It has finally got out that Asham Homes blew £114,652 on lawyers and other fees when they kept on digging once they had got into the legal hole caused by their failure to manage a repairs programme properly. The information was obtained after a request made by leaseholder Mick McGough under the Freedom of Information Act.
For people who have never been inside their shoddy housing stock or taken even a general a look around one of their crappy housing estates a series of lies and leaseholders not being consulted properly would have been the early symptoms of Ascham Homes poor management. News in the press of the botched legal process which followed should at the very least have rung alarm bells at Waltham Forest Council. Sadly, it didn't. The matter dragged on for ages before someone finally woke up to the need to have a look at the failing institution.
After Ascham Homes has wasted millions, the cash-strapped council is now going to have to dip into a £5m council contingency fund to pay for the repairs and meet its Decent Homes targets. Additionally, a probe into the fiasco at the social housing organisation was announced last week by the council. This, however, looks like a classic stable door-bolting exercise, in which the council, "working with Ascham Homes", will undertake a “detailed internal review” of the way Ascham consults leaseholders in an attempt to find out what went wrong. A spokeswoman is quoted in the Waltham Forest Guardian saying: “This is to ensure we don't make the same mistakes in the future, and that people are properly consulted.”
My advice for the council is to also read the court papers and go and talk to the leaseholders. As I mentioned over a year ago, there are also a number far-reaching questions which can be asked about this organisation which don't just relate to their inability to consult leaseholders.
Since my last blog on the topic, the public have discovered that our old friends Kier Group (well known for our dirty local streets) were implicated nationally in contract cover pricing, a practice which rigs the market prices which public sector contracts are set at. Their turnover in the year running up to June 2008 was £2.3bn.
Did I not mention this turnover includes the work they get from being one of the contractors which Ascham Homes' management likes to do business with? Kier were among 103 construction firms fined £129.5m by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for “cover-pricing” and other forms of collusion to artificially boost contract prices. Kier Regional Ltd and its parent company Keir Group Plc, were "very disappointed" to be fined £17.9m, the largest single fine in the industry.
Meanwhile, the cheeky monkeys at Ascham Homs who hve wasted so much public money have the gall to pretend that “Our aim is to empower residents to make informed and better choices during the credit crunch." A continuing spin operation has it that their brilliant team of employees have formed themselves into an Orwellian body called, with no apparent thought to the irony of this, the "Proserity Team". Their role being to "help residents make informed and better choices in terms of financial management and sustainability". In oher words, peoples' landloirds r gpoing to be poking about in theri tenants private business in order to make sure that somthing is done about the number of them ho default on their rent.
The potential conflicts of interest involved in the ideologically motivated employees of an orgnisation whih fails to provide decent homes for its tenants and which is demanding money at the threat of eviction from them, also trying to tell them how to run their finances and pioritise their spending does not seem to be obvious to the social engineers in our council and at Ascham Homes. I wish they would just stick to providing decent houses. But no, they want to spend their time on nagging people make "better choices".
"This isn’t just about giving away free low-energy light bulbs and reminding residents to recycle their waste. We are promoting financial inclusion by helping residents get access to the benefits available to them and helping them understand the importance of keeping up to date with priority debt repayments."
Don't get me wrong, low energy light bulbs and recyling are all laudible aims. But not aims that a failing landlord should be spending its time on. Other agencies can do that. Sign-posting people to independent finnacial advice may be something that a well-run social housing provider which understands the conflicts of interests involved may be able to do at some later date. But when Ascham Homes waste the money they do collect in rents and are still leasing out sub-standard hovels dripping with damp? This is not prosperity.
[Updated 24 October 2009]