Letter of 19th Sep 2019

Dear Kim,

I hope you are well and have had a pleasant Summer.

We are writing to you to try and seek some clarification of the position of leaseholders on the Lancaster West Estate, especially regarding the planned recharges. There have been several different offers from the council on this and also now, following our successful meeting with the ministers on the 1st July the sums committed and timings have both changed.

The last figures I have are from the Leadership Team meeting on 23rd July and these were confirmed by James Caspell at a meeting on the 10th September. Here you outlined the decision to recharge non-resident leaseholders, following representations from residents, raising up to an extra 12% of the budget (£7m). You state that it is not fair to consider the tenants bearing costs for the refurbishment of the leaseholders yet at no point do you consider using this money to cover the costs of the refurbishment for resident leaseholders. Out of the 187 resident leaseholders how many of them are non-resident? Why have you not even considered this idea?

You state that we are not being recharged for any of the Government Grant money yet you cannot legally recharge for a grant and this is no favour to the leaseholders.

Also, you have stated that you understand the unique set of circumstances at the Lancaster West Estate in your letter of 13th December yet you are recharging the resident leaseholders the maximum you legally can under The Social Landlords Mandatory Reduction of Service Charges (England) 214 Act then offering a paltry discount of 20%. Yet as the works being offered to the Leaseholders are only new windows and radiators all of these charges could be included as paid out of the money from the Government Grant and lead to no recharge. This was stated as a possibility by Doug Goldring to residents in one of our first meetings about this. The fact is that a major part of the cost of the refurbishment will be the interior work on the socially tenanted flats. Leaseholders will, of course, not benefit from this. Therefore this proportion of the cost should be deducted. this would more than halve the recharge.

When the (as we now know) disastrous refurbishment works were undertaken in Grenfell Tower the council eventually decided that no recharge would be made. What are the differences between these two cases and what were the even greater 'special circumstances' of the leaseholders in the tower pre-fire? I would request any legal advice you have on both these decisions. We have been asking for this for two years now. This is the last time we will ask for this otherwise we will take out a Freedom of Information request for it. It is also telling that the Central Government money came as the result of the trauma suffered by Lancaster West residents and that this should be recognised by them but nor by the Council who must accept some responsibility for this trauma.

The leaseholders are only being offered basic repairs to their properties, not the 20th century model of social housing promised by the council leader. Surely have already paid for these repairs through their service charge and the years of neglect from the TMO?

Though the leaseholders understand the arguments that they will reap the benefits of the work through increased value in their properties but these are basic repairs following years of neglect and disrepair and please remember we are still suffering the effects of this disaster on a daily basis.  It is also the case that the value of the leaseholds has fallen precipitately as a result of what happened and the forthcoming works.

We are pleased that you are prepared to offer the internal improvements to the leaseholders at a good price (with a management fee of around 10%) as this is something many leaseholders have asked about and is a testament to the quality of the work we have seen in the flats that have been refurbished so far and the management of the W11 team.

At the procurement meeting a few months ago you made a minuted promise to investigate the possibility of providing financial assistance to the leaseholders to get genuine, independent legal advice on this offer. We have spoken to James Caspell about this and he sees no problem with this as long as we provide a clear out-line of what we will be looking at and the expected costs. We are currently investigating who we would like to carry out this work and what the scope will be.

We are also investigating the discounts and allowances made to tenants and businesses in baseline as it seems these were far more generous (and have persisted for longer) than those that were given to the leaseholders. Can you confirm if the businesses in Baseline are still receiving a discount for the disruption yet residents, many of them living directly above are not? I request that you send us a full table of the discounts offered to tenants and when they were offered along with the discounts offered to the leaseholders so we can compare.

It is disappointing that the council have refused to budge on its offer and would argue that with some creativity we could structure this to allow everyone to feel this gesture as it was intended, as an act of reparation and not as a financial penalty to some of the residents.

I look forward to your reply and hope we work towards a positive solution on this.