A few days ago, after a bit of Boris-bashing, I was accused of being politically non-neutral.  That is probably true.  I'm deeply non-neutral, despite my best efforts.  I have now written in the "About me" link that:

"Politically, I'm generally on the side of the people who do not currently hold power in local or national government."

The problem is that my non-neutrality tends to reveal itself under the guise of dislike or disgust of some policy or lack of action.  I am not a member of any national political party, and I'm a true floating voter.  I tend to vote for people, rather than parties as I tend to think you're better off with local politicans who act on your behalf, rather than those with whom you might agree on every issue.  I thought I'd give you a guide to my current general South London political feelings so that you can see that my non-neutral feelings are not particularly uni-directional.

Boris Johnson - Unimpressed by super highway that, in reality, is just blue paint.  Unimpressed by abandonment of cross-river tram.  Unimpressed by attempts to close the South London line.  Unimpressed by refusal to turn Vauxhall into a high-rise mecca, despite supposed dislike of tall buildings.  Unimpressed by attempt to regenerate Nine Elms by "intensification", without having any funding plan for Northern line extension or solution to overcrowding on Victoria line at Vauxhall.  Unimpressed by attempt to include Elephant and Castle in the Crossrail levy, despite it not being anywhere near Crossrail.  Unimpressed by money being found for Crossrail in North London, but no equivalent South London transport investment.

Local Labour lot - Pleased that none of current Labour councillors have run off to Bristol like the last one did.  Pleased to receive regular email updates re. planning consent and bike plans.  Unimpressed that former-Lilian Baylis project still has no legs, and refuse to be fobbed off by the SAZ occupation.  Unimpressed that Beaufoy project was scuppered by insiders at Lambeth Council and is also going nowhere.  Accept that current Councillors appear to do their job adequately, but would be pleased to see a bit more vision and "fight" for the local area.

Lambeth Labour lot (in power) - Deeply deeply unimpressed that the campaign to re-elect Labour is proceeding on the basis of "slag off the Lib Dems" and videos that contain no policy content.  Not impressed by the level of leisure facilities available (or rather, unavailable) to Lambeth residents (particularly re. swimming).  Not impressed by the number of Lambeth leaseholder service charge queries that I(!) have received due to the outsourcing of accommodation management to Lambeth Living.  Annoyed by general Labour smugness.  [I have said on Twitter, in recent days, that unless the Lambeth Labour lot clean up their act, and cease publishing antagonistic videos, that I will refuse to be non-neutral in the next election.  Haven't decided who I'd publicly support, but I despise dirty campaigning.]

Lambeth Lib Dem lot (not in power) - Unimpressed that they only seem to pop up with vigour near to an election.  Unimpressed that, if not carefully watched, they could launch into an aggressive anti-Labour campaign, without detailing their own policies.  Quite impressed by local Oval councillor who spoke up persuasively at recent Nine Elms consultation meeting.

Lambeth Conservative lot (not in power) - Again, tend not to think they do very much outside of local election time.  Neither impressed nor unimpressed by them, but think they lack gravitas locally.

Caroline Pidgeon (Lib Dem London Assembly member)- Quite impressed that Caroline Pidgeon is so re-active when it comes to local SE11 issues.  Quite impressed to have received timely and relevant emails from Cllr Pidgeon when questionned.

Kate Hoey (Labour) - Generally impressed by Kate Hoey, as am in awe of anybody that can topple a speaker.  Particularly approve of Kate Hoey's anti-war and anti-trident stances.  Secretly admire Kate's public disavowal of the whole of Lambeth Council.  Deeply impressed to see Kate Hoey at a number of very small local meetings that couldn't really be used for political capital.  Unimpressed by Kate's occasional attempts in campaign literature to claim that the work of local organisations are somehow all attributable to her in the end.

Free chipping for cats and dogs on Thurs 25th February in Kennington

This one nearly slipped under the radar.  I know that Lambeth Living aren't able to resolve your service charge queries, but it appears they're better with pets.

According to a Gumtree ad,  Lambeth Living and RSPCA are offering a free microchipping event for dogs and cats at the North Lambeth Area Housing Office on Thursday 25th Feb (this week), from 16:00 - 18:00.  No appointment is required.

North Lambeth Area Housing Office is at 91 Kennington Lane, SE11 4HR

The ad. doesn't say that you need to be living in Lambeth Living accommodation.  It appears that anybody can bring their dogs / cats along.

Event is supported by Lambeth Council Environmental Services.

Lambeth Leaseholders vs Netball...

...a little tip-off...

Lambeth Leaseholders will be delighted to guess which Chief Executive (hint: the one paid over £100k to make sure Lambeth Living hits government targets to obtain Decent Homes money) considers playing a game of netball to be more important than /staying/ for an entire meeting to hear the views of Lambeth residents views (and ensure their participation, which will help guarantee the money).

Go on... have a guess or three!

[Also, I have another huge Lambeth Council screwup to be released, but I'm waiting for a few details to be confirmed prior to putting it on the blog... Keep an eye out!]

Ongoing Lambeth leaseholder debacle

I've been leaked a copy of an email which was sent to Cllr Steve Reed (leader of Lambeth Council) and Derrick Anderson (Chief Executive of Lambeth Council), which I'm going to paste in full below:

I understand from Chris Lee's email response to me late last week that Lambeth Living stand by their estimates as Lambeth has been informed by their vendor, Lambeth Living, that all the estimates are correct and that, and I quote from Cathy Deplissis from Friday news piece, "Lambeth Living has a legal obligation to bill for service charges and Leaseholders have the legal obligation to pay thiose charges",

May I take this opportunity to remind you that those charges have to be "reasonable" and represent value for money otherwise they will not stand up in Leasholder Valauation Tribunal cases and again, this will be costly for Lambeth and will not help the organisations achieve the balanced budget by March 31st.

I am extremely disappointed that given the initial findings of the Audit Commission on the lack of response to Leaseholders' queries and request for information/evidence of charges etc, that we are still in this position and there seems to be no signs of progress to meet across the table to discuss this major issue.

I know that for political reasons, distancing oneself from the shambles of the ALMO might seem like a good idea, however, I cannot see how this will serve the longevity of any officer or Councillor as the fact remains that our Landlord is not ble to manage their property management contractor.

I can only say that after requesting this meeting, and Cllr. Pecks further follow up which has been ignored, that I will now have to email the residents who have again, given up their own time to work out their charges etc and sent copies to me so that I could have a discussion with you both, only to be let down again. I will aslo be sending this to the other Leaseholders that I have contact with as I have promised them that I will do what I can. and this failure is simply not for my lack of trying.

I am very disappointed that there are around 10,000 household in Lambeth being ignored and expected to pay for these hike in charges and the response is to pass this around and not to meet with us.

I will also be sending information to as many leaseholders as I can to inform them of their rights, under law, to hold Lambeth to account for these charges.

Yours in utter frustration and disappointment,

Steve Rice

It appears to me that Steve Rice is doing a fantastic public service for all Lambeth leaseholders. Remember, the inflated leaseholder bills are an issue across the whole Borough, and are not exclusive to SE11.

If progress on the issue (in the form of public meetings, and so on) is not forthcoming, then I will continue to publicise that fact in a way that makes it known to as many people as possible.

More on Lambeth Leaseholders

I'm getting a considerable number of hits from people who are Googling for Lambeth leaseholder charges. Please do keep the comments coming in. It's part of this blog's function to enable local people to have online contact with one another in order to build real life contacts, and hopefully strengthen our community.

In further news, the BBC published an article at lunch time today about the deteriorating relationship between Lambeth Living and the leaseholders here. Some of you might recognise the cheeky chappy in the picture!

[Edit 27/6/2009]: There is a video link to the BBC article now as well. Click here to view the clip which appeared on the BBC news. It's very interesting, and shows local people arguing that it would make more sense to move out, rent somewhere else and lease their properties back to Lambeth Council. I felt rather sorry for the Chief Executive of Lambeth Living, since her arguments about improving the way that they "capture" information on service charges clearly don't stack up against complaints that work stated on the bills has never actually been performed!

One commentator has linked to an article from Inside Housing, which details a massive catalogue of Lambeth Housing's failures from 2005 here.

Lambeth Leaseholder Service Charge Estimates 2009/2010

Today I was emailed a document, sent to a number of councilors/officers in the London Borough of Lambeth about the ludicrous Lambeth Living service charge increases for 2009/2010. Apparently, the service charge increase is widespread and a number of residents have complained direct to the BBC, so expect to see the item feature on the news tonight!

Amongst other items, the email alleges:

* The estimates have gone out to leaseholders, 4 months late.
* The charges appear to have gone up by at least 50% and in many cases nearly 100% for the coming year.
* There was no forewarning residents of the huge increases other than one letter 7 months ago regarding the possible increase in heating charges.
* There are charges on the invoices for services and contracts that do not exist.
* The delays have resulted in a huge cash flow problem, not only for Lambeth, but for residents, as Lambeth Living will be deducting 4 months at the increased rate from Leaseholders bank accounts - resulting in many peoples' account being in unauthorised overdraft.
* No notice was given to Leasehold Council nor residents that the increases were going to be so high

Also, the email states...

"Leaseholders have called the contact centre only to be told that they would receive a call the Leaseholder call back in 48 hours. When Leaseholders called again after not receiving their call back, there were to that the contact centre had received a directive that they were not to speak to anyone about these charges and that Leaseholders must put their enquiries/complaints in writing.

This would conveniently take us past the three days notice that leaseholders have before the Direct Debit requests would be made on their bank accounts."

No doubt we'll be hearing more about this in the coming weeks. Why not leave a comment if you live in or near SE11 and say how this affects you.

LEAKED copy of Lambeth Council ALMO Draft Inspection Report

An anonymous contributor has leaked to me part of the Lambeth Arms Length Management Draft Inspection Report, which I referred to in my post two days ago here. The document is an inspection of Lambeth Living, Lambeth Council's social housing management wing, and is confidential, and, as far as I know, has not been released on account of it being so critical of the council's service.

The document is dated April 2009 and indeed alleges (amongst other things) that the complaint system within Lambeth Living has broken down and that the organisation is is bad at rent collection and the collection of service charges. Most alarmingly, the number of properties without Gas Safety Certificates is high. Anybody who knows anything about property management (and I know a little) might be aware that if a house blows up on account of faulty gas equipment (and indeed has no valid Gas Safety Certificate), and anybody is killed, the people within a company responsible for arranging the certificate might be charged with Corporate Manslaughter. There's a RICS report here to such end, should there be any interested landlords reading. It's a very serious alleged failing of a landlord duty.

The report (I'm presuming the copy I've received is genuine) does also say some good things. I wouldn't want anybody to think that Lurking about SE11 is unfair in its reporting, so it's worth recording that estate management is considered to be delivered effectively with "reasonable" standard of ground maintenance and cleaning, and that some improvements are beginning to emerge from the service overall.

However, the report is incredibly damning. There is no escaping the fact that major reform will have to be carried out. I suppose the main question will be; is there money to carry out the reforms of the department, necessary to drag it up from its weak position?

I actually do have a suggestion on the matter. In my view, property management is all about systems, and software systems in particular. With the implementation of excellent software, staff trained to follow procedure and use the software, and good relationships with maintenance teams, it's possible to turn around a management service relatively quickly. The report seems to suggest that Lambeth Living only manage 34,000ish properties, which isn't that many in the grand scheme of things. Let's hope that change for the better happens quickly since so many Labour residents are being let down.

Personally, I find it very interesting that this report should have been leaked so close to the Princes ward by-election. I doubt it has been leaked for precisely that reason (since the inspections took place in February, and relate to the entirety of Lambeth and not just SE11), but it's not going to help the local Labour team in their campaign efforts.

Ed: Actually, I think I'm going to change my mind about the fact that I said 34k properties aren't a lot to manage in the grand scheme of things. There's a recently published housing strategy by Lambeth Council (2009 - 2013) which suggests that Lambeth Living is the largest ALMO in London, which would imply they have a huge number of properties to manage. On reflection, perhaps that might be the problem.

Lambeth Housing Audit - Conservatives drop bombshell

Personally, I'm not convinced that there's as much Conservative support in Princes ward as the number of blue/green boards in Kennington Road would have you believe. I think that the residents are highly likely to be local Tory MPs who have their London residences in the road. However, if the boards are representative, then Labour, Lib Dems and Green are going to have to work their socks off in the election to compete, as I've not seen as much visible signage anywhere else! Has anybody got reports of Labour/Lib Dem/Green signs up anywhere?

In the meantime, somebody from the Lambeth Tories has, according to Twitter, managed to get hold of a report from the Audit Commission, damning Lambeth Living (the organisation that manages Lambeth's Social Housing). It's an Arms Length Management Organisation, for those who like the lingo. Apparently, the Audit Commission has said that every single area audited within the Lambeth Living organisation is "weak". More information about this matter is on the Lambeth Conservative website.

And what's more, due to the fact that the Auditor's report is currently being witheld, the Tories say they're prepared to publish the document on the Lambeth Conservative website for everyone to read... Looks like red hot stuff to me. I hope they have good lawyers!