SyTRA continued work for our estate
You may or may not know that SyTRA has been lobbying tirelessly and has saved the residents £30,000 in service charges. This was given as a rebate to those not in receipt of housing benefit for the year 2008/9.
We managed to get some senior, accountable heads of department to look at the estate on the 15th June 2010.
The main focus of the meeting was three fold:
- To have Lewisham Homes give all paying residents back-dated refunds for service charges applied between 2009-2011. The meeting was also a forum to discuss the exorbitant rates charged by LH for services.
- The bring the poor standards of service to the attention of accountable and influential Lewisham Homes staff and to get reliable statements of intent from Lewisham Homes regarding the levels of service improving.
- To point out obvious and literally dangerous health and safety risks on the estate: Lights not coming on, pot holes, broken glazing, loose brickwork, blocked gutters etc. Also to demonstrate the poor standards of grounds maintenance.
One of the outcomes of the meeting was a letter sent to Mr Adam Barratt (Lewisham Homes Director of Resources):
Dear Mr Barrett
MEETING WITH HEADS OF DEPARTMENT TODAY - 15 JULY 2010
We met today with various Senior Personnel of Lewisham Homes to discuss our on-going concerns about the management of the Sydenham Hill Estate and our request for a refund of Service Charges for 2009/2010 and 2010/2011.
I have attached for your information some of the points that were raised and also our version of what we are paying for the different categories of Charges as we have NOT been able to obtain any figures from Lewisham Homes despite this request in April 2010.
The conclusion of the meeting is that Nick Spenceley is going to get back to us within 14 days i.e. by 29 June 2010 with definite outcomes in terms of the points raised. In addition there will be extra work done this afternoon and on Monday to sort out as much of the concerns as possible.
We thank you for arranging this meeting for us and hope that we don't have to do as much follow-up as we have been doing to date.
We also hope that these issues can be satisfactorily resolved or else we have no choice but to escalate this matter upwards and externally.
As an aside; Lewisham Homes has to develop a VERIFIABLE Programme of Supervision and Inspection of Services that includes all your Housing Stock per week/month etc and a system that records what for instance caretakers are actually doing daily. Something along the lines of what you see when you go to public toilets in shopping centres or department stores. For e.g. - last cleaned by, at time, inspected by, time..., if not satisfactory call...
Kind regards,
SyTRA
