Bastard Housing Association Leaving Me With No Heating!

[Guineveretoo]

This is pathetic. You were nitpicking and now you're denying it. I also said later that his salary is relevant...or perhaps you missed that too? You say that you were "making a point/statement" but you did so in order to try and make me look stupid. Pity it backfired - eh?

You never said anything to oryx for rasing the issue in the first place...odd that.

You're the one who needs to learn to grow up. You could do with learning how to communicate too. It's not one of your strong points.

You don't really think that I was trying to make you look stupid, do you?

I certainly wasn't doing so, but your constant harping on seems to have done that all by itself.

I posted on a public thread - oryx can read it, too. If I had meant to make a point just to you, I would have sent you a pm.

Anyway, I am not going to reply to any more of these silly posts from you, not least because I am aware that, any second, I will be told to start ignoring you, so I will do so of my own accord.

I will only reply to posts on this thread which are on topic, and not about some spurious nonsense as to my motives for posting

 

[bluestreak]

As a Peabody tenant, he's worse. I don't think I know many Trust tenants who approve of what he's doing: the closure of estate offices; the selling off of Trust properties for a profit; Peabody Direct...and those are just a few reasons.

Peabody Direct is worse than estate offices? Not for the majority of tenants that didn't have an Estate Office on their Estate, according to my personal research. Many tenants disapprove of selling off Trust properties however, and I kind of agree with them, but believe me, without it Peabody wouldn't have been anywhere close to meeting Decent Homes standard, as rubbish as that is. It may not seem like he's better, but from a financial and performance management viewpoint he's turned the Trust around. The last guy nearly bankrupted you by bidding on pretty much every Council House Transfer going when the Trust simply could not afford to maintain the Estates, let alone keep to its promises. The King's Cross 7 is a case in point - the Trust simply couldn't manage that using its existing infastructure. Howlett also renegotiated a series of bank loans the last guy had taken out on Trust properties to save over a million quid in interest repayments. You may not think so, and I doubt he's perfect but he's definitely a better financial manager than the last bloke.

As QAO I was also privy to performance monitoring on complaints and investigations by the Ombudsman and those significantly improved once the pre-Howlett backlog had been cleared too.

I havne't worked for them for a year though, so I don't know what it's like now.

 

[nino_savatte]

You don't really think that I was trying to make you look stupid, do you?

I certainly wasn't doing so, but your constant harping on seems to have done that all by itself.

I posted on a public thread - oryx can read it, too. If I had meant to make a point just to you, I would have sent you a pm.

Anyway, I am not going to reply to any more of these silly posts from you, not least because I am aware that, any second, I will be told to start ignoring you, so I will do so of my own accord.

I will only reply to posts on this thread which are on topic, and not about some spurious nonsense as to my motives for posting

What's the use? You're just being wilfully ignorant. You're on ignore, where you should have been awhile ago.

 

[nino_savatte]

Peabody Direct is worse than estate offices? Not for the majority of tenants that didn't have an Estate Office on their Estate, according to my personal research. Many tenants disapprove of selling off Trust properties however, and I kind of agree with them, but believe me, without it Peabody wouldn't have been anywhere close to meeting Decent Homes standard, as rubbish as that is. It may not seem like he's better, but from a financial and performance management viewpoint he's turned the Trust around. The last guy nearly bankrupted you by bidding on pretty much every Council House Transfer going when the Trust simply could not afford to maintain the Estates, let alone keep to its promises. The King's Cross 7 is a case in point - the Trust simply couldn't manage that using its existing infastructure. Howlett also renegotiated a series of bank loans the last guy had taken out on Trust properties to save over a million quid in interest repayments. You may not think so, and I doubt he's perfect but he's definitely a better financial manager than the last bloke.

As QAO I was also privy to performance monitoring on complaints and investigations by the Ombudsman and those significantly improved once the pre-Howlett backlog had been cleared too.

I havne't worked for them for a year though, so I don't know what it's like now.

There used to be an estate office here and when it was closed, the day to day maintenance of the estate went downhill. Most of the staff that work in Peabody Direct don't know anything about maintenance issues (as has been illustrated above). The vast majority of tenants on my estate have nothing nice to say about Howlett. I think you need to ask those tenants who used to have estate offices how they feel about the closures.

You do realise that they sent a questionnaire out before they closed the estate offices? Nowhere on that form was the question "Do you want to keep your estate office"? The outcome had already been decided and the questionnaire was a mere formality.

Aye, Kings Cross was a disaster for the Trust and tbh, I could see that one coming.

 

[bluestreak]

You're no worse off now than a) Peabody Tenants who didn;t have Estate Offices and b) the average tenant anywhere. Estate Offices are good for those who have them but are very expensive to run. Personally I think they should have kept the ones they had, but there you go. I did ask lots of tenants how they felt, and yes, people who had Estate Offices aren't happy but on average the research I was doing personally showed that Tenants are happier with Peabody Direct. Most tenants want a fully manned estate office on each estate, local full time maintenance and caretaking team, etc etc. The simple truth is that the money isn't there. You're still better off than a private tenant.

The questionnaire you refer to is nothing to do with the research I worked on, in case that's what you think - the decision wasn't made without consulting residents, there are tenants on the board, there are residents groups with real power etc.

Which estate do you live on, if you don't mind me asking?

 

[Guineveretoo]

Whose decision was it to close the estate offices which did exist? Was it a management committee decision, or was it a Housing Corporation recommendation, or was it simply a decision of the chief executive?

It does seem a bit mean to go for the lowest common denominator, and close the estate offices even where these were deemed to be valuable, or was the money saved used to open this "peabody direct" thing, which is, presumably, available to all tenants? What did those tenants who lived in properties not covered by an estate office in the past do previously?

 

[bluestreak]

No decision can be an executive decision. All operational proposals whether internal or external have to go in front of the board and various committees - the board includes a number of tenants so that tenant voices are represented. Consultation is an HC recommendation, requirement in some areas as I understand.

Peabody Direct is available to all tenants. It's a call centre / clearing house. They log repair requests, deal with anything non-speciality or administrative like rent enquiries, general information queries. They're not housing professionals or maintenance workers, but they are given constant training and have access to all policies and processes. They are allowed to redirect calls to the correct department, though it is not encouraged unless they simply can't deal with the issue themselves.

Previously a tenant without an Estate Office would have to call or visit their nearest Regional Estate Office. Most tenants without local EOs who had to do this find that they have more access to Peabody than previously.

Once they'd visited they would have had to make an appointment with the Housing Officer or Maintenance Officer who would visit, assess what work had to be done and make an order, or in the case of simpler repairs would order work. Peabody Direct is worse because it's more impersonal, but better because it's manned far more and with a wider range (though less depth) of knowledge.

 

[bluestreak]

And HAs are mean. They have to be. They have to spend loads of money on building non social housing property in order to fund takeovers of properties that councils should be running. They have to provide more services for less money to a higher standard or face govt. censure and funding cuts. They're not allowed to get on with the job of providing social housing. It's shit, the whole thing is making the best of a shit situation. People like Howlett are needed because they're liberals who know how to do well getting more for less. Capitalists, basically. And SH shouldn't be run for profit, no matter what our glorious government think. They should provide better homes to more people.

 

[nino_savatte]

You're no worse off now than a) Peabody Tenants who didn;t have Estate Offices and b) the average tenant anywhere. Estate Offices are good for those who have them but are very expensive to run. Personally I think they should have kept the ones they had, but there you go. I did ask lots of tenants how they felt, and yes, people who had Estate Offices aren't happy but on average the research I was doing personally showed that Tenants are happier with Peabody Direct. Most tenants want a fully manned estate office on each estate, local full time maintenance and caretaking team, etc etc. The simple truth is that the money isn't there. You're still better off than a private tenant.

The questionnaire you refer to is nothing to do with the research I worked on, in case that's what you think - the decision wasn't made without consulting residents, there are tenants on the board, there are residents groups with real power etc.

Which estate do you live on, if you don't mind me asking?

That's debatable but then, that's the nature of research.

Some of the LAs that I worked for, who had got rid of their caretakers, later came to regret that decision and reinstated them. The caretakers are the eyes and ears of the estate and when it comes to smaller jobs, they tend to be a lot cheaper than paying a tradesman on the SOR (Schedule of Rates).

I mentioned the questionnaire because it's a good example of how a particular consultation was carried out by the Trust and how the decision to close the estate offices was taken without consulting the tenants (as evidenced by the way in which the q'uaire was written). My problem was primarily with the wording of the questionnaire (I've worked in market research too, for my sins). if the Trust is going to send out a questionnaire that asks residents how they would like their services to be delivered, then the option to retain the estate offices should have been written into the questionnaire.

I'll give my location by pm.

 

[nino_savatte]

And HAs are mean. They have to be. They have to spend loads of money on building non social housing property in order to fund takeovers of properties that councils should be running. They have to provide more services for less money to a higher standard or face govt. censure and funding cuts. They're not allowed to get on with the job of providing social housing. It's shit, the whole thing is making the best of a shit situation. People like Howlett are needed because they're liberals who know how to do well getting more for less. Capitalists, basically. And SH shouldn't be run for profit, no matter what our glorious government think. They should provide better homes to more people.

Well, this all goes back to the general housing issue: the RTBs that led to the haemorrhaging of housing stock, none of which was replenished by the councils because central gov't had cut off the funds for new builds. HAs were supposed to take up the slack but this has led many of them to bite off more than they could chew. Peabody is a classic case.

 

[Guineveretoo]

I think that, by RTB, you mean "right to buy", and the fact that a lot of publicly funded housing was lost to the social housing movement by this policy, which meant that people could buy their council (or housing association in most cases) home at an obscene discount, without the receipts from those sales being put back into housing.

I am not sure that housing associations were expected to "take up the slack", though, because that suggests a complete policy and what actually happened was an overriding Tory attack on the provision of social housing by the State, whether that was directly provided by local authorities, or through government funded housing associations.

Neither am I convinced that Peabody was a victim of this scheme as such, but wonder whether, in common with many other charitable housing associations, it simply got too big too quickly, and was not able to continue to provide the specialist, individual support to its tenants as it had previously been able to.

I speculate that, in fact, they brought in a new chief executive to try and reposition themselves and get themselves out of the risky position they were in, and that the closure of the estate offices is part of that risk avoidance?

 

[scifisam]

@N1 Buoy - glad to hear that. You never know, maybe you'll get compensation by Christmas, like an extra present! Yeah, and it'll be dropped down the chmney by Santa

i think we try and sort it within 24 hours during the winter, but sorting it, can mean, supplying temporary heaters while we wait for parts, i think there's a scale of compensation if tenants are without heating/hot water for more than 3 days

That's fair enough - you can't work miracles, even at Christmas!

I think people are getting a bit confused. As far as I can tell, there should be no reason for disagreement with Oryx. There is no LEGAL obligation on social landlords to follow the "right to repair" regulations, so there is no "law" that they have to follow. There is, however, a duty under their relationship with the Housing Corporation, which is the body which funds and monitors housing associations, and which can take action against a housing association which fails to adhere to the regulations.

The idea is that social landlords, like the Peabody Trust, should behave as if the regulations apply, but the remedy, should they fail to do so, is not through the law, because there is no legal requirement.

There is quite clearly a duty on the landlord to sort out the heating, and I would complain not just that they failed to do so, but that they have not trained/informed their staff correctly. Complain through the internal process, though, keeping copies of all correspondence, and don't try and say that they have broken the law, because they haven't, and it merely diverts from what I believe to be a genuine complaint which should be dealt with.

I never actually said 'law' at all. I said that Peabody were obliged to deal with this problem. Oryx disagreed with that.

Nino said 'law,' but, to be fair, I, too, sometimes (lazily, I guess) use 'law' as a shorthand for 'rules, regulations, you know, things you have no choice about doing.'

Peabody are obliged to treat loss of hot water and heating as an emergency. From all the sources on this thread, it looks like all social landlords are obliged to do that. Whether it's a law, a regulation, or a 'guideline' which everyone has to follow (which means it becomes a rule rather than a guidelne), is semantics: the effect is still that the SLR has to treat this event as an emergency.

Like I said before, I have complained in writing through Peabody's site, and my complaint is purely about the wrong information given out by that particular person at Peabody Direct. They called back (speaking to my partner), and I think that issue will be dealt with - I'm happy with all that.

Also like I said before (I hate repeating myself so much) they did sort my heating out within 24 hours after I went through a different route of reporting the repair, so I was never going to complain about that anyway.

@WRT the changes and standards slipping - I have to say that, as a tenant on an estate that previously had an estate office, the standards have slipped dramatically. Previously the caretaker would organise repairs very quickly, and everything was in excellent condition. Now repairs (the non-urgent kind) take forever, and the kids' playpark has been smashed to pieces and left unrepaired.

The worst thing was when they repainted all the windows - while they were closed. Now most of them won't open (which is a big fire hazard in this particular flat - it's above a deep kind of 'dry moat' where the old caretakers' store rooms are, and the only windows that access the ground are now sealed), and all my window box plants died.

It's possible that before we were simply very lucky and had an excellent caretaker (I knew him by name within days of moving in), and now we've gone down to a more normal standard.

I've never got involved in tenants' associations or anything like that, and, with the hours I work, I'm never likely to, so I have no idea about the more complex reasons behind any of the changes really.

Of course, I do have a good deal in comparison to most private tenants, and I'm grateful for that. But that doesn't mean I can't have a little moan on a messageboard when things go wrong.

FWIW, the old estate office is now finally almost ready for a family to move in (I presume planning permission or something was what caused the hold-up in adapting its use), so that's a better use of space - one good thing about the estate offices being closed. I'm hoping the new tenants are a nice family with kids my daughter's age.

 

[Nikki7316]

During the heating season, which runs from October to March, social landlords are obliged to remedy any heating/hot water problems within 24 hours regardless of whether or not you are vulnerable or have children under 5. Afaik, this is the LAW...or this is at least the case with all the HA's and local authorities that I worked for.

I would make a complaint through their complaints procedure, if I were you; and once the process has been exhausted you could take your complaint to the Housing Ombudsman. The chances are it won't come to this and your landlord will apologise. But this obviously doesn't immediately solve your problem.

Who is your landlord? You can pm me the details if you wish.

Hi
I just phoned my housing association as my boiler has gone. No heating no hot water. I phoned the emergency line and I am asthmatic and I have work on Monday. But she said i'll phone the heating company and see if they'll come out. If they dont think its am emergancy they will not it will be Monday. It's Saturday and that was at 6.50am.
I'm having to sit in bed as it's literally freezing here.
But I have not heard back yet. Does anyone know if they do have to do repairs within 24 hrs?? I'm froze and stressing which is making my asthma worse. I have a nebuliser which the housing association were told of. But no reply yet over an hour.
Can anyone advise?? Please and thank you

 

[Schmetterling]

Hi
I just phoned my housing association as my boiler has gone. No heating no hot water. I phoned the emergency line and I am asthmatic and I have work on Monday. But she said i'll phone the heating company and see if they'll come out. If they dont think its am emergancy they will not it will be Monday. It's Saturday and that was at 6.50am.
I'm having to sit in bed as it's literally freezing here.
But I have not heard back yet. Does anyone know if they do have to do repairs within 24 hrs?? I'm froze and stressing which is making my asthma worse. I have a nebuliser which the housing association were told of. But no reply yet over an hour.
Can anyone advise?? Please and thank you

Your HA should have a section on their website listing turn-around times for repairs and which are considered emergency, 24-hour, etc. HTH

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

Hi
I just phoned my housing association as my boiler has gone. No heating no hot water. I phoned the emergency line and I am asthmatic and I have work on Monday. But she said i'll phone the heating company and see if they'll come out. If they dont think its am emergancy they will not it will be Monday. It's Saturday and that was at 6.50am.
I'm having to sit in bed as it's literally freezing here.
But I have not heard back yet. Does anyone know if they do have to do repairs within 24 hrs?? I'm froze and stressing which is making my asthma worse. I have a nebuliser which the housing association were told of. But no reply yet over an hour.
Can anyone advise?? Please and thank you

Call them back and ask if their contractor is coming out, no heating or hot water is an emergency and explain that you have a health condition and should be classed as a vulnerable tenant.
Fingers crossed for you as it must be hell without hearing in this weather!

 

[zippyRN]

During the heating season, which runs from October to March, social landlords are obliged to remedy any heating/hot water problems within 24 hours regardless of whether or not you are vulnerable or have children under 5. Afaik, this is the LAW...or this is at least the case with all the HA's and local authorities that I worked for.

I would make a complaint through their complaints procedure, if I were you; and once the process has been exhausted you could take your complaint to the Housing Ombudsman. The chances are it won't come to this and your landlord will apologise. But this obviously doesn't immediately solve your problem.

Who is your landlord? You can pm me the details if you wish.

Act and Section Please

 

[StoneRoad]

zippyRN

READ THE THREAD

 

[existentialist]

Act and Section Please

Fuck off. You're trolling pretty much any support thread you can find, and it's nasty.

 

[Pickman's model]

Act and Section Please

Only an stupid wanker would ask such a question of a nine year auld post

 

[StoneRoad]

Should I annoy the mods / editor by suggesting (as one of the other threads) that the such "helpful" posts from orange zipped one be reported ?

For the first time in all my years on here I am seriously considering putting another poster on ignore.

 

[Pickman's model]

Should I annoy the mods / editor by suggesting (as one of the other threads) that the such "helpful" posts from orange zipped one be reported ?

For the first time in all my years on here I am seriously considering putting another poster on ignore.

Pm editor

 

[StoneRoad]

Pm editor

I might just do that, the poster in question is trolling and seems fireproof to flaming /sweary replies !

 

[existentialist]

Should I annoy the mods / editor by suggesting (as one of the other threads) that the such "helpful" posts from orange zipped one be reported ?

For the first time in all my years on here I am seriously considering putting another poster on ignore.

He is not directly annoying me enough to warrant my ignoring him, but I am offended by the way in which he seems to be targeting threads in which vulnerable people are trying to find support, and instead are encountering what must look awfully like the attitudes they're trying to deal with IRL.

 

[StoneRoad]

He is not directly annoying me enough to warrant my ignoring him, but I am offended by the way in which he seems to be targeting threads in which vulnerable people are trying to find support, and instead are encountering what must look awfully like the attitudes they're trying to deal with IRL.

Same here, but he's getting soooooo close to that line.
But since I want to be able to report the trolling ...
Cleft stick dilemma , ain't it !

 

[existentialist]

Same here, but he's getting soooooo close to that line.
But since I want to be able to report the trolling ...
Cleft stick dilemma , ain't it !

If he really is trolling (as opposed to merely being a clodhopping, insensitive bastard), then flaming him will be to give him exactly what he's after (or was, at 2am, in his cups). Report away

 

[High Voltage]

OP dated 14th December 2007

My heating and hot water aren't working. I have a housing association flat, so I called their hotline to report the repair . . . I'm going to wait till 8 o'clock, report it to the out of hours team and, if necessary, pretend that I have a one-year-old neice staying with me for the weekend

Supportive post 15th December 2007

During the heating season, which runs from October to March . . . Who is your landlord? You can pm me the details if you wish.

Far from helpful, totally irrelevant contribution (yet still quoting the supportive text as if it's still current) - 9+ years later - finger on the pulse mate, well done

Act and Section Please

 

[Pickman's model]

zippyRN has gone all brave sir robin I see