Covering up the cracks on the Island Homes road to disaster

ELN: Island Homes Housing Association has now been formally swallowed up by One Housing Group. Despite fine words of support from all political parties, not one politician among them has been able to find a way for residents to save what they voted for being taken away from them. Residents of four estates on the Isle of Dogs – the Barkantine, Kingsbridge, St John’s and Samuda – voted to transfer their properties to a new housing association, Island Homes, specially set up to receive the transferred stock. The residents agreed how Island Homes would be run: in particular, it would have a Board on which the majority of members would be residents, elected by those living on the estates to represent them on the Board. The Council promised it would guarantee that the housing association which residents had designed would be safeguarded. Transfer took place on 5th December 2005. As a new housing association, Island Homes had to work with an existing housing association which was supposed to help it develop and achieve good standards in at least the first five years of its existence. Island Homes began working with Toynbee Housing Association – which decided, in 2007, to join Community Housing Association and form One Housing Group (OHG). OHG was determined, from the start, to create a uniform structure for all three of its member housing associations. When the Island Homes Board politely declined to surrender its structure and powers in

Treating Island Homes the same way the pigeons do

favour of the Island estates being run from Chalk Farm, OHG just sacked the Board and took over control of Island Homes, operating through a puppet board which it appointed itself. The Council supported Island Homes residents’ campaign to restore the sovereignty of their own housing association. However, it then found that its own legal services department had messed up the formal transfer documents, so it was not able to enforce the promises it had made to tenants before the vote to transfer about how the housing association would be run. The then Housing Minister, Margaret Beckett, supported Island Homes residents’ campaign to restore the sovereignty of their own housing association. She asked the Tenants Services Authority (TSA) to work with Tower Hamlets Council to bring this about. OHG refused to surrender control of Island Homes, and the TSA and Council agreed a shoddy and pointless compromise with OHG: that OHG should appoint a few more residents to the Island Homes Board. Residents were not satisfied. At the end of January 2012, Island Homes wrote to residents, asking for their views on whether Island Homes should be dissolved, with the properties being absorbed by OHG. The letter suggested that Island Homes wanted to do this because it would be tidier and may reduce bureaucracy, diverting money to housing services. Island Homes staff knocked on residents’ doors to obtain completed response postcards: not surprisingly, a majority of residents were in favour of the move. Island Homes did not mention that OHG had told the Council that it wanted to abolish Island Homes and acquire the properties itself as long ago as 2009! This fact came to light on 25th July, in a report to Tower Hamlets Cabinet. The report asked the Mayor to agree to the transfer: as the original transfer contract had been between the Council and Toynbee Housing Association, the Mayor’s consent was required for OHG to take over Toynbee’s place in the contract. Officers advised the Mayor that OHG had said that the takeover would go ahead whether he agreed or not and, citing the need to protect the pension position of the eleven workers who remain in OHG who were previously transferred from the Council, the Mayor signed the documents requested. What the Mayor did not do was to question why OHG had ignored not only the promises in the Council’s original Offer Document (not legally enforceable, due to the mistakes of the Council’s legal services department), but also why OHG had not honoured parts of the Transfer Document (which is legally enforceable). Nor did the Mayor question why Council Officers had wasted time negotiating post-takeover service standards with OHG, without bothering to raise the crucial question of governance – and without consulting Island Homes residents about what they were doing. The Mayor’s decision was put to the Council meeting on 19th September, and councillors just raised their hands to note the decision without a murmur. Sold on 5th December 2005. Sold out on 19th September 2012.