Further Advice

The following comment was forwarded to this blog:

It's an invidious situation that the K & C Tenants are in as clearly the current TMO Management service has failed them but what the Council are now proposing is to eliminate all tenant presence on the managing board. In a perverse sense, it is punishing what modest tenant empowerment for what has gone wrong. It is an unfortunately predictable response by the Council as it enables them to present themselves as somehow 'rescuing' the unfortunate Tenants from the wicked oppressive management of a body that in theory was supposed to be an example of Tenant empowerment. In reality the organisation became dominated after several years by self serving officers who were able to manipulate to their advantage; they ran the show.

The wonderful enthusiasm of the tenants and leaseholders who set up the original body back in 1995 were gradually displaced. The dedicated Labour Councillor John Keyes, an early promoter of the TMO model sadly passed on a few years after it was set up. I always thought that this was a big blow at the time as he had this empowerment vision. One of the very best Tenant Board activist members committed suicide by jumping off one of the Worlds End tower blocks. My own thinking  is that all efforts to delay the vote be employed so that those who care about the empowerment of the tenants at a management decision making level buy themselves some time to think through/formulate some new alternative governance structure in the managing of the homes. Clearly the current managing body has to go, as everyone has lost confidence in them. The current Chair of the TMO is not even a tenant. I have never seen or heard any comment from this person since the fire; it's as if she does not exist.

If the management of the homes is passed to an agency such as a Housing Association then tenants can kiss goodbye to having the opportunity to take more effective control of their service. Worth remembering that TUPE would kick in if another managing body (even the Council itself) takes over. This can mean perhaps unfortunately that the very same staff who appear to have not responded to the Grenfell tenants’ complaints and representations would transfer across to the new management. How they are managed and turn around their performance and probably more importantly their attitude, is something the replacement management body would need to achieve. It may well be that the current Inquiry will resolve some of the bad management issues by TMO staff anyway.

Before a vote of the TMO members takes place, Tenants need to know what is the proposed alternative and be able to exercise due diligence about its reality.  The Tenants may well need some independent advice on this point. Housing consultant Steve Hilditch may be the best adviser. He was a wonderful inclusive chair for the Hammersmith and Fulham ALMO when it was in operation. They got a 3 star rating. He helped develop tenants (an enormously important support function needed by Tenants) on the ALMO Board; a Councillor on the ALMO Board at the time said Steve was the 'best Chair he had ever come across'. Perhaps what needs to be developed is a fresh governance structure which really involves tenants and leaseholders. Something that groups like the Grenfell Action Group would sign up to. A revised constituency/ new constitution in effect is what is needed. At this stage perhaps there needs to be a Tenants and Leaseholders Steering Group dedicated to exploring the future management alternatives, to take these options forward. I read that there are 25 TRAs operating in the Borough. Consult them first of all to see if they think that developing a new governing management structure might be worthwhile and whether they would support efforts to examine what this might mean.

Terminating a TMO Modular Management Agreement has a voting authority process but it seems that this termination is being proposed without the Tenant membership body knowing what they are voting for ie what happens next. I would respectfully suggest that it is not in the tenants and leaseholders’ interest to leave the decision making up to such an uncaring Council. That is what will happen if the TMO is wound up right now. In 1995 I was part of a small team of TPAS independent housing consultants who helped set up the original TMO. The key motivation was to get away from what the tenant and leaseholder activists perceived as a permanent Conservative Council administration. Their campaign logo was 'We can do it better'. I produced a campaign video of that name for the tenants and leaseholders who wanted this change which featured only the words of the tenants reps. Despite what Channel 4 keep mistakenly saying, it was not the initiative of the Council to 'outsource' the management of the homes to a new TMO. What actually happened was that the tenants themselves served, what is known as a 'Right to Manage' Notice on the Council. The Council could not resist this serving of Notice. For a number of years, it worked well and the management service was generally really good, but changes over time in the personnel changed that. Did you know that Notting Hill Housing Group owned 3 leasehold flats at Grenfell Tower which they leased out to K & C homeless families? Two of the families were lost in the fire. They also own 23 such flats on the next door Lancaster West Estate; families from these 23 flats had to be evacuated due to the fire.