 |
| Chelsea Theatre |
The Pre-AGM Meeting is being held at the Chelsea Theatre on Thursday 15th September commencing at 19:45 and finishing at 20:30.
One of the key components of a campaign to clean up the TMO is an urgent need to change ipolicy on answering FoI questions. All other departments and organisations of RBKC answer FoI questions even though they don't have to.
With the policy changed many more embarrassing facts, figures and general incompetence will come tumbling out of the rotting TMO woodwork.
Lobby your councillor to make this happen, and, as importantly, come to the vital pre-meeting on Thursday.
Dark glasses may be worn!
Why is the TMO permanently in conflict, conducting a Civil War, with tenants, the very people who keep them in their highly jobs and Local Government Pensions.
ReplyDeleteIn the past we had Kingsford, Perry and Lee teaching tenants a lesson.
We now have Black, Brown, Jevans, Birch, and Maddison punishing people. It is now time for tenants to declare war on the TMO
I am in. Till they are exterminated.
Deletewe have already read about the FOI problems. I should be delighted to attend with my beloved.
ReplyDeleteI hope you will both have a good old scrub if you come
DeleteANARCHISTS please hold your horses and keep a cool head - THIS IS NOT WAR.
ReplyDeleteThis is about our lives and our homes. We need KCTMO to engage with us to resolve all our issues NOW. If we are in a position by the next AGM to vote the KCTMO out for something better, then THAT WOULD BE GREAT. In the meantime we must all WORK TOGETHER and that is the point of the AGM Pre-meet. Please be respectful of that.
Thank you.
11.11 If I say it's war , it's war. War does not preclude you devising some thing better than the TMO in time for the 2017 AGM. The TMO has been indulged for too long.
DeleteREVOLUTION is the best solution,
now is the time to realise, it's war.,
LINK MAGAZINE STATES FOLLOWING AGM INFORMATION AND STATISTICS (page 37)
ReplyDelete"Members play a fundamental role at the TMO. We are an organisation build on the engagement of its members, particularly because at each AGM members are required to consider a resolution on the TMO continuing to manage the Council's residential properties. Last year 712 of the votes cast were in favour of this. At 98.3% this was the highest ever figure in our history."
712 votes out of a membership of around 5, 000 is hardly a ringing endorsement for the TMO. Last year my Housing Officer told me not to dare to think about voting against the resolution. The TMO dishonestly tells people they will get a private landlord if the TMO goes.
ReplyDeleteBe Careful residents. This Council likes nothing better than to see the 'poor' revolting! It gives them the perfect excuse to NOT provide social housing. Don't play into their hands. If the truth were out they will try to sell off all social housing....whilst Labour.....does.....
ReplyDeleteAs if we behaved, they wouldn't sell the social housing? It is already happening!! Why do you think so many properties are kept empty for more than a year? Please wake up. So many commercial building has been demolished. Why should they hold on to social housing? You need to think like them to make a sense of this. You need to read the report which Sheter produced last year. They think 97% will go.
Delete15.30 sounds like an apologist for the Labour Party. If you think that indulging the TMO will preserve social housing then you need to have your head examined. The end of Council housing is nigh.
DeleteIt is time for a showdown with the TMO; no less than Robert Black deserves. Labour Councillors will tell the Council that people don't behave badly without good reason but they won't say that the TMO is a disaster because they have served on its Board and have been complicit in the TMO treating tenants badly.
Everybody who are involved, let's do the right thing for once. The answer can no longer be, "because I am on the Board (i.e. I am convering my back side for the sake of pathetic expense!!)". This goes for Labour party councillors. You should also examine, what kind of human you are. I guess you have no shame...like them! Time for flowery words of excuses why you can't do the right thing for the TMO victims is over. If that's your attitude then clearly you are with them. This thing either work for the tenants/leaseholders or they don't. There is no grey area.
DeleteToo bloody true 21.51 - well said.
DeleteLabour Councillors have not covered themselves in glory when it comes to looking after Council tenants They have contributed to the mess at the TMO every bit as much as Maighread Condon Simmonds.
Blakeman and Dent Coad must take responsibility for the situation at TMO.
DeleteWill they now both pay the price and resign from the Council.
If they don't they will be no better than Condon Simmonds
Dent Coad and Blakeman won't resign. They need the £ 10, 000 that they claim from the Council. That's two hundred quid a week for sitting on their arses in the Town Hall.
DeleteTen thousands poxy amount! In this day and age, £10K is nothing. Haven't they got a brain to make six figure sums? I'd rather have money coming in while I sleep rather than sitting and twiddling my thumb. Seriously somethin' wrong with these people. But I also feel sorry that they are the victims of mind control programming i.e. poverty consciousness because under such programme, one is never free but a slave.
DeleteIf you cannot make it in the economic race, join the Labour Party and get elected to RBKC. Pick up £ 10, 000 once a year and all you have to do is patronise those at the bottom of the pile by telling them you know best what is good for them.
DeleteThey're very arrogant when they say know what is good for people. I hope that is not what they are going to do at the pre AGM meeting they're holding.
DeleteThe pair of them got much more than ten grand when they were leaders of the local Labour Party. Wouldn't mind if they did a good job but they didn't.
DeleteCllrs DC and Blakeman work hard for residents,
DeleteThere are other Conservative and Lid Dem cllrs who well justify their allowances. We need to be fair in our criticisms.
Dear Dame,
DeleteHeaven forfend that I should upset you.
Condon Simmonds has come in for criticism on this website. She is a Tory and not up to much.
I don't see why Blakeman and Dent Coad should escape criticism just because they are not Tories or Lib Dems and just because they say they work hard. It is about time they put their backs in to sorting out the TMO and as there are no significant improvements, it is time for them to give up their ten grand.
Dent Coad and Blakeman are part of the problem at the TMO because they have solved nothing.
19:39 Where and what is the evidence of what you accuse? Please do tell.
DeleteYou appear to have unrealistic expectations of two people within a huge bureaucracy and that is very unfair.
Councillor Blakeman is very good, she is one of the most attentive councillors we have met, we have first hand experience of her help and how she makes a real difference.
19:39 You might fit in well as a KCTMO employee with that attitude!
DeleteLadies & Gentlemen, don't you think IF whoever councillors you are referring to had concerns, s/he would have already helped TMO victims by now? They haven't and that's why we have reached a point where we needed to arrange a pre-AGM meeting. We don't have luxury of time to argue who has helped or not. When you get robbed by a thief, you don't go to him/her and ask if he could stop stealing. When in history such plead was successful? We can't ask TMO and its accomplices to sort it out. We've been there. It is US, We need to get moving before the next tide is going to hit us i.e. all of us cleansed from RBKC.
Delete'Redevelopment' of Silchester is a test run. They wanted to test out to see what kind of reaction the Council would receive. Good for the residents who are resisting it but I think they deserve more support from the borough. But of course, majority think it's THEIR problem until it comes to your estate. If you live in the borough, 'their problem' is ours too. In fact, this is happening London wide and we really need to see what's happening to this city. Just because it hasn't come to your estate, don't think you are immune. It's just a matter of time.
21:02 You sound like an ideal candidate to run as a councillor to clean up the KCTMO
Delete20.07. I'll tell you straight if no one else does.
DeleteBlakeman and Coad both agreed to sit on the TMO Board representing the views of New Labour and Socialism. They know that the TMO has made people's lives a misery. If they do not know this to be true, I have over estimated their intelligence and apologise for doing so.
Coad was on the TMO for a very long time. She should have told the local Labour Party that it was not appropriate for the Party to support an Organisation that treats tenants oppressively and has failed tenants at every turn. She should have had the decency to resign from the TMO Board to publicise the plight of those who are repeatedly seen off by the Black regime. All I ever heard her do was to snipe to me and other tenants about people she disliked at the TMO or on its Board. Juliet Rawlings, Reg Kerr Bell and Helen Evans come to mind from her past comments.
Coad did not resign and continued to serve on the TMO until Blakeman took over. The modus operandi of this pair has been to react when people report serious matters to them and to ignore those who report things to them that they do not want to do anything about. (I know this from personal experience of the pair of them.)
Coad and Blakeman would like us all to believe they were the "good guys" looking after the interests of working people and those claiming the social living in K&C Council flats. They would like us all to believe that they are not responsible for the dustbin of failed policies, questionable practices and administrative incompetence of the Black Regime. They are collectively responsible for all failures, both operational issues and policy matters, at the TMO. It simply will not do for you to suggest what could Coad and Blakeman do, god love them, in this sprawling housing bureaucracy? They both know that the TMO is, and always has been, a disaster and to continue to give succour to it by serving on its Board is repugnant and morally reprehensible. If they could not do anything to bring about root and branch reform in the TMO, and let us face it nothing at the TMO has ever improved, then it was time to bail out to press the Council to abolish the TMO. I don't expect much from the Tory Condon Simmonds who toes her party's line on subjecting tenants to a lifetime of misery but I do expect a higher moral standard from New Labour or its so called socialist reincarnation.
Go, go, go 21.02 and 01.36. It is time for everyone involved to admit failure including Labour people
DeleteThey've messed up. We can't afford for them to mess up again. Time to leave the TMO and resign from the Council
Delete01:36 - I have some sympathy for your argument but I do not believe it is accurate.
DeleteThe real purpose of the TMO is to keep the messy business of managing the Council's housing on a day-to-day basis a nice, safe distance from the relevant cabinet member, the leader, the rest of the cabinet, the Council and the Council's housing department. The TMO gives all of them all plausible deniability when things go pear shaped, as they often do, and they like it that way.
The TMO's board is a façade. A façade to provide an illusion of democracy. Those who sit on it have no real power or control over the TMO. The Board could disappear tomorrow and the TMO would continue to exist, perhaps not in its current guise, but in a similar form, and none of its problems would go away. The two Councillors currently sitting on the Board could resign tomorrow and it will make no difference. In fact the whole Board could resign tomorrow and it will make no difference. The TMO would continue to manage the housing stock and “alternative governance arrangements” would be dreamt up by the Council to provide it with a new façade of “tenant-led democracy”.
The TMO manage the housing stock because the Council, from the leader on down, want it to. The suggestion that they need a mandate of any kind from anyone else, is mistaken.
Anyone wishing to rid themselves of the TMO needs to forget about asking questions at the AGM, trying to call EGMs, putting together petitions and the like. If you really want rid of them then rid yourself of them – serve a right-to-manage notice on the Council and begin the process of taking over the day-to-day management of your housing. If you live in a large estate with hundreds of homes it is a daunting task that will require persistence and fortitude on the part of the residents, but if you live in a small block of flats with a couple of dozen flats it's a no-brainer.
If even a handful of estates, however small, were to serve right-to-manage notices on the Council citing the TMO's poor performance as the reason for doing so the Council would stand up and pay attention.
DeleteAnd if just one of those estates proceeded to manage itself the TMO's days would be numbered.
11.24. There is some truth in what you say.
DeleteThe fact remains is that Dent Coad and Blakeman are both guilty of a serious error of judgement for allowing the "facade" of tenant management, as you put it, to be disseminated falsely by Tories who want to abrogate all housing management responsibility to a Company and its Board that is not fit for purpose. By playing along with the Tory sham of tenant management, Dent Coad and Blakeman take blame and share responsibility for the misery inflicted on decent people who rent from the Council.
Why have these good Socialists been so willing to play along in the Tory sham of tenant management?
I thought they hated the Tories and were supposed to oppose them. Strange...can you enlighten me? It is definitely time for them both to resign for what they have done or have they got no shame.
You misunderstand.
DeleteI will repeat myself for the sake of clarity:
The two Councillors currently sitting on the Board could resign tomorrow and it will make no difference. In fact the whole Board could resign tomorrow and it will make no difference. The TMO would continue to manage the housing stock and "alternative governance arrangements" would be dreamt up by the Council to provide it with a new façade of “tenant-led democracy”.
If you want yourself rid of the TMO the escape route is clearly sign-posted: "the right to manage". The relevant information is here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tenant-management-organisations-guidance
Those disaffected with the TMO would be best advised to gather up their courage and go talk to their neighbours about the alternatives to the TMO described on that page.
Unfortunately I have a feeling that many of the people posting on here are incapable of having a conversation with their neighbours about anything, let alone the management of their homes, and would clearly prefer to spend their time moaning and recriminating rather than doing something productive that might actually result in an improvement to the quality of their own lives and those of their neighbours.
If so, the Council and TMO have little to fear from them or any "meetings" they might organise.
In reply to the above RBKC is a Tory led council, how can 2 labour councillors overthrow that machine, pie in the sky! You have so much to say and to criticise, please run for councillor and support do what you accuse others of not doing.
DeleteHave you never met the any of the Tory councillors who do absolutely NOTHING.
Councillor Blakeman does a good job we are lucky to have her. You obviously do not speak from experience, but we do!
I most certainly speak from experience of Judith Blakeman and Emma Dent Coad and neither of them impress me. They both know that the TMO is a miserable, pathetic, organisation; a disaster. For reasons that you have not explained they have consistently supported the TMO. I have heard Emma Dent Coad on more than one occasion take a swipe at people on the TMO that she disliked, for example Rawlings and Kerr Bell because they are Tories.
DeleteThey have both given succour to the tenant management myth whereas they should have withdrawn their support by leaving the TMO Board and by showing up the Tory led Council over the way in which its housing contractor treats tenants. If they had even tried to do this, I would have had some respect for them but they have played the Tory game and are every bit as guilty as Condon Simmonds for the misery visited on tenants.
In a Socialist Society, a workers' militia would judge them and decide their fate. Can the Constituency Labour Party report them to the NEC or the EC?
Dear 22:22
DeleteIt sounds like you would have done well to have lived in 1950's Soviet Union to experience your utopia. Cllr Judith Blakeman does an excellent job unlike her Tory counterparts who just seem to like the privileges.
19.46 asks how could two Labour Councillors overthrow the Tory machine.? They might not have been able to overthrow the TMO Tory machine but they didn't have to get in to bed with the Tories and con every Council tenant in to believing the tenant management myth. I think they have behaved despicably. They have both toed the TMO's line on collective responsibility admirably when they should have resigned from their Directorships and speaking out.
DeleteI won't ever let a Labour Councillor tell me what to do ever again or allow them to tell me that they know what is good for Council tenants.
What ever happened to the integrity of K&C Labour Councillors?
DeleteLabour Councillors acting as "Double Agents." Whatever next
DeleteWhen you lie down with dirt, you get dirty. I think this is what happened when poor Judith got in to bed with the TMO Board.
Delete23.51 If Judith B is naive for going on the TMO Board, what is Emma DC's excuse? Emma has a superior attitude and always appears to be very focused with a strategy. Let's see if Judith now does the right thing by resigning from the TMO. Emma got dirty lying down with dirt on the Board for about 6 years. By doing so she propagated the tenant management myth- no messing
DeleteIf this is the best that 2 K&C Labour Councillors can do for Council tenants by conning them in to believing the tenant management sham then how bad would it be if Labour got in with Jeremy Corbyn running the show.He tried to con us by sitting on the floor of a train when seats were available
DeleteKCTMO is a major problem for leaseholders too, malpractice, unsubstantiated service charges, poor major works/contractors, no accountability or service are just some examples, all of which are charged for.
ReplyDelete17.06. I am a leaseholder and I have never come across such bunch of useless individuals as I have in leaseholder services.. They have a careless and indifferent attitude to their work. They should all be sacked.
DeleteWell said, 23:30 agreed, see you on Thursday.
DeleteRobert Sasha Yvonne Theresa and Peter are normally very strident at work and very self assured. I don't like to see them feeling vulnerable and insecure.
ReplyDeleteWhat ever the TMO problems in relation to FOI to say that RBKC reply to requests and I am not trying to be rude, is utter rubbish. With regard to the TMO there is a certain amount of RBKC involvement they like to retain control but when the situation does not go according to plan they are quick to up and run. I am not saying that the TMO executives don't have a case to answer but RBKC are control freaks ask any organisation that has ever done business with them you would be horrified by some of the stories. Read the old Etonian's letter he has captured much of what is wrong with this borough and the idiots in control. The standards in this Borough are now some of the worst in the country.
ReplyDeleteAs for FOI issue, you've got to remember, TMO can't be blamed for refusing to answer FOI request because, in a legal sense, they are LTD company and no private company has to answer a FOI request by law. This is another reason why TMO must go if you don't want them to hide behind such protection. If you think you are getting worst deal, think again. Worst is yet to come if we were to carry on with TMO.
DeleteThe TMO does a sh*t job
ReplyDelete"Whether the object be to crush an army, to storm a city, or to assassinate an individual, (((it is always necessary to begin by finding out the names of the attendants))), the aides-de-camp, and door-keepers and sentries of the general in command. Our spies must be commissioned to ascertain these."
ReplyDeleteInteresting.
So which character are YOU going to come as?
I'll be going as "seriously pissed off of W11".
DeleteAnd I as "totally enraged of SW3".
DeleteThe most sensible suggestion here is to serve a right-to-manage notice on the TMO for your own block. You will have to work hard to obtain the right to manage, but when you get it, make sure you do and don't keep expecting other people to do it for you. Moaning from the sidelines is just pathetic.
DeleteIt's worth remembering that no-one taking up the right-to-manage is forced to actually manage their estate. It doesn't turn residents into managers or "staff" and no-one will be expected to wander round cleaning, gardening or carrying out repairs in the TMO's place.
DeleteYou can take the management allowance you'll receive from the Council and use it to appoint a private sector company to manage your block/estate for you. There are several estates in Westminster who did just that, and made use of the right-to-manage to escape the clutches of City West Homes and appoint someone substantially more competent to manage their homes.
The key point that residents will be able to do is decide what's important and what isn't and direct their property manager to act accordingly. In other words, it takes power away from the likes of Robert Black and his "executive team" and gives it to the people who actually live in the properties, have a rather better idea about what actually needs to be done to maintain the property and actually care enough to ensure that it is done properly.
DeleteA last, three positive and forward-looking comments. Let us hope that this evening's meeting can develop a way forward along these lines. Just demonstrating and whingeing is not the way to do it; this is.
DeleteI hear Mr & Mrs G Orwell will be attending this evening. I didn't know they used to live on Portobello Road, walk passed there so many times. lol
DeleteLet's not get bogged down on Cons vs Labour. It's a form of distraction which gets you nowhere and they like it that way because they don't have to answer your question. As you hop over to Labour Council, the residents are blaming the Labour. So both parties are no good. Demonolition will come to your estate and we need to act now than when it knocks on our door.
ReplyDeletePlease read Micky's comment Posted May 11, 2016 at 8:47 below. As you can see, it's happening over there too. When they are incovenienced, they just ignore you. Like Odeon....
http://www.brixtonbuzz.com/2016/05/in-photos-brixtons-guinness-trust-flattened-as-regenerationgentrification-marches-on/
So much was promised, so little delivered! It's right-to-manage now, or nothing.
ReplyDeleteI'm very impressed by the detail of your blog posts. This is going to be very helpful. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteResidential properties for sale in Marina Del Rey