THAT GUILTY FEELING AND STATEMENTS OF DISCONTENT

PRESS STATEMENT

Council deputy` s 

comments "offensive",

says community group

Statements of discontent not allowed..Darren Crossley

The deputy chief executive of Carlisle City Council, Mr Darren Crossley is criticised today for   comments which  a community group says are “offensive”. The group says it  was trying to engage with the council but has been made to feel guilty. The group has  asked Mr Crossley to withdraw the comments but he has refused, says the group`s annual report.

Some years ago , Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation was encouraged   by the council to attend meetings of  its  Community Overview and Scrutiny  Panel and engage with the council by asking oral questions which the panel chairman answered.

The  Federation says in the report that it now finds it increasingly difficult to do this because the council  has  not been allowing the questions without a lot  of alterations. 
On  the last occasion, the Federation`s  questions were blocked by Mr Crossley.

The Federation protested but Mr Crossley in his ruling  said in an email: : “The facility for questions is an opportunity for residents to  engage with the council and not to provide organisations with a platform to make statements of discontent”.

The federation report says that this  ruling is offensive.

A spokesman for the Federation said today:” We are not in the business of making statements of discontent.

“We are in the business of supporting tenants and leaseholders of Riverside Housing Association because Riverside cannot or will not  properly support these people and tenants find it impossible to get Riverside to change things.

“Asking questions  at panel meetings   is one of the few ways we have of  bringing  these matters to the attention of the council and to the public of Carlisle.

“We are  surprised and offended by Mr Crossley`s  offensive ruling, particularly as thequestions we asked are about specific issues raised by councillors at panel meetings. They are certainly not statements of discontent.

“There has been a complete turnaround by the council .We were encouraged a few years ago to ask these questions and were made very welcome at panel meetings, probably because no one else was asking questions. Things have now changed and with Mr Crossley`s curt and unhelpful ruling we have been made to feel guilty for attending.

“That is not the way to encourage taxpayers to engage with the council.”

The questions blocked by Mr Crossley were:

Concerns were expressed by Councillor Michael Gee at the last meeting of the Panel about the failure of Riverside Carlisle to reply to letters from leaseholders in Dalston and the failure of Riverside to adequately address problems raised by these leaseholders. Councillor Gee said he had raised these issues with Mr Dean Butterworth, Regional Director of Riverside Carlisle and it had been agreed at a meeting between them that  what Councillor Gee called “the culture of Riverside Carlisle “ had to be changed. Councillor Gee later said that the culture of Riverside was “too authoritarian.” Does the Panel agree with Councillor Gee and if so, is it satisfied that Riverside Carlisle is dealing adequately with these concerns?

The concerns of Councillor Gee, mentioned in the previous question, have been replicated at Longtown for two years and latterly at meetings of Longtown Action for Heat, a community group formed  in recent months to address these concerns which in Longtown  are those of an estimated sixty Riverside tenants who are unable to afford to adequately heat their homes.These concerns have also been raised with the two elected members for Longtown and also the elected Cumbria County Council member. These concerns have also been raised with the tenants` M.P., Mr Rory Stewart . Mr Stewart has given the tenants strong continuous support and has now called on Riverside to finalise, what is a very serious situation  for the tenants, without further delay. It   appears that the elected members of both councils have no power  to influence  this situation. Is the Panel satisfied with  the elected members` lack of power in dealing with Riverside and Riverside`s consequence lack of accountability,  and if not, what remedy does the Panel propose?

Issued by Carlisle Tenants` and Residents`Federation

Enquiries to 01228 522277 or 01228 522277

QUESTIONS FOR THE `BLIND EYE` COUNCIL

`Shop the park

vandals and shop

 Riverside too!`    

          Malcolm Craik

A leading Carlisle councillor`s appeal  for the public to shop the yobs who are vandalising  the city parks is welcomed by  community activist, Malcolm Craik.

But there is also vandalism on a much larger scale going on in the city and the council  is turning a blind eye to it, Mr Craik claims in a letter to the editor.

This vandalism, alleges Mr Craik has been done to a village green by the city`s biggest landlord, Riverside Housing Association. Like the park vandals, Riverside also should be shopped and that should be done by the city council, he says.

The letter to the editor has been submitted to the Cumberland News, Carlisle.

Mr Craik is a former member of the governing board of the Riverside company. Carlisle Housing Association. He now is very active  with Carlisle Leaseholder Action Group  and Cumbria Riverside Action Group in long-standing disputes with Riverside.

 This is his letter:

Elsie Martlew is to be congratulated for her stance on the vandals who drove across the grass at Rickerby Park and Richmond Green. 

She urges members of the public to shop these park yobs and pledges a £200 reward for information leading to a successful prosecution of the offender or offenders.

While I have no information on these most recent park related outrages I would like to shop  Riverside Carlisle housing association  to Elsie for creating a memorial garden at Seatollor Close in Morton last year on land which has been designated as a village green and as such is protected from such vandalism by an act of parliament.

Planting trees there, I understand, contravenes the Open Spaces Act 1906. Remarkably the city council took no action against Riverside Carlisle  over this blatant disregard for the law which leads me to wonder if councillors were aware of it.

In another case involving Riverside Carlisle  leaseholders and tenants have been forced to accept new front doors that are narrower than those they replace.

These doors appear to contravene building regulations because of their narrowness and because of the need for front doors to provide disability access now and in the future for residents.

Leaseholders have raised this issue with the council whose officers tell us that Riverside Carlisle  doesn’t need to get building consent from the council and they have refused to force the landlord to comply with the regulations even though they have a statutory duty to ensure compliance throughout the authority’s area of governance.

Perhaps Elsie will want to look into the reasons why the city council seems so unwilling to prosecute the Riverside organisation whenever it breaches law or regulation.

 It is especially important that the people of Carlisle observe that everyone in the city, especially electorally unaccountable housing associations, are subject to the rule of law.

Housing will almost certainly be a major issue on the doorstep during the coming election; let’s hope our elected representatives can provide some plausible answers- 

Malcolm Craik M.A., Carlisle Leaseholder Action Group, St Martin` s Place, Brampton.

THATCHER AND `SONS`

Getting an answer

                                                Hinchingbrooke  Hospital

 to the basket cases

 

The first NHS  hospital contract to be handed to a private operator has just failed, but sadly, the news has been squeezed out  of the headlines by the Paris terrorism.

That  hospital failure was  significant . It was a failure not much different  from what many people consider the failure of a similar Thatcherite back-to-private operation here in Carlisle, pioneered by the same Labour government.

This was the privatisation of the city  council houses, initiated and supported with cash  by John Prescott, Tony Blair`s deputy and environment secretary.

It was  Mr Prescott`s  cabinet colleague,  health secretary Andy Burnham who decided to go ahead with the now-failed hospital  contract, that of Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire .

The private  company chosen, Circle Holdings has now  pulled out of the Hinchingbrooke contract early,  after mounting losses and heavy criticism of its performance.

In Carlisle, the privatised council houses were handed to the giant Liverpool property organisation, Riverside Housing Association.

Since then, like  Hinchingbrooke , there has been heavy criticism of  Riverside`s performance, particularly its failure to ensure proper  care for  its 6000 tenants and 270 leaseholders.

Circle  blamed its failure on rising numbers of accident and emergency patients and a ten  per cent cent  cut in funding from the government.

But the chief inspector of hospitals has just delivered a damning assessment of Circle` period in charge of  Hinchingbrooke and  decided  to award the hospital a rating of inadequate.

Many Carlisle and Longtown tenants and leaseholders would give  a similar inadequate rating to Riverside.

The failure at Hinchingbrooke has dashed the hopes of those people wanting a national change for the NHS through greater involvement of private firms in what it does.

The failure at Riverside Carlisle has  also dashed many hopes. But many people had warned:we told you so.

The Riverside victims are still suffering in the winter cold, faced with astronomic heating bills they cannot afford and astronomic repair bills they cannot understand.

Critics said Hinchingbrooke  was “ a  basket case” hospital before it was  handed to Circle.  Critics said  the same  about Carlisle council housing before it was privatised and Riverside took over.

Mrs Thatcher and her “sons”,  John Prescott and Andy Burnham all said they had the  answer to the basket cases.

They said they had the answer?

Yes, that is what they said. 

Community Voice Carlisle is the blog of Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation. Information about the Federation is available on 01228 532803 or 01228 522277.

ALL MUST GET FREEDOM, BUT SOME MORE FREEDOM THAN OTHERS

Secrecy,

scandal

and Riverside 

gobbledegook

Bizarre report.....forner Riverside boss Patrick Leonard

Ten years on, and freedom of information  is now  accepted as    a right  for everyone. But it is a  right that needs strengthening. And that strengthening is needed urgently by thousands of householders up and down the country. They have been let down by freedom of information

The Freedom of  Information Act  has  been a great success for most of us. The act, for example was used  to expose the MPs` expenses scandal a few years ` ago.

Now,  almost every day other scandals are exposed, some by the Press and some by individuals making use of the act and the

  information that  it frees.

This information, by public bodies such as local authorities has  been made  readily available to everyone.

But despite the act, many scandals remain hidden. And that is a worry for thousands of tenants and leaseholders because they get no benefit from freedom of information.

They get no benefit  because the big landlords, the housing associations   are not included in  the provisions of the act.

And housing associations just love  it that way. Because they are not included in the provisions of the act, all their activities, all their costs and charges can remain secret.

Housing associations can go merrily on, unchecked by anyone, charging what they like, doing what they like...accountable to no one but themselves.

That is the situation here in Carlisle  where the massive Liverpool  property organisation, Riverside Housing Association  charges tenants and leaseholders what it likes, installs dodgy  heating  boilers in Longtown which tenants cannot afford to turn on- so they shiver in ice box homes- closes sheltered housing homes without proper consultation and generally  goes its merry way as a profit making  property developer.

And amazingly, Riverside  has gone  further than all of that.

While the rest of us continue to enjoy the benefits of freedom of  information, Riverside, in the opinion of many people, has actively  gone out of its way to hide what it is  doing.

Riverside did this on one occasion in a unbelievable written  report by using jargon or gobbledegook  which no one  could understand.

The report was to Carlisle City Council  following an inspection of Riverside by the government`s Audit Commission.The author of the report was Mr Patrick Leonard, regional director of Riverside Carlisle.

 Mr Leonard`s report  was bizarre. It contained 35 oblique abbreviations or  jargon that none of the city councillors could understand.

These included such obscure items  as tp trackers, FTA processes, HHSRSs, and SHAIPs

 And  the report also included phrases such as: ‘develop TRG wide customer segmentation through profiling project with CACI’, and ‘carry out review of group VFM strategy to set strategic framework and approach to service reviews’.

Not surprisingly, the city councillors were critical of the report. Mr Leonard  responded by saying that he would ensure that  reports were less confusing in future.

(Mr Leonard did not write  many more reports for the city council...confusing or not confusing.

(He decided  he wanted to become the Cumbria Police and Crime Commissioner and offered himself for election as Labour candidate.

(More confusion-and other reactions- followed during the election campaign when Mr Leonard said that if elected he could combine the police commissioner`s job with his Riverside job as regional director.Mr Leonard was not elected. He resigned from Riverside a few months later.)

There was no confusion in what followed Mr Leonard`s bizarre report to the city council. The story got national attention from the influential social housing publication, Inside Housing .

Riverside refused to apologise for the report to Inside Housing saying that it was not written for the  general public. 

Riverside said: “The report is an internal action plan that was submitted as supporting information with a report to Carlisle Council’s overview and scrutiny committee and was not primarily written as a direct communication with tenants or residents.

"Riverside prides itself on ensuring that any commmunication that is written fortenants is easy to understand and written in clear English."

Easy to understand and written in clear English?

Inside Housing did not seem very impressed.So they published a quiz for readers listing the ridiculous gobbledegook and jargon used by Riverside and other housing associations

Inside Housing readers were in absolutely no doubt that they actually preferred  freedom of information to gobblegook and jargon.

Community Voice Carlisle is the blog of Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation. Information about the Federation is available on 01228 532803 or 01228 522277

A CHRISTMAS STORY

No room

BARRAS HOUSE..built in 1992 by Carlilse City Council

`in the

inn`

The  front page Christmas headline has an echo of Bethlehem and the Nativity. The headline says:“Old Folks Forced Out of Homes”

The homes are in Riverside Housing Associaton`s Barras House sheltered housing  complex at Dalston, near Carlisle. Twelve elderly people live there but now, like Mary and Joseph, there is no room for them in the inn.

The twelve are being forced out and are angry about this upheaval to their lives and the break-up of their sheltered  home community says the newspaper, the News and Star, Carlisle.

In the case of one of the twelve- a man of 85- this is the third Riverside sheltered home he has  been forced to quit in the last five years. Others of the twelve have  twice previously been  asked by Riverside to quit homes.

A  woman living near Barras House is quoted  in the article as saying there is a real sense of community in and around the home and the planned closure is an absolute disgrace.

Riverside says it plans to upgrade Barras House in 2016, converting it from 19  flats to14 larger flats. Before then, the properties have to be vacated.

The  row about Barras House is not the first sheltered housing row Riverside has had since it took over the city council houses eleven years ago.

There have been several similar rows, largely because Riverside promised the city council at the takeover to keep all the city`s sheltered housing.

This was then located at  Morton. Harraby, Longtown, Botcherby, Brampton and Dalston.

Has Riverside kept that promise to the council?

In those eleven years , wardens were withdrawn from the homes. Then some homes were demolished, and  rebuilt with  a smaller number of larger more expensive flats or houses. One home remaining demolished is Lady Seat at Longtown.

In Brampton, after Riverside closed its sheltered housing complex, West Hill House,   another housing association has stepped in  to fill the breach and cater for the town`s continuing need for sheltered housing.

Impact Housing Association is  going ahead with plans for 38 extra care flats in the town.

In Brampton and other places with sheltered housing there  was the evictions, the upheavals  and destructions of the community inside each home. It was the same sort of  evictions, upheavals and community destruction now causing an outcry at Barras House.

This repeated  upheaval and community destruction since Riverside took over the Carlisle council houses is of  great concern to Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation and to other critics of Riverside.

The concerns are about that promise to the city council, about the apparent  abolition of sheltered housing in the Carlisle area, and whether the people of Carlisle have been properly consulted and involved in all that has gone on in those eleven years.

And  what about Riverside`s present status as a  profit-making property developer? 

Has property developer Riverside-unelected and unaccountable- the democratic mandate to take on the job of properly responding to the crying local  need for sheltered housing?

(Incidentally, the need for sheltered housing is also a national problem says the Daily Mail today. It reports a survey by Saga saying that that thousands of older people are stuck in large family homes  because of a chronic shortage of retirement housing.)

Back to the local problem and another question:Has Riverside the skllls and know- how needed to cater for the needs  for retirement housing in the Carlisle area? Is Riverside up to the job?

And what about Riverside`s duty of care?

The best people to answer this question and the other questions are the sixty unfortunate frozen - out Riverside tenants in Longtown.

Once again,they are now struggling in deep mid-winter, unable to afford to heat their homes properly.

It is their third deep-midwinter of struggle. 

Community Voice, Carlisle is the blog of Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation. Information about the Federation is available from 01228 532803 or 01228 522277. 

DAVID AND THE BEANSTALK

It`s panto

time

again...

Cyber attacks from North Korea would find it hard to outnumber  David Cameron`s  incentives to push us all on to housing  ladder and, hey presto, solve the housing crisis.

Government subsidies for Help to Buy and similar schemes  are all that is needed to provide that extra shove  to get us on to that magical mortgage ladder we can all climb and get a home. A bit like Jack and the Beanstalk,the stuff of pantomime

Welcome to tjhe mortgage ladder...David Cameron and a new- home couple

Back in the real world where the number of homeless  goes on rising and food banks go on expanding, several councils have resorted to buying back  at full market value some of the homes they sold off at a discount under the right to buy legislation.

The failure  in the past to replace this  sold-off social housing stock has led to a critical shortage of homes, reports The Times  newspaper this week.

The Times  highlights Leeds where the council recently paid nearly £1.24 million for 15 homes it sold over the  past decades for the total sum of £411, 000 at today`s  prices.

Next  year, Leeds plans to buy back a further 100 former council properties under the same scheme.

For The Times, this pantomime  story is what it calls” a huge loss  to the taxpayer.” The homeless, of course, see it  in a vastly different light. No pantomime for them.

Readers of the Times see it differently again. One of those readers in a letter to the editor looks back 30 years to the huge popularity of the sale of council houses when  the policy was announced, and the thousands of votes that policy won for Mrs Thatcher.

But, says that reader, the sale of council houses was nothing more than a private killing for some of us  at the expense of the rest of us. We are now living   with the consequences,  the consequences being   the housing crisis.

Tenants of who bought their council homes were not alone in making a  killing at the expense of the rest of us. Housing associations made a killing too.

They were given Whitehall cash  to take over many of the remaining council houses and are now growing fat in size and profitability under their new guise.

They are now mainly property developers like the much-criticised  Riverside Housing Association of Liverpool which has a near- monopoly of social homes in the Carlisle area.

Community Voice Carlisle is  the blog of Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation Information about the Federation is available  from 01228  527358 or   01228 22277.

WILL EMILY THORNBERRY M.P. NOW TWEET FROM ENFIELD?

The Right to Buy

and The Right

to Buy Back

Emily Thornberry M.P. (above) should get inspiration for another tweet from an opinion poll in yesterday`s Times newspaper. The YouGov poll shows that most British people would like the energy companies and the railways to be bought back into public ownership.

Mrs Thornberry who was furiously attacked last week as snobbish following her tweet about the White Van Man in Rochester would probably agree with the poll. The rip-off energy companies are a  disgrace and you need a second mortgage to afford to travel by train.

But what about another privatisation that Mrs Thornberry showed a lot of interest , a privatisation that  has become just as unpopular as the energy companies and the railways? That is the privatisation of social housing, particularly privatisation by the bossy and autocratic housing associations?

Housing associations are still as bossy as ever and just as much in need of democracy as they were  when Mrs Thornberry introduced a private member`s bill in the House of Commons to make them more democratic. Sadly, the bill failed to become law.

 

Mrs Thornberry,  M.P. for Islington South and Finsbury said  at that time that most MPs felt that tenants' opinions were not being listened  to by housing associations. She said: I have estates in my constituency where tenants are pulling their hair out.”

Riverside Housing Association tenants and leaseholders in Carlisle and Longtown are still pulling their hair out.

Their annoyance and  anger is about the failures of their housing association landlord, the uncaring and inefficient Liverpool-based Riverside Housing Association with its 50,000 homes, many of them in the Carlisle and Longtown areas.

Two reports  this week aim to stop that hair pulling, The reports want  social housing to move on... but  to  starkly  different futures

The future seen by the first report- from the think-tank Policy Exchange-  is  a future of more and more privatisation. Housing  associations,  it  recommends should become free housing associations, possibly eventually  ending up with a stock market quotation.

(The homeless charity Shelter  will have  none of that. Shelter says in reply:`Housing associations are being forced  to chose between what is good for their balance sheets and what is good for the people they were set up to help. Who will provide the new homes  for the increasing number of needy people who can’t afford the market?)

The future seen by the second report - from the London borough of Enfield - wants  an end to privatisation and an end to  Right to Buy  which was brought in by Mrs Thatcher 30 years ago with big discounts for tenants.

Right to Buy  decimated social housing. But many tenants have become wealthy after  selling their former council house homes at a massive profit.

Enfield  has decided to try to end all this .It is to borrow up to £100m  to buy and renovate homes,  before transferring them to  a separate company it has set up.They would then be made free of Right to Buy.

This company will lease these properties at low rates  to cut  down the  7,700  people now in Enfield temporary accommodation, each costing up to £80 a night. There will be  another big saving - 25 per cent off the council`s  total  temporary accommodation bill.

 A council spokesman said;”Under Right to Buy we are forced to sell off our social housing at a bigger discount than ever and at the same time we are forced to pay bigger costs than ever for temporary  accommodation to house those people that social housing was created for. It just didn`t make sense. “

Enfield is Labour controlled, and Mrs Thornberry is from the same party. Labour once opposed  Right to Buy.

Mrs Thornberry wants to reform housing associations. But many people consider  housing associations are already too full of flaws and are beyond reform.

Mrs Thornberry`s White Van Man tweet was :"Images from Rochester".

Her next tweet should be:" Images from Enfield."