Lewisham
Homes was just three years into its tenure when, in
September 2010, the arms length management organisation (ALMO) posted a letter which read: 'Dear
Homeowner. Lewisham Council
and Lewisham Homes do not inspect the inside of your property or make
any necessary safety adaptations to your property". (Emphasis added.) So why has the council's rabid housing enforcer placed its bullyboy jackboots across leaseholder thresholds? TheBigRetort
Lewisham Homes has called for an avalanche of (so-called)
improvements to its housing stock. Recently the amateur managing agent has gone way "bespoke". Under the watchful eye of Mrs Hilary Barber (above) its Director of Corporate Services. This "necessary" (is it really?) fire-safety equipment has been placed into 1400 street properties along with a raft of additional unnecessary improvements... earning Mrs Barber the honorific Baroness Barber of Breachlease.
Barber is threatening court action if any recalcitrant leaseholder doesn't bow to many of her outrageous demands. Automatic Fire Detection is one.
"AFD" is being pressed on Lewisham's beleaguered property owners; who have the misfortune to have the not-for-profit ALMO as their management agent. This consists of a fire control panel positioned on the walls of communal hallways. It also calls for flat entrance doors to be changed as well.
Lewisham Homes spent millions of pounds changing its own tenants' doors. It was actually all unnecessary - as a later post will show - and a huge waste of public funds.
However, unknown to me, it had entered my tenanted property, screwed a
heat detector to the hallway ceiling, and interlinked it with
its own tenant's system. Supposedly monitored back in Catford Central, it was
only when a false alarm was triggered that I discovered the trespass and the little interloper itself. (Pictured below. Just to the left of the light shade.)
[
Apparently if you put your ear to it you can almost hear someone at the other end saying "Start the tape." Very Orwellian indeed. ]
When challenged Mrs Barber imperiously responded: “All
flats within the house require a heater/sounder device to be
installed in order for the whole fire alarm system to function
normally to satisfy the fire safety legislative requirements.”
This is not actually true. But, then, Lewisham Homes staff regularly reach for a
lie when the truth won't best serve its actions or expenditure.
“The
heat detector is different to a smoke alarm as it activates on
temperature rise and will not sound from household smells such as if
you burn your toast!” LH claimed.
Which is laughable. How many residents cook in hallways?
Why this heat
device is placed where it is really a bit of a mystery. (Perhaps they'll place it in the bedrooms next...?)
So, by locking me out of the communal entrance for three months, following many months of threats and cajoling, by placing a monitor in my ceiling - without my permission - the council's Rachman enforcer has
created an easement into the flat. Left unchallenged it allows a right of
entry for maintenance as and when. (Does it simply kick the door in next if one is away on holiday?)
Unfortunately
Lewisham Homes Board, which consists of councillors and lay persons appears blind to this. And a brief chat with many law firms suggests they are unwilling to represent on the issue. (Probably due to Lewisham Council hiring as many law firms as it can within the Metropolis. Smart move.)
In the case of my flat the operative had simply tricked the
tenant into believing I had given permission for the placement of the device. And it was all based on yet another Lewisham Homes porky. One of many the managing agent regularly utters to leaseholders.
"Pathological lying is habitual to Lewisham Homes and its staff," one frightened leaseholder informed.
Lewisham Homes staff should of course lean towards presenting the ALMO in a favourable light. But when forensically examined, or experienced personally by a leaseholder, the truth is often quite galling - and so too its constant drip feed of misleading and/or erroneous information. Never more so than with its presentation of service charge bills that constantly contain errors that favour LH financially and not the leaseholder.
But who amongst the 5000 leaseholders will step forward to throw off this yolk of oppression?
A little David against the huge bosom of Baroness Barber's Goliath, TheBigRetort tentatively approached Catford Town Hall... and slowly withdrew the sword from its rotten bricks and mortar.
What followed was the formation of a group of leaseholders across the borough known as "The Alliance". (Lewisham Council Leaseholder Alliance, to give it its full title.)
It fell to these knights of the round table - at a coffee bar in Lewisham - to commence plotting a coup d'état against what they see as the mighty oppressor... Lewisham Homes.
But first... back in the days of yore.
Back in the days of yore, before it got too big for its jackboots, things were very different betwixt the peasant leaseholders and the sheriff's men at Lewisham Homes.
Then, in 2010AD, CEO Andrew Potter, who has since resigned to greener pastures, gently reminded leaseholders and private landlords of their duty: “This includes you, as the landlord installing smoke detectors. It is also your responsibility to test them – you cannot pass this responsibility onto your tenants.”
Potty Potter as he later became known to TheBigRetort offered a polite reminder of the need to... 'minimise risks and keep your blocks safe.'
Contrast that with present landlord-leaseholder relations championed by Big-stick Barber de Breachlease. Whilst LH had claimed in 2010 it did 'not inspect the inside of your property - or make any necessary safety adaptations to it' - now things are different. The agent is using subterfuge to bring about change, and at cost.
Actually, when I discovered that the proposed
fire-safety system was “bespoke” to LH, I came out in what I my doctor later diagnosed as "Sham Flu". Lewisham Homes Flu produces a myriad of symptoms. Cold sweat. Raised blood pressure. Reduced bank balance. Whenever Sham Homes wrote - usually at the wrong address - I knew it meant trouble. Its mostly unqualified workforce is known to turn up without warning - or not at all when it does finally make an appointment. But a heat alarm? Inside your flat? Controlled by Lewisham Homes..? No thanks.
When LH does actually manage to make an appointment, which is rarely, then fellow leaseholders, brothers, sisters and comrades out there, will know that, after years of abuse, the canny leaseholder wouldn't care much for its cavalier attitude. Nor what it thought was its "baronial" right to enter private property and introduce... "things" ad hoc or "bespoke".
I mean.. if Albert Einstein had worked for an ALMO instead of the patent office in Berrn, Lewisham Homes it would not be.
I winced at the thought of false alarms sounding long into the night. Until I was expected to arrive to sort it out when it finally did go off.
So, like any Lewisham Council leaseholder should, I trod on the side of caution where Lewisham Homes was concerned. I said No to the heat monitor. (I said No to Lewisham Homes quite a bit actually; for all the good it did.)
It was for me simple: The leaseholder is responsible for the interior of the
property and for certain obligations under the lease. End.
Unfortunately, Hilary Barber did not see it that way. Neither did she believe that she had breached the lease. Earning her the sobriquet Breachlease Barber. Neither did she accept that Lewisham Homes, despite the evidence, had behaved 'in any way' unlawfully. The lockout was purely an accident, apparently. (It claimed there was a burglary; but could not adduce any evidence of this dueto the Data Protection Act.)
There were aggravating factors too in Lewisham Homes' Stasi-like behaviour. Amongst which, the following, harassment, deception, trespass, damage, MONEY LAUNDERING - you name it, LH had actually done it. Feigning, making a show of, making a pretence of, seemingly assisting, were amongst many of its attributes. In truth, this kind of behaviour was really rather insidious and endemic within the organisation. Clearly designed to wear down a certain leaseholder who was considered by the ALMO to be... "very problematic".
"But this was after all just a 'low risk' Victorian flat.. Not a high-risk high-rise 'stay put' tower block."
Breachlease Barber and her cohorts feigned assistance. They claimed that they did not know when the conversions took place: so they had to make "assumptions".
One such assumption was that the Victorian property's construction was not up to present-day standard?
It's true to say that as it is over a hundred years before the present day then this is entirely likely. But since the council controlled the planning approvals for the conversions... it must have known the actual date. Lewisham Homes is the pseudo council under a different name. These "assumption" really allowed a multitude of abuses against the leaseholder.
As did a failure to consult the planning and building records. In a Victorian property converted to flats, this oversight gave Lewisham Homes plenty of scope to introduce changes to its own portfolio; subsidised by leaseholders. The gift that keeps on giving. However, clearly, if audited properly, it would soon become clear that this ALMO is money laundering. Which is a crime under the Proceeds of Crimes Act.
Additionally, Hilary Barber's earlier demand to change the flat
entrance door and introduce a monitored alarm system (that wasn't really monitored) appeared to be driven by nothing short of hysterical mania. Whilst the hysteria is understandable in the present climate, it really manifested itself after the 2010 letter from former CEO Potter. In other words before Grenfell Tower and that tragic "stay put" night.
Lewisham Homes simply, conveniently, rides on the back of the tragedy. But "stay put" they should not have that night. And stay put in any Victorian conversion you should not do either: certainly not if it's managed by Lewisham Homes.
Following a tragic arson, just after the 2010 advise letter to leaseholders and private landlords, . Lewisham Homes received a conviction. (The trial did not take place until 2016.) LH failed to prevent what was an arson. The judge.. gave them a "wake up call" in the form of a fine and conviction. So the Gang of Five that headed Lewisham Homes nearly received a go straight to gaol card.
Fortunately, due to the social nature of its management, they were all spared porridge.And they were determined that this should not happen again. However, as a result of the Marine Tower Tragedy, and with certain terms contained in the leases, the "victim" was now the service-charge-paying leaseholder. Sh/e was the cash cow that part-bankrolled mainly 'unnecessary' works, and would continue to do so.
However, it is the cosmetic appearance of fire safety - above and beyond that which is needed - that drives Lewisham Homes and its bullying staff - simply in an effort to avoid gaol a second-time around. Many of the changes introduced are not really in the best interests of the occupants. Certainly not in Victorian properties.
According to accounts filed at Companies House, the officers who occupy the organisation's top tier are well rewarded. A regular yearly increase in costs for the top team is syphoned off the what it conveniently terms the "surplus" - profit by another name. And by this not-for-profit coterie of bureaucrats. Into their own pay packets it goes, and on and on and on.
Be that as it may... perfectly adequate flat entrance doors have also been culled. At a cost in the millions. In what is simply a hysterical vanity project for this Stasi collective. Most of the old doors that were changed were actually more resistant to fire than the walls and ceilings inside the flats themselves, and so the so-called fire-safety introductions are dubious, to say the least. Added to which... the Lewisham Homes bespoke alarm system was not actually really
“monitored” when I challenged this.
Did you know that emails to Lewisham Homes can take up to ten days - or longer - for a response? Imagine that. It was against this backdrop, one of overzealous and uncontrolled overspend, riding on the coat-tail of the tragedy of Grenfell Tower, that I resisted the introduction of a little heat device. And all the other unnecessary "improvements".
Repeated harassment followed. The device screwed to my ceiling was a reminder of leaseholder impotence in the face of local government adversity. I was both amazed and appalled.
“We still think these are essential for both the protection of residents’ safety and to comply with fire safety law. You disagree with this. This is an area we take very seriously, and will take legal action if required. I think the only way to move this on is for the courts to decide."
The deceit. The unbridled arrogance. Barber, as head of corporate services, refused to accept that its “above and beyond” and "zero tolerance" approach was actually harassment and trespass and deeply distressing. Not
only did Barber repeatedly threaten legal action, but her bully-boy behaviour, endemic within the
organisation, went unrecognised by her.
But I, like many leaseholders, felt a breach of the lease had taken place. And it was the Gang of five that had breached it, constantly. The Alliance was born.
The behaviour of Lewisham Homes' staff verged on the criminal. The
lease doesn't allow a freeholder to place devices inside a private dwelling. And neither could the managing agent, under the terms of the lease, and various other laws, use subterfuge to place it there. Despite this, Automatic
Fire Detection (AFD) was seemingly being pushed, not into dangerously clad high rises but Victorian street properties - simply to satiate the Gang of Five's ego.
Despite
the evidence before her, Barber responded:
“...we
believe these are required for both the protection of residents’
safety and for Lewisham Homes to comply with fire safety law.”
Lewisham Homes employees speak with forked tongue.
When
an organisation refuses to respond to Freedom of Information Act
requests, or is ponderous in its response, it merely peaks the old investigative interest. TheBigRetort...
The
new AFD system will not be monitored 24/7/365
A
number of alarms have resulted in emergency visits by the Fire
Brigade... later found to be due to 'dust'. But the fire brigade
will not respond unless telephoned
There will be no immediate response from the fire brigade
One
company that installed the system has gone bust; leaving the AFD
project itself in doubt
- The officer who commissioned it has left LH; and his colleagues in the lurch
Be
that as it may... there is no smoke without fire. So too, there is no fire without fuel. And Lewisham Homes has added lots of
it.
What
"bespoke" Automatic Fire Detection actually means
A
potential fire is detected in the form of an "error". A
live report is sent - by email? - to Lewisham Homes. Where
'Appropriate actions will be taken.'
The
fire-safety panel has a back-up battery
which vents hydrogen and has been known to explode in past tests.
The system introduced, along with the electrics, actually adds to the risk.
What Lewisham Homes neglects to mention is
that the appropriate action itself is a bit... inappropriate.
Following
one such false alarm I was contacted by phone. A disembodied voice told me to
sort it out myself.
Lewisham Homes did attend to reset the device...
days later.
A case of more is actually less?
An additional demand by Lewisham Homes for changes to perfectly robust flat entrance doors, to be
replaced with those with in-tumescent fire-safety strips around its
edges, could effectively funnel the smoke from a potential fire
through inadequate Victorian lathe-and-plaster ceilings to the flat
above. Due
to the strip around the door the smoke would not reach the smoke alarm
sited in the communal hallway... Meanwhile, the heat detector in the
private leaseholder hallway, interlinked to its system, would sit
waiting for it to get hot. By which time the smoke would have
overwhelmed the unwitting inhabitants. And don't get me started on those anti-arson letterboxes. (Who needs a
letterbox on a flat entrance door of a property with just two flats?)
More exciting revelations in a forthcoming post that will save you the leaseholder thousands £££!
Any Lewisham Council leaseholder will know by now that the communal hallway itself is a
ransom strip. A licence to print money in DEED. A handy cosh
in the grubby hands of Lewisham Homes' Gang of Five.
However,
regardless that these parasites are preying on tragedy. Making money
off the back of Grenfell Tower tragedy. In my humble opinion the
hallway is a place where the prying and preying eyes of the state should well-and-truly end.
Not so Lewisham Homes: “A
wireless heat detector will be installed inside the front door of
your home in the hallway ceiling.”
Note, it did not say: 'May we'. It did not even say: 'Pretty please'.
It simply stated: 'We will'.
But what ever happened to that
place commonly known the Englishman's home?
A
precept since the 17th Century, it was established in The Institutes
of Laws of England 1628, which states: "For a man's house is his
castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and
each man's home is his safest refuge]."
Not any more. In
addition to forcing its heat monitor into leaseholder flats, despite advice in its own Fire Risk Assessments stating that this was not needed, Lewisham Homes removed perfectly adequate lighting from hallways.
It replaced this with its own emergency lighting - and a bonfire of
fire-safety paraphernalia. The cost of which is
to be passed to leaseholders as an "improvement" of course.
This constant drip-drip-bureaucratic-drip against the leaseholder brings with it a huge financial burden. In addition to the erosion of well being. And it is the leaseholder as well as the taxpayer who carries the burden of this rampant bureaucratic stupidity. Causing some leaseholders to breakdown mentally and/or financially.
Others are forced to sell their homes due to these punitive charges. But no one at the Council or in Parliament seems to care. And why should they? It is after all benevolent corruption.
Instead... Barber of Breachlease maintained that the relevant legislation and guidance for the system
which is “bespoke” to Lewisham Homes - in other words, designed by one of our backroom idiots - was due to the Housing
Act 2004 and the Fire Safety Order 2005. In addition to LACORS. But whatever this all means, contradictory information aside, it's quite simply utter guff. Designed to conceal the mugger from the mugged.
Many of Lewisham Homes assertions were found to be untrue. One quickly learns when dealing with it, which is really Lewisham Council at an arms-length-distance, that there are two truths. Truth that Lewisham Homes sees. That is truth for profit. And truth ...from which it cannot profit.
However the above Act and Order and "guidance" do not state that the fire-safety devices must be introduced by a freeholder into a private dwelling. That's a truth from which LH cannot profit.
Nor do they state that this system must be interlinked to a private residential dwelling. Another truth from which LH cannot profit. Or introduced into
the hallway for that matter.
Certainly not a heat monitor. (Try the kitchen, divvy!)
That's another profitless truth.
When pressed on this Hilary Baroness Barber appeared confused. And vague. Amongst one repeated utterance “They
were converted before 1991, and we cannot be sure of the quality of
the compartmentation at that time.”
But... why not? Lewisham Council was the freeholder. And the controlling building
authority. Surely it must know the dates of the conversions, and
what materials were used? But then, what do you expect the compartmentation of a Victorian house to be like - a highrise? A purpose-built block?
Fortunately there is no "stay put policy" for a Victorian conversion.
So. Is the introduction of heat monitors inside the hallways of private dwellings a step too far? Today the heat monitor - and new door - tomorrow the whole dwelling. But for the
hapless council leaseholder, where does the call for "improvements" actually end?
Coming up in the next exciting instalment... TheBigRetort is summoned to an audience with Hilary Jean Barber (nee
Doe). Before she received her new title that is.
And following that useless meeting we see the birth of The Lewisham Council Leaseholder Alliance. Ensuring Fairness and Transparency for Lewisham Council Leaseholders.
