Our MPS & councillors must back this campaign: 10 Steps to End Our Cladding Scandal - the Video

 This is a national scandal with many local residents suffering as a consequence.  I hope our local MPs and councillors will get behind the campaign.

Latest on South Kilburn controversy: L&Q Chief Executive to step down

David Montague

L&Q, the controversial housing association recently in the news for its handling of Bourne Place in South Kilburn LINK, has announced that its Chief Executive, David Montague, will step down at the end of the financial year.

L&Q made the following statement on its website today:

David Montague has today announced that he will step down from his role as Chief Executive of L&Q by the end of the current financial year.

David joined L&Q as a member of the finance team in 1988 and became Group Director of Finance in 2003. He was appointed Chief Executive five years later in February 2008.

As CEO, he has overseen L&Q’s growth to become one of the country’s largest developers and providers of social housing. L&Q now houses over 250,000 people in 110,000 properties and has an ambition to help solve the housing crisis by building 100,000 new homes.

Speaking about his departure, David said: “It has been a pleasure leading L&Q in such extraordinary times and working with talented, dedicated and values driven people for the past three decades to deliver our social mission. At L&Q our story began in 1963 with a handful of entrepreneurs, £64 and a dream to house the people who had been forgotten by others; that dream has never waned.

Our mission is that everyone should have a quality home they can afford; everything we do is about providing essential homes and services for the people that need them most. I couldn’t be more proud of what we have achieved in my time as Chief Executive but I have decided that it is the right time for a new challenge.

I will continue to lead L&Q as Chief Executive until my successor is found. My remaining time will be spent working with the team to develop a new five-year strategy that will help us deliver the best we possibly can for our residents and communities.”

L&Q Chair Aubrey Adams said: “David has been a leading light not just for L&Q but for the housing sector in general. His commitment to our residents, homes and communities has enabled L&Q to face some of the toughest economic and structural challenges in the company’s history, and he has always done it with our social purpose firmly and passionately at his heart. We are thankful for everything he has championed.

Our search for David’s successor will begin immediately and will be squarely focussed on enabling us to secure the skills and diversity needed to continue our focus on safety, quality and customers, and steer L&Q through our next chapter. We will be working towards a smooth handover and transition by the start of the new financial year.”

UPDATED - SCANDALOUS! Brent Council accused of colluding in L&Q's leaseholder exploitation and neglect on 'flagship' South Kilburn Estate new build

For some time now I have seen increasingly desperate messages on Twitter pleading to  Muhammed Butt, Brent Council and L&Q Homes to do something about the state of a new building on the much vaunted regenerated South Kilburn Estate.  The pleas have been ignored so I have offered Lucie Gutfreund, founder of Homeowners of L&Q,  a platform on which to make her case.

This is Lucie's guest post:

Bourne Place with unidentified black cladding

Buying my first home in 2013 was a joyous occasion for me. I worked hard to be finally able to afford a small one bedroom flat on a 25-year mortgage. I couldn’t wait to move into the brand new and shiny Bourne Place development in South Kilburn, phase 1 of the regeneration project partnership of Brent Council and housing association L&Q. The brochure was promising: cost-effective energy through communal heating system, green landscaped spaces and a positive picture of a mixed tenure development, residents on different incomes, with the social purpose of bringing communities together.

I was very naive.

Window Panels

The shininess of my new home was quickly overshadowed by the reality. It didn’t take long before my flat was flooded from the mains; the rubber seals completely decomposed within a couple of years; something my plumber said he had never seen before. I noticed creeping wetness and mould all around the external walls of our block. Since the first winter I have battled with intermittent hot water; at best I would get about 30 seconds of hot water between November and March. I was left without hot water and heating for the majority of the last winter and even through the first months of the pandemic.

Service charges seemed reasonable at the point of sale at £1,100 a year, even though still a bit high considering I am in a ground floor flat with my own entrance and receive no cleaning or day to day maintenance of my property by L&Q. I don’t have access to communal areas of the building. Now I am being asked to pay £2,200 a year, plus  an extra £1,000 to pay this autumn due to L&Q’s overspend last year. That’s £3,200 to pay yearly on top of my mortgage, utility bills and council tax. I can’t afford this. The costs are even more obscene if your flat’s access is via communal areas; £4200 with service charge and overspend combined for one bedroom flat.

Leaks

We receive appalling service for the charges we are asked to pay. Maintenance is sporadic and often non existent. At one point we had mushrooms growing in communal areas from unattended leaks. Lift cables rusted in a mere few years and had to be changed and we were charged for it. We had rodents and ant infestation. Most landscaping died; we received a revamp of the grounds last year upon my years long complaints but by now most has died off again. Residents’ complaints get ignored and property managers, who change yearly. are nowhere to be seen. Staff on call lines are rude and dismissive and treat us like pests. Random additional amounts of £s are sometimes taken from residents' bank accounts via direct debit.

'Landscaping' 2019

New builds are sold at a premium price due to an assurance that there will be no major costs because the new build warranty is there - usually for 10 years. For years, L&Q would dismiss our concerns about building defects. A property manager would go as far as stating that leaking balconies are architect’s design. When balcony doors started falling off door frames, we were told that we are breaching manufacturer’s guidelines by leaving the doors open - i.e. that we should not be using the doors for what they are intended for. And that L&Q are responsible only for the actual door but we, as homeowners, are responsible for the frame. Eventually it became clear that neither the housing association or the warranty provider have any intention to pay for the repair of defects or do everything possible to avoid submitting a claim to their warranty partners.

Rusted Balcony

Eventually one of our neighbours paid for a survey of her leaky balcony. It finally gave us the proof that there are defects. Another one and a half years on since an estate-wide building survey was finally arranged by L&Q, we are yet to see the numerous problems fixed. We are dismayed by how our blocks could have ever been approved on completion by inspectors.

The communal heating system, promising efficiency and green energy, is another lie we were sold. Under the leasehold system residents do not actually own any communal equipment. L&Q own our communal heating system which means that we have no consumer rights to choose the energy provider. L&Q set up their own in-house energy company, L&Q Energy, and they force onto us their monopoly energy provision at any rate they please and with no service or rate explanation agreement. Worse, they also choose the supplier of electricity for the boilers and the pump as well as for the maintenance. This year they served our three blocks a bill for £138,000 for electricity and maintenance combined. This means a cost of over £1,000 per flat for the privilege of simply being connected to a communal heating system every year.  Energy charges come on top.

Rising Damp in Communal Areas

With the unfolding cladding scandal following the Grenfell disaster, we were in for a big shock last year when we found out our properties are now nil-valued, unmortgageable and unsaleable and potentially a fire hazard. We do have cladding and unknown fire safety status of our insulation and balcony materials. L&Q refuse to conduct the necessary survey, saying our block is the least of their priority being a low-rise and that it can take years for them to survey and remediate all their buildings. The costs are likely to fall in our laps too as the building warranty does not cover cladding defects in buildings completed prior to the amended fire safety regulations in 2018. We despair, realising we have fallen into a trap. We were sold a home, a product which was faulty, and we are now facing being asked to pay to make our homes safe. The new build warranty coming with our new homes is not worth the paper it is written on. We are trapped until our homes are made safe and we pay tens of thousands of pounds for it.

This year we found out that we are also affected by the ground rent scandal. The Competition and Market Authority published their report on leasehold mis-sells and abuses, with one aspect being unjust increases in ground rents. Brent council, via L&Q, sold us a lease with RPI ground rent increases, which the CMA now calls an exploitative practice and a mis-sell. If, at some point in the future, our ground rent exceeds £1,000, our homes will legally turn into assured tenancies and will become unsaleable. We are pleased to hear that the CMA will be bringing prosecutions and we hope they will shed the light on social landlords and councils as well.

Brent Council, the mastermind behind the South Kilburn regeneration project, our freeholder of land and partner to L&Q, has expressed little interest in helping us. Muhammed Butt, Brent council leader, states that our cladding problems have nothing to do with the council. Despite the fact that the council collects £18,000 a year from leaseholders in the three blocks for ground rent, making Brent our landlord, Mr. Butt doesn’t think that compels the council to even speak up on behalf their residents.

Discoloured Exterior Brickwork

A local housing councillor who visited our estate last year dismissed the majority of our defects as ‘just fine’ because her father is a builder and therefore she knows. Even though we have a building survey saying otherwise. We were promised support but a year on we have not seen any real action from the council and staff responsible for Brent’s relationship with housing associations continue to change. When we went to press in 2019 to complain about the state of our estate, Brent council stated in response in Brent & Kilburn Times, that L&Q are their trusted partner and ‘provider of quality housing’ and hence dismissing anything our residents had reported.

Despite our misery, Mr. Butt is proud to display his name on the walls of our development on a plaque celebrating our estate as a milestone in South Kilburn regeneration project. He seems to care little that behind these walls live actual residents, people who were mis-sold costly and potentially unsafe leasehold tenancies; homes with numerous defects under false promises of high-quality homes based on the South Kilburn Regeneration Master Plan. For us, our homes have become a noose around our necks and a major source of unhappiness and mental anguish when dealing daily with the rogue and incompetent housing association, the social landlord and partner of Brent Council.

From Anna O'Neill (@Annareporting)

Some residents have said they would need to look for second jobs to be able to pay for the ever increasing costs of service charges and our communal heating system. I have given up two years of my life raising awareness and fighting for our homes to be fixed and maintained by L&Q. I am getting nowhere. Some days I am finding this extremely hard. And there is no sight of end to this abuse or having our homes finally fixed.

The joint landlords of our homes, the housing association L&Q and Brent Council, continue to ignore us and exploit us financially. After all, that is what the intention of the cross-subsidy model of social housing is: sell a leaseholder a dream of homeownership, make them a mere tenant with no rights or control over their homes and use them as cash cows to fund social housing, under a threat of forfeiting their home if they don’t pay. Leasehold is abuse and councils actively participate in this web of exploitation.

Lucie Gutfreund
founder of Homeowners of L&Q

Since this article was published on Saturday it has nee folowed up by Harrow Times and the Brent and Kilburn Times and other media outlets.

The issue regarding EWS1 forms has been taken up by the LBC radio station.  These are the forms that have to be completed to indicate a property is safe before the owner can sell.  Without the form the owner is effectively imprisoned in a worthless property. LINK

BBC Radio London interviewed Lucie on Thursday August 27th in a programme about the leasehold scandal.  The main segment begins at 19.56 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08mx67k

Angry leaseholders, caught in a dispute over responsibility between L&Q and Brent Council, call for action on cladding trap

The Evening Standard hails the development in November 2012

There have been many social media posts over this issue over a long period but no action has resulted so leaseholders of the new build Bourne Place, in South Kilburn, have issued an open letter to Cllr Muhammed Butt, leader of Brent Council, who are the freeholder of the development.  Cllr Butt has his personal imprint on the development as his name is on a commemorative plaque on the wall of this beacon of regeneration.


 


Dear Mr Butt, 

We, the leaseholders with the housing association L&Q in Bourne Place NW6, a development delivered by partnership of Brent Council and L&Q as part of South Kilburn Regeneration in 2013, are appealing to you, as the leader of the council who are the freeholder of our development, to urgently intervene in the cladding scandal we leaseholders are entrapped in.



Due to the revised Advice Note 14 issued by the Government and the agreed EWS1 certification for fire safety of buildings by RICS and mortgage lenders, our development consisting of 3 under 18-metre blocks has also become affected by the cladding crisis.



The 59 leaseholders and shared ownership tenants of Bourne Place are now unable to sell their homes or remortgage without the EWS1 certificate. Depending on lender, we may also face expensive variable rates on our mortgages. We are trapped in nil-valued homes and we do not know whether our homes are safe because our landlord, the superior lease holder, housing association L&Q, refuses to conduct testing of our external walls. They give no indication whatsoever how long it will be before our blocks are examined and how long before they are remediated, should fire safety concerns be confirmed. Our lives are on hold; we cannot move, whether for jobs in these turbulent times or to start a family, and we face many financial consequences. 

Additionally, safety concerns affect all residents, including additional 75 social tenants homes at Bourne Place. In the wake of another Grenfell anniversary, we live in fear as we see more and more fires in blocks with combustible non-ACM materials such as in Barking or Worcester Park - all blocks under 18 metres just like ours. We grow angry as it becomes clear so many of us were sold or rented poorly-built homes but somehow the developers are not being made to act fast and answer our concerns. We are being brushed aside, saying our homes are not a priority to address for the housing association L&Q.


 

One of the excuses we have been given by L&Q, in writing, is that they are not able to provide us with EWS1 certification because they are not the freeholder of our site. Brent Council is. Us, leaseholders, find ourselves here in the middle of a squabble who is in fact the building owner and responsible for acting. We ask you, Brent Council, as the freeholder and superior landlord to housing association L&Q, to clarify with immediate effect the ownership structure for our estate and agree on accountability.





The Secretary of State, Robert Jenrick, has said that all building owners should act, without exception, to test and remediate new build blocks. Unfortunately, as leaseholders, we are largely powerless to force our landlord, L&Q, to act. We are homeowners without any rights of homeowners. Brent Council, on the other hand, as freeholder of the land and superior landlord to L&Q, have the power by lease to make L&Q act due to their apparent negligence to act in line with government guidelines. 

We look to you and Brent Council for help, in your capacity and legal powers of the freeholder, and as the responsible partner in constructing and delivering our homes as part of the South Kilburn regeneration program - homes that were meant to be constructed with safety and quality in mind from the beginning.


 

We look forward to hearing from you soon.
 


 

This letter is written as an open letter, copy of which we will provide to the Greater London Authority and the leader of councils, Mr Navin Shah, as well as enable publicising on social media and/or press. 

Representative of Bourne Place development, South Kilburn
 

 


Supported by UK Cladding Action Group, Homeowners of L&Q and National Leasehold Campaign 

Residents would like to see backing from the Council. They could well take a leaf out of Hackney Council's book: