Letter to Kim Taylor-Smith 26.05.2020
Dear Kim
I hope you are keeping well.
I know you have all been busy in the Council providing support and assistance across the borough. Now that the lockdown is lifting I am writing to you again as none of the leaseholders have received a satisfactory answer to any of our questions on the recharges. With the 3rd anniversary of the fire rapidly approaching it seems a good time to remind the Council why they, along with the Government, committed to make Lancaster West a model of 21st Century Social Housing. The residents quite rightly see this as reparation for what they suffered and will continue to suffer for many years.
I have attached the Lancaster West Leaseholder Association letter from the 11th of September, and despite our meeting on 9th January this year we still don’t feel we have had our points answered directly. When the Government gave their initial £15 million, which was matched by the Council you stated that recharging would be based on the effect on the HRA (section 6.7 in the attached document). Then when you reached the decision in March 2019 you stated that The Social Landlords Discretionary Reduction of Service Charges (England) Directions 2014 did not allow you to waive service charges, that does not appear to be so. I have attached the relevant document for you. Indeed, in the criteria section 3e:
any other circumstance of the lessee which the social landlord considers relevant.
This gives the social landlord total discretion. I cannot think of a more relevant circumstance than the catastrophe of the fire and the aftermath.
There has been a collapse in the value of the leases post fire, leaving leaseholders unable to move and the modernisation of Lancaster West will not do anything more than restore our homes to somewhere near their original value. When looked at in conjunction with the direction the economy is headed due to the current pandemic, it would be totally unjust to recharge any amount to the leaseholders. In comparison to the loss of value of leasehold properties, approximately £9m, the amount the Council is trying to recoup by recharging leaseholders is only circa £1.5m of the £60m raised for the works.
It is good to remember that the Council’s reserves before Grenfell were, in no small part, funded by a surplus in the HRA. A profit, that was generated by the TMO’s chronic under-investment, as you stated yourself. It is only logical to conclude that we as leaseholders have already paid for our new windows and heating system through our service charges.
You acknowledged in January that had the Grenfell fire not occurred, Lancaster West leaseholders would be facing compulsory purchase orders and demolition of Lancaster West Estate rather than a 21st-century model estate.
At our meeting in January you promised to investigate why leaseholders in the Walkways should be recharged for a new boiler/heating system. The Council should be able to recover the cost from the insurance of the boiler destroyed in the fire, which was also serving the Walkways’ heating system. By charging leaseholders, it appears the Council is attempting to recover this cost twice.
We have also not received any reassurance or guarantee that the £15k the Council is planning to recharge will be a one-off charge over a 5year period, or whether further £15k charges will follow thereafter.
The Council and TMO found it possible to regard major works to the Tower as improvements in 2012 and to waive any charges to leaseholders. You expressed surprise about this in our meeting in January. I have attached the letter written to the Grenfell Leaseholders dated 12th October 2012 for your convenience. You promised to go away and investigate this with Doug, yet we have heard nothing back from you. As stated in my letter of 11th September, we would urge you reconsider your position and to look at this as a long-awaited modernisation and improvement of the estate which will aid the residents’ recovery and not merely as regular, cyclical repairs that can be paid for by leaseholders.
The resident leaseholders on this estate are not rich: they form a high proportion of the residents because they love living here. They have suffered much and have much to go through still; a 20% discount does not provide us with any comfort or appease the situation we find ourselves in through no fault of our own. The terms of payment are little better than the standard repayment options you offer for Major Works.
While we welcome the Council’s decision to borrow £270 million to refurbish the housing stock in the rest of the borough, the per unit cost of £40,000 is the same as is being spent on Lancaster West; half of which has been paid for by the Government. This in conjunction with the cap provided by Florrie’s law means we will be paying the same as a leaseholder in another part of the borough when almost half the cost comes as grant from the Government. This is manifestly unfair.
As there are no conditions placed on how the central government grant should be spent, it would be fair and right in all the circumstances that this money is allocated to pay for windows and heating across the estate, thereby removing the need to recharge leaseholders. Specifically, the Council should use the most recent grant of £9.9million from the MGCLG towards leaseholder property improvements. This was provided to all residents specifically to aid in their recovery. We do not feel you have given this any consideration and have failed to give a proper response since we first raised this at the committee meeting on the 9th January this year.
It seems the resident leaseholders are merely regarded as a convenient cash-cow for the Council and are owned no consideration for their recovery, many of whom are still trying to put their lives back together and are now suffering a second disaster with the Coronavirus pandemic.
Finally, we want to put forward our request for financial assistance for independent legal advice. We are making this request so that we can progress our case with proper guidance.
Why should we be paying for the mistakes of the Council? We have consistently lobbied the Government and GLA for further funds to pay for the best possible improvements for the whole estate. We want the best for our estate, for our friends and neighbours whether they are leaseholders, temporary residents or tenants. The Council has contributed relatively little, the last £18 million came from unallocated funds not the HRA. How can they continue to justify charging resident leaseholders?
Yours sincerely
Lancaster West Leaseholder Association
Letter to Deputy Mayor 26.05.2020
Dear Deputy Mayor
I am writing to you on behalf of the Lancaster West estate resident leaseholders. We are the estate on which Grenfell tower still stands.
As leaseholders, we are sensitive to the way that our neighbours who survived the tragic fire still have not had their needs met. This is completely inexcusable, and with the third anniversary approaching, even though we are facing unprecedented times with the Covid-19 crisis, we hope that you as Deputy Mayor for Housing are working hard to hold RBKC and the Government to account, seeking justice for these families and our community. I am writing today to make you aware of the less high-profile situation of Lancaster West residents being wronged by the Council, specifically leaseholders. We hope you can help.
As part of the recovery after the dreadful events of 14th June 2017 the Council promised residents a 21st Century refurbishment of the whole estate. To deliver this, £15 million was pledged by MHCLG on behalf of the Government which was matched by the Council. At the time of the announcement, the leaseholders made it clear to the Council they did not see this as a regular refurbishment but as an act of reparation. Reparations for all the residents that suffered on that terrible night, and in the months and years afterwards. Many of us are still suffering and will never be the same. On this basis we agreed to look at what can be done, even though many were nervous about more disruption to our lives.
We realised at the time that £30 million wasn’t enough money to achieve anything like the state-of-the-art, modern 21st Century estate the Council had promised. The Council led ambitious workshops proposing a complete revamp and from the first meeting before talking about details of the changes, leaseholders were seeking clarity about costs and recharges. Leaseholders make up 20% of Lancaster West estate, many of us were once tenants, and a few of us are on help to buy scheme.
Leaseholders have been paying extortionate service charges, from over £200 pm, which is way above the London average. Leaseholders have consistently asked how the Council spent the historic service charges because the estate is in disrepair with no evidence of investment for years. The Council have never been able to answer this question satisfactorily. In workshops, Leaseholders were mindful that we didn’t want to be in a position where we were blocking or objecting to the much-needed maintenance and refurbishment in our neglected estate, for our tenant neighbours or us. At the same time, we did not want to be lumped with huge bills, especially when we had seen such significant equity drops in our property. We were worried by the Council’s indication that they would recharge as much of the work as possible to leaseholders. The Council’s logic was because the government donation was not enough, leaseholders would need to pay for some of the costs.
Following extensive lobbying of the Government by the Residents’ Association in July 2019, we achieved a further £9.1 million from the Government and a further £28 million from the Council, from unallocated funds. However, to our surprise, the Council still decided to recharge as much of the work as possible to leaseholders. For resident leaseholders, the rechargeable amount is capped at £15,000 as per Florrie’s Law. They have offered a 20% discount on this and refuse to offer more. Initially, they refused the discount for ‘shared owners’ on the help to buy scheme as they argued they are ‘non-residential leaseholders’ as Notting Hill Genesis owns their full tenancy. After extensive lobbying, the Council accepted the irony of leaseholders on an affordable housing scheme paying more and have agreed to charge the residential leaseholders and shared owners the same.
Understandably after Grenfell, residents in Lancaster West do not trust RBKC. It seems not much has changed since the fire as they have consistently misrepresented their actions. They offered the £15,000 cap as a favour to us when it is a legal obligation. The estate has always run with a surplus, much of which contributed to their £270 million in reserves pre-fire yet has suffered from decades of underinvestment. Many leaseholders feel their service charges have paid for this work many times over. After promising ‘a state-of-the-art estate’ using the Government’s contribution the only works the leaseholders will receive are a new heating system and new windows. Some parts of the estate still have the same, single-glazed windows they were built with.
The £40,000 per unit they are spending on our refurbishment is the same amount as they are spending on refurbishing the rest of their housing stock in the borough though they constantly announce that this is a model for Twenty First century Social Housing. They have not borrowed any money for our refurbishment, much of it has come from the Government for the express purpose of the recovery of Lancaster West estate. People whose lives have been shattered, many of whom are still receiving counselling and are unable to work or get back to their lives the way they were before, are being cynically asked to foot the bill for it. The service charges on parts of the estate most directly affected have recently been increased by 20% by the Council as it seems they are determined to make the resident leaseholders pay for their mistakes. To add salt to the wound, insurance costs have gone up significantly, much of which is recouping costs of the fire to insurers. When you add the proposed ‘refurbishment works’ to the newly increased monthly service and insurance charges, leaseholders living costs will have increased significantly since before the fire, even though we understood that these works would be some sort of reparation.
To be clear, there is no financial gain for the leaseholders in all of this as the value of our properties has collapsed dramatically after the fire. One resident got her flat valued before and after Grenfell, and the value had gone down by over 40%. It has left those who find it challenging to live with the looming presence of the tower and the memories it brings with no choice. The tenants across the estate who were too traumatised to continue living there were quite rightly offered the chance to move away, there is no opportunity of that for the leaseholders.
Lancaster West estate is long overdue maintenance work and repairs. Before the fire the Council had said they were planning to rebuild a large part of the estate. This ‘work’ had started in 2012 but the only changes were those made to Grenfell Tower. Most of these changes were cosmetic (e.g. the cladding) and did not address long-standing maintenance issues. We will not outline the problems with this work in this letter, but you will be aware of the misconduct and shortcuts taken by RBKC as exposed in the ongoing Grenfell inquiry.
Interestingly, the Council were happy not to recharge the 11 leaseholders in Grenfell Tower for the disastrous refurbishment in 2012 stating that all the works were ‘improvements’, yet now after the tragedy are saying this new work is a ‘refurbishment’ and thus must be recharged. We had radio silence about any new improvements until after the fire and this was framed as compensation. We are puzzled by the complete lack of sensitivity of RBKC after they have failed our estate so severely. We are very mindful that in the grand scale of things the way leaseholders are being treated does not compare to the outrageous way they have treated survivors from the Grenfell fire. We will always support Grenfell United and other groups in their advocacy for justice. We are, however, mindful that RBKC is not being held accountable for the promises that they have made to the wider residents of Lancaster West, so we are hoping that you could help provide this challenge as Deputy Mayor.
We are not talking about rich people, the leaseholders who bought on the estate mostly did so because we wanted to continue living here and because we love our community. The money the Council will recoup by the recharges to leaseholders is £1.7 million. This is small in comparison to the £57.9 million refurbishment, £24.9 million of which comes from the Government as a grant. None the less, on an individual level £15k makes a big difference. Many leaseholders are concerned that this will push them into serious financial hardship or destitution at an already hard and unstable time, with little option of re-selling without losing significant equity.
With the third anniversary of Grenfell rapidly approaching we would ask you to do what you can to remind the Council why this is happening as they seem to have forgotten already. It was their obsession with profit at all costs that lead to the disaster, and it seems they are already slipping back into the attitudes of the past. The Council are already issuing section 20 notices to leaseholders, so time is running short to bring them to their senses. I hope you will feel there is something that can be done here as it seems so manifestly unjust