foster carer prog - Council meetings - Lewisham Council

Findings
noted that the external facilitator felt that, although they clearly had a
large number of concerns, they had all participated in a constructive
manner; had appreciated the opportunity to speak; and hoped that the
focus groups would lead to their issues being taken forward.
97. We welcome the initial response of Lewisham Homes and Regenter
B3 to the results of our questionnaire and focus groups and to our
review in general. We were pleased to hear that the results would be
studied in detail and used to drive improvement. We look forward to
their response to our detailed recommendations.
98. We were pleased to note at our second evidence session that
Council Housing Officers felt that they were aware of what needed to
be put in place to address some of the concerns raised by leaseholders
through our review. In particular, we were pleased that officers
accepted that:
• The management and professional fees being levied by Regenter
were in excess of those being levied by Lewisham Homes, who had
recently reviewed their charges, and the charges needed to be
synchronised
• The Council needed to ‘beef up’ its clienting role in relation to
leaseholder services. In particular, more checks on (a) the quality of
work and (b) the accuracy off bills needed to be carried out
• A better breakdown of service charges needed to be provided.
99. Officers made the point that whilst leaseholder satisfaction was
low, when benchmarked against other ALMOs it was clear that
satisfaction was low across the board. Whilst we accepted this we did
not feel that this should allow complacency to creep in when
considering leaseholder satisfaction. We had no information on the
standard of the ALMOs Lewisham Homes was being compared to (they
could have all been very poor) and the fact remained that satisfaction
was alarmingly low and action needed to be taken to address this,
regardless of how low leaseholder satisfaction was in other ALMOs.
100. However, we accept that leasehold tenure tends to produce
dissatisfaction in itself due to (a) the lack of control that leaseholders
have over repairs, maintenance and major works done to their home;
(b) the fact that regular service charge bills had to be paid; and (c) the
fact that large major works bills would be levied from time to time.
Whilst it might be thought that economies of scale would reduce costs,
in reality costs were often higher in larger projects as factors such as
health and safety legislation came into play and added to costs. We
therefore accept that a certain level of dissatisfaction is inherent in this
tenure type, although there is clearly room for improvement.
The Council’s obligations to leaseholders
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