Pulling many strings she manages to get him various jobs but after a week or two he is 'let go': theft, drunkenness and general licentiousness are often involved.
One of her ambitions is to get him into local government.
The idea came to her when she saw that K&C Housing Director, Laura Johnson- a geography graduate from John Moores, a mail order uni in Liverpool, is paid the thick end of £130,000 a year! Laura's unique under-qualification mirrors that of her friend, Robert Black of the TMO. Robert got some interior design qualification from an unknown college in Aberdeen!
Anyway, one of Laura's underlings is Janice Jones, a lady of a certain age who was the Lancaster West Housing Officer for a number of years.
She is now the Housing Officer in the Colville Ward (Portobello and surrounds).
She was considered by many as useless, inefficient and just waste of time.
Mrs. Jones, on one occasion, failed to act when a crack cooking/distribution den was reported to her.
It took Sgt May to deal with it.
It took Sgt May to deal with it.
She failed to act when a stench was reported coming from a mews flat claiming she had spoken to the gentleman only a week previously!
In fact, he was decomposing in his flat for the fifth week.
Action was taken only when the police were called.
She also failed to deal with anti-social behaviour on the Estate and illegal sub-letting, which is rife.
Laura, your highly paid job involves ensuring that you provide taxpayers with VFM.
Mrs. Jones is clearly in need of some training.....
Good Old Dame! Very important, from time to time, to prod these overpaid and under qualified Officers. And what on earth is a mail order expert doing in charge of the Royal Borough's housing?
ReplyDeleteDo hard pressed council tax payers need to fork out £130k every year to pay for someone to collect the rent? And of course tax payers also pay this rent (in most cases in North Kensington) via benefits which a high proportion of these occupants claim.
We should be clear that the bureaucracy in Hornton Street is not only failing to maintain its housing stock (eg Grenfell) but it is filling our housing with refugees and asylum seekers. Who in turn are claiming benefit but also sub letting illegally.
But it gets even worse. Hornton Street has over taxed hard pressed council tax payers by at least £300 million which it put into the piggy bank for new toys (eg Exhibition Road, Holland Park Opera) to be dreamed up by bored Councillors. Now the whole £300 million is being spent on £1 million flats to be occupied by the ex residents of Grenfell who will mostly pay the rent from benefits. And council tax payers will also pick up the £15k per year service charges due on these luxury properties earmarked for benefit seeking refugees.
A right old mess. The kind of situation that Emma Dent Coade, MP, should be trying to put right instead of moaning about chandeliers.
Mail order expert? well, that helps in ordering repairs. It is bit late and crass to cry about Grenfell survivors getting luxury flats, instead of 'affordable' or ' social' housing. Where were your objections at the planning stage/permission? How many of you who are now so, so concerned, expressed objections? So, rightfully, as there were only a handful of these, RBKC ploughed on. RBKC and many individuals handsomely benefiting from the schemes.
DeleteSad Badger, But Repairs Direct is also shambles so her experties hasn't helped.
DeleteCant wait for the Badger cull in Holland Park. Long overdue.
DeleteA Tory Council putting the low paid and unemployed into luxury housing alongside people who have worked hard and saved hard to get responsible jobs that can afford to pay for luxury properties. This is not what helps to make our economy move forward.
DeleteHard working taxpayers, waking up to find unemployed refugees sharing their block of flats.
Is this what Tory-ism has come to?????????
Nuts
Was Councillor Fielding-Mellen informed about the crack cocaine den that Mrs Jones failed to investigate?
ReplyDeleteCracking question. We should be told the answer.
Deletewhy? To point him to a new source?
DeleteYou cannot train the living dead. Mrs Jones should be pensioned off.
ReplyDeleteI understand that she may already qualify for OAP. But she can be sent to a pasture by RBKC/TMO. But, do not forget that she may also be a witness in the Grenfell disaster.
DeleteShe can be excused and sent away but can still be called back to give witness account in Court. Continued employment seems rather waste to me. We already know she's useless after all.
DeleteWhy is Laura Johnson still on post? Leader Campbell, post Grenfell, why are any RBKC Housing, Property, Regerartion on the payroll let alone engaging with North Kensington on any level? Weren't some Grenfell Task Force meant to be cleaning this swamp up?
ReplyDeleteHow can this the same seemingly corrupt group of Cllrs, Officers, and TMO bonus grabbers still be paid by us? Change must mean change. RBKC knowingly cruel it seems, if not somewhat morally sick!
Morally sick. That cannot be the case, as they are are all amoral.
DeleteAs I understand it Laura Johnson has gone.
DeleteNothing changes at the good old Kensington and Chelsea TMO. History has repeated itself. The TMO never ceases to amaze me.
ReplyDeleteI recall a similar situation wrought on by Elm Park Gardens' residents when Helen Evans was in charge back in 2008. An incompetent TMO Housing Officer told residents that a decomposing corpse in a Council flat would have to remain in the flat, with the attendant stench, until a Notice to Quit expired in twenty eight days' time. The smell of putrefaction permeated every nook and cranny in the building. Residents, including a Duchess, complained to no avail. The situation was only resolved after a couple of weeks in to the public health catastrophe when an RBKC Environmental Health Officer intervened, an official who clearly had a decent level of schooling and professional education; attributes that are evidently lacking amongst the many managers and workers at the TMO.
I always knew that Robert Black would not cut the mustard and pull the TMO round. In the presence of another resident and the then Company Secretary, Robert Black early on in his stint at the TMO told me that it did not matter who worked at the TMO as long as the management structure was "right" and that he was putting in place a better management structure to the one that existed under Gordon Perry and Helen Evans. I told him that I disagreed with this incredibly stupid remark because an "organisation is only as good as the people who work in it and in the case of the TMO none of them are up to much." Nine years on, it took the intervention of the police to get a decomposing corpse out of a Council flat.
The Secretaries of State with responsibility for Education, Social Services and Children's Services are empowered to disqualify incompetent and unsuitable people from working in these sectors. In the light of Grenfell and all the other fiascos at the TMO, it is high time that similar powers were conferred on the Secretary of State for Local Government to disqualify incompetent people from working in social housing.
The TMO in its twenty year history has gone from crisis to crisis and has been allowed to do so by Councillors of all political parties and its pathetic tenant management board.
from crisis to crisis, without any involvement of the Council. That was the reason for creating the TMO, to absolve the Council of any responsibilities. Get rid of them,
DeleteI can stomach a story about decomposing corpse but not KCTMO. I feel sick everytime I have to deal with them. No other organisation has given me this kind of adverse reaction in my life.
ReplyDeleteIt is also clear to me that, post-Grenfell, KCTMO's attitude towards safety has not changed. Business as usual.
Some facts: 1. Laura Johnson has left RBKC. 2. Janice Jones is an employee of the TMO, not the Council. 3. Grenfell Tower residents have not been rehoused in luxury homes; they have been offered homes in the affordable housing part of the Warwick Road development which are not luxury and do not have access to the spa, swimming pool and other grand facilities. These homes were always intended for affordable housing residents, so the fuss others are making about this should have been made before they bought their homes there, not afterwards. 5. Almost all Grenfell Tower residents paid their rent and were not on housing benefit. A number owned their flats, some on mortgages, some outright. The only residents on benefits were elderly or disabled residents. Please can people stop being so unspeakably nasty about people who have been through hell.
ReplyDeleteThank you 14.40 for the clarifications. Very good to have balanced information in social media. More like you should contribute to the dialogue.
DeleteCould you tell us why Council Tax (the £300 million reserves) is being used to buy social housing? I cannot think of any precedents, anywhere, when council tax has been used to invest in social housing for rent. What will happen when the £300 million is exhausted?
My information is that the Service Charge on the Warwick Road flats is £15k per year. Could you confirm this? Whatever it is, Kensington and Chelsea Council Tax payers will pick it up.......
Central Government (Mrs May) pledged to do what is necessary to cope with the Grenfell calamity where blame will soon be established by the police and the Enquiry. My information is that not a single penny has been contributed by central Government - for replacement housing and emergency relief.
Thank goodness more Tower Blocks did not catch fire......
In eight months time (local elections) we can expect the Tories to catch fire and be burnt to the ground in Kensington and Chelsea.
Tories wont catch fire in May. They will be torched!
Delete14.40. I agree that the nasty remarks about Grenfell Tower residents on this blog are despicable.You make a number of points that I do not believe are factually accurate despite your claims to the contrary.
DeleteHow do you know that:-
(i) Almost all Grenfell Tower residents paid their rent and were not on housing benefit?
and
(ii) The only residents on benefits were elderly or disabled.
I have twenty years' experience of working in the social housing arena. In that twenty years, I have never come across a tower block where the only residents on benefits were either elderly or disabled people. There is usually widespread poverty amongst residents of inner London tower blocks and I have no reason to believe that Grenfell Tower was different to other tower blocks in London. There is no disgrace in being on means tested benefits and it seems that by denying the poverty that exists in that building you are accepting the bigoted remarks of those uncharitable people who have negatively stereotyped Grenfell Tower residents and their entitlement to benefits.
The information that you have provided is not in the public domain which leads me to conclude that you may be an elected politician who is privy to this information in which case have a modicum of dignity and provide your name.
Go, go, go Shane. You're blunt but right about the TMO. More honest about the TMO than any of the councillors.
Delete14.40. Thanks for your correction. Thank you for informing that Laura Johnson has departed RBKC and will nolonger be coming into contact with Grenfell or other TMO/ RBKC tenants, who were- and are still- so appallingly treated...
ReplyDeleteAnon 14.:40. Some clarification appreciated. Nobody will cry about Johnson's departure. On the contrary, many should rejoice. But this does not prevent her from being compelled to answer questions re Grenfell. Re Jones: indeed she is wallowing in the adjunct swamp to the Town Hall, with little difference.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, those who are now whingeing about having new neighbours, should have thought of this possibility before buying. You can choose your friends, but not your neighbours. Alas! I don't think that there has been much resentment about Housing Benefits, as there has been about illegal sub-letting. This should have been more rigorously controlled by Ms Jones and RBKC's Ms Lord (fraud dept). Obviously, they failed miserably, hence the difficulty is getting a list together of actual residents. These two have some questions to answer. Re people having been through Hell: there are comments floating about some claiming multiple £ 5,000 from the fund; helping those not entitled to jump on the gravy train. So, please do not be so apologetic about it all
I never thought that the TMO would bring the Council to its knees. How the mighty Council has fallen thanks to the sick joke otherwise known as RBK&C tenant management.
ReplyDeleteDear Dame Hornet of Goodness and High Moral Standards,
ReplyDeleteWould you please start a blog so that readers may list those persons whom they would like to see disqualified from working, or serving on any Board of Management, in the social housing sector with the reasons why that person is being on the list.
19.44 Dear Dame,
ReplyDeletePlease set up a list. It would simply be the most to see who gets put on it. There are quite a few people that I would like to put on the list. For years, Black had people blacklisted now it's our turn.
Please appoint your best Hornet as Secretary of State for TMO Blacklisting.
DeleteROBERT BLACK
ReplyDeleteBARBARA MATTHEWS
DANIEL WOOD
NIZRAL ISLAM
PETER MADDISON
DAVID WARD
DOMINIC DAVIES
RAY CUNNINGHAM
SARAH LYNCH
.....to be continued .......
23.35. You are responding to my suggestion at 08.35.
DeleteI love it. The people you have put on the list should all be on it. Let's hope that The Dame sets up a special page for list creation. If she does, we will able able to give reasons for the listing those that we are putting on the list.
Everyone knows about the TMO's blacklist. Even Emma Dent Coad MP knows about it and she has never had a Council flat. She told Parliament that residents in conflict with the TMO or the Council's Housing Directorate were blacklisted. It is a serious disciplinary offence for a Member of Parliament to mislead the House of Commons. So Robert Black cannot deny the existence of the blacklist.
Juliet Rawlings
ReplyDeleteMaighread Condon Simmonds
Reg Kerr Bell
When you host the TMO Memorial Dinner, or throw a Street Party, to celebrate the end of theTMO I will arrange for a Lord High Executioner to do a turn for you with the TMO version of the list in the style of The Mikado.
Delete" it doesn't really matter who you put upon the list,
let none of 'em be missed, let none of 'em be missed"
Catherine Dack
ReplyDeleteJanet Seward
YVONNE BIRCH
ReplyDeleteI've not come across Sarah Lynch or Nizral Islam. Who are they? What posts do they hold? And why are they on the list?
ReplyDeleteEveryone else deserves to be on it.
Ms. Jevans
ReplyDeleteTHERESA BROWN
ReplyDeleteThey're the TMO's finest.
Delete06.48 The finest in the business, the best they have.
DeleteThe TMO claimed in an Employment Tribunal matter that they always recruit the best person for the job. We all know they do that very well.....
Delete