Advice re MMA

What you have accessed on the internet is the standard model guidance for a Modular Management Agreement. 

The MMA contract between the Council and the K&C TMO would however be a more bespoke version as TMOs can opt to carry out a range of different specified management duties. The respective duties of the 2 parties to the MMA can of course get renegotiated over time.

Be very interesting what the actual current MMA says about the respective responsibilities and duties between the TMO and the Council in respect of managing and authorising the Major Repairs spend and budget ie the actual finances that would be drawn upon to pay for refurbishment of something like Grenfell Tower. I suspect that this responsibility lay with the Council and would involve designated Councillors in their financial authorisation role.. This goes to the heart of what went wrong at Grenfell of course.

Last week's Inside Housing  magazine(article 'Council votes to terminate contract with the KCTMO' dated 6th October 2017) carried an article that said that 14 Tenants Associations in the Borough has signed an open  letter expressing a lack of confidence in the TMO organisation. It also said that 25 leaders of residents associations supported removing the TMO from managing the stock. This is quite understandable given what has happened of course but.....

What they are in effect (probably unknowingly and innocently to be fair) doing is surrendering any remaining vestiges of Tenant power to the Council. Just what the Council have always wanted of course. Worth remembering that(despite what Channel 4 mistakedly like to propogate) the Council did not originally want a TMO to be set up back in 1995 but had to go along with it because the Tenants served a 'Right to Manage' Notice on the Council to force the issue. The Tenants Associatiopns in the Borough at that time (1994/5) wanted to get away from what they considered a permanently-in-power Conservative Council that had no interest in looking after let alone improving the various estates. Their setting up the TMO campaign was done at this time in good progressive faith, their campaign slogan was 'We can do it better'. Indeed they could and did run a better service for a number of years. Sadly this would be more variable in some later years. It's not the TMO management model itself however that was at fault but some inadequate staff in certain areas and a less empowered set of  Board Members cultivated by some clever manipulative officers who took over the real power.  I could never understand why the role of Chair was not taken by a Tenant or a Leaseholder. I never heard a single public word from the person who was the TMO Chair in the post Grenfell fire period.  This would prove disastrous in my view. It would come to blight the whole TMO sector which is, by and large, an honourable body who in most cases,provide better services than the Council's own housing management undertake. That's my take on matters.

Delaying the winding up process is clearly going to be challenging but if it were to succeed it might just give time for the Tenants and Leaseholders to know what the next steps would be. To be able to make an informed choice as to the way forward.  I cannot see Tenants getting any say if one of the big Housing Associations took over the management on behalf of the Council. It's a tough call for the Tenants.

I predict that the recently merged Peabody/ Family Mosaic HA will be approached by the Council. This would of course be an absolute disaster for the Tenants. Hope I am wrong here! We shall see.......