The HLA’s next committee meeting will be held on Tuesday 7th May at 7pm in the Commerce Rd Community Centre. On the agenda will be the meeting with HfH that is scheduled for the next day, the latest on the ‘Leaseholder Improvement Forum’ as well as updates on the situation at Tangmere and Love Lane. The HLA continues to have concerns over escalating service charges and unreasonable billing for major works. All are welcome even non-committee members. 

Leaseholders in Tangmere block, part of the Broadwater Farm Estate, have been told they must get out of the building by the end of October as the gas supply will then be switched off leaving them without heating or hot water. This is because the building has been deemed to be at too high a risk of disproportionate collapse due to an incident such as a gas explosion. Although other blocks on the estate are similarly at risk they are being strengthened and an alternative boiler system is being supplied. But Tangmere is unloved and run-down.

It is not even a year since the HLA succeeded in getting HfH to restore the recognition regime they had previously so unwisely scrapped. The Board then re-recognised us under those rules (and added a caveat) in January 2018. So we thought the matter was settled at least for now. But no!

The old Leasehold Panel has been recast as the ‘Leasehold Improvement Forum’ and leaseholders were invited to what was billed as its first meeting on Saturday 8^th September last. Along with the invitation the new Terms of Reference were revealed for the first time too. They stipulated that the forum would meet in the evenings for two hours. Bizarrely the Saturday meeting was in the day time and lasted for four hours.

We have good news from Stroud Green where leaseholders have finally succeeded in winning up to £1,000 back on their enormous major works bills! The contractor had charged for windows scaffolding when no windows were even installed. Even Homes for Haringey had to acknowledge eventually that that was wrong. So Julie Weir, who battled for two years with emails and phone calls, is coming to this year’s AGM to tell you how you can do the same. Putting leaseholders in touch with one another to provide a ray of hope is what the HLA is all about.

The HLA is very pleased to be able to announce that, after over three years of effort, the Association has been formally re-recognised  by HfH as the borough-wide representative group for leaseholders. This follows on from the tremendous achievement of forcing a legal climb-down from HfH over the removal of umbrella-group recognition in May 2016. In June 2017 HfH settled at the last minute and agreed to redo its consultation on this point rather than argue their case in court. In the process HfH had wasted some £170,000 of public money and a huge amount of the HLA’s time.

In addition to restoring the recognition regime the Chair of the Board of HfH, Mr Aman Dalvi OBE, also agreed to regular face-to-face meetings with HLA representatives in order to build trust and address outstanding issues in a constructive way.The HLA had significant outstanding concerns over the nature of the recognition regime, unanswered Freedom of Information requests, the need to set the record straight over the mishandling of the HLA’s previous derecognitions and the refusal to allow appeals against them to go ahead normally, the proposed new management agreement between the Council

On one of the points discussed with the Chair of the Board the HLA is pleased to announce that progress has been made. Mr Dalvi initially promised simply to restore the Leasehold Panel as it used to be. He then went back on that promise when the Board decided to replace the Leasehold Panel with a ‘Leasehold Forum’ at its meeting in January.

The principle of respect for residents, their empowerment and the importance of meaningful consultation in giving them a real say are at the heart of the legal correspondence that the HLA, along with Mr Paul Burnham of Haringey Defend Council Housing, have been conducting with the social housing regulator, Homes England, over giving HfH another 8 years as the borough’s ALMO. At present we do not believe that there are sufficient guarantees for resident engagement in the management agreement as it stands and that there is no point in an ALMO that doesn’t come up to scratch on this point.

Of course one of the times when it is absolutely vital for residents’ voices to be heard is when the Council is proposing to knock your home down. Haringey’s plans for the HDV, an enormous programme of ‘regeneration’ involving the forcible demolition of thousands of Council homes and the surrender of practically the entire portfolio of public land to Lendlease, an amorphous multinational property developer, have been so controversial that they have made national news.