Monday, October 18, 2010

Home Sweet Home


Walking back from Greenwich via Ha'Penny Hatch on Saturday I saw one of the above lying on the ground. Since I have not received the October 2010 copy of Home magazine through my door I bent to pick it up but stopped when I realised it was hiding some dog shit beneath it...

Later I went to the Lewisham Homes website and clicked on Home – The resident magazine under Publications in the lefthand menu on the home page. I got this...

Our quarterly residents magazine, Home, is sent to all Lewisham Homes tenants and leaseholders.

Oh no it isn't! Anyway, Issue 13 was available to download and I read with interest that Lewisham Homes is pleased to announce it achieved the two-star rating from the Audit Commission (after their inspection in June) that it needed in order to access extra government funding to deliver a Decent Homes investment programme...(depending on the government having any money left of course).

The Audit Commission Report is available to download from the LH website HERE (scroll to the bottom of the page to download the pdf)...worth a read if you want to know a bit more about the areas 'that require improvement'...(for instance, a cock up with the Grounds Maintenance contract, low levels of customer satisfaction particularly the ASB service, poor monitoring of services generally, service charges poorly calculated etc)...

There is an small indication of the degree to which the report is white washed (or subject to inaccurate information supplied by LH officers in June 2010) apparent in paragraph 164 of the report which states "Leaseholders receive the residents' newsletter every three months". Meanwhile on page 11 of this quarter's residents' newsletter that I never received it is announced that "from 2011 we will reduce Home to three times a year, rather than four".

We will be detailing other findings in the report in due course.

4 comments:

  1. Mushroom, I got one through the post today. They probably send them out in batches?
    Did you get the other thing last week about Major Works? I don't know anyone who knows what to do with it...

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  2. I thought Major Works lost his job in the Comprehensive Spending Review, something to do with Defence Cuts and not being in the short-term national interest.

    (No, I didn't get either, either.)

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  3. No still not got one...maybe tomorrow, eh.
    Re Major Works, 65 pages of Audit Commission Report easier to read than 5 or 6 pages of gobbledegook from Lewisham Homes.

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  4. Over at Evelyn estate we haven't seen this yet either, although I did know about the 2 star rating from various meetings. The major works letter is simply a process they are obliged to go through before they appoint term contractors or let works worth more than a certain amount of money.

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