The collapsing ceilings saga continues...

Continuing the story of total ineptitude at Farrer House that we reported in late October, when roof repairs by MITIE were left exposed and rain flooded into the flats below...
 
We're not sure what's happened with Vincent and his family after MITIE's gaff on the roof of Farrer that caused one of his ceilings to collapse onto his young daughter while she slept in her bed. But their flat was not the only one affected. Yesterday, one of his neighbours at the other end of the block was hit on the head by a piece of falling plaster from the ceiling in her toilet. The whole of the ceiling and wooden supports are rotten and AJ can see the loft insulation through the hole. Apparently, the flat next door is in an even worse state.

The fire officers attending the roof flood at Farrer House in the early hours of 27th October stated that all the fibreglass insulation in the exposed roof area was soaked, was unlikely to dry out properly and would probably need replacing. What has happened since?

On 3rd November, the access door to the loft was open and a worker was overheard chatting in a foreign language on his phone in the pitched roof area...was he fixing things?

The new balcony walkway surfaces were still covered in flood debris outside Vincent's place and up the other end of the walkway...

The walkway ceilings were still bulging...

And, though nothing to do with the roof, a pipe was leaking and soaking a wall...just one of the many examples of MITIE's shoddy work and Lewisham Homes' poor management.

AJ already had a hole in her kitchen ceiling from roof work that took place prior to the flood. MITIE had made an appointment to visit her flat about that damage but hadn't kept it. By 12th November, AJ's toilet ceiling was beginning to grow mould. But all that had happened after the flood was a brief visit from the MITIE site supervisor the following morning. And a letter went out to Farrer residents from MITIE, apologising for the roof leak.

By 18th November, no one from Lewisham Homes had made contact and no interior repairs had taken place.

Yet astonishingly, on 2nd December, AJ was invited (as the 'block representative') by the Lewisham Homes Major Works Project Manager to attend a walkabout on 16th December (with Lewisham Homes surveyors Baily Garner) to "sign off" – or "handover" – all of MITIE's 'completed work' on Farrer House.

How can work be signed off when ceilings are rotting?

On 7th December, when a gentle tap with a broom handle indicated her toilet ceiling was liable to collapse at any time, AJ chased the Project Manager yet again and questioned whether a "handover" was really appropriate. If anyone was going to be working up there, a misplaced foot would bring the whole lot down, she warned. She emailed again when it started falling in on her head the next day. The reply she got was even more incredible.

The Major Works Project Manager replied that MITIE had been asked to provide the reports of their "pre-condition inspections" carried out before work began, and that "it was evident from MITIE's photos that the ceilings were already in a poor state of repair". In other words, MITIE was claiming that the damage had not been caused by their failing to protect the roof repairs, and Lewisham Homes appeared to be agreeing with them. 

AJ was astonished, as her ceiling had been more or less fine before the flooding. The Project Manager continued, "Following the roof leak, MITIE submitted a report of the damage, having visited the properties in question last week". But they had made no such visit to AJ.

Not in any particular hurry, the Project Manager said she would have a look for herself when she and Baily Garner came to do the "handover" next week. She added that "Leaseholders are insured by their building insurance".

So, it was not MITIE's fault, making interior repairs was not Lewisham Homes' responsibility, and AJ would have to claim on her own insurance. The Project Manager had, as usual, preferred to believe MITIE over evidence presented by the resident – and was also entirely wrong about the insurance situation...

******

Over many years, AJ had made several claims on her own insurance for damage to walls and ceilings caused by water penetration. Damp was being caused by the leaking flat roof and the canopy that covers the top floor walkways which leaked where it met the walls of the flats. Only Farrer's roof is designed like this, being the last building to be constructed on Crossfields in 1949 – other top floor walkways are covered by pitched roofs. During this time, the freeholder, Lewisham Council, has only ever made temporary repairs by patching or by clearing the flat roof's drainage gullies of leaves.

Leaseholders pay a contribution in their annual service charges to a buildings insurance policy taken out by Lewisham Homes which covers damage to the overall building and its communal parts. Leaseholders must also get their own building insurance to cover any damage they might be responsible for to the flats below or above them.

But in AJ's case, the interior damage was directly attributable to the lack of maintenance of the building's common parts (ie, the flat roof and the top floor walkway canopy) and should have been covered by the freeholder's own building insurance. When AJ first realised this, Lewisham Homes had not been invented and the estate was administered by the Housing team at the Council. AJ began referring the problem to Lewisham Council's insurance team. In 2001 their broker refused to pay out and wrote to the Housing department to tell them why. Although she was not supposed to see it, AJ managed to get a copy of this internal document, which said:

"the cause of the problem – the worn out flat roof – does not seem to have been addressed.  The insurers would now regard any further damage to Ms (AJ)'s property as being inevitable due to lack of repair. Patch repairs would appear to be ineffective and a new roof is required.

"Ms (AJ) is a leaseholder and under the terms of her lease the Council is responsible for maintaining the 'reserved' premises.  By not replacing her roof you are in breach of the lease. Again insurance cannot be used to compensate for breaches of contract.''

Lots of paperwork seems to have disappeared during the Council's handover to Lewisham Homes in 2007, including repair records and details of previous Major Works to Crossfields in 1997. Nevertheless, Lewisham Homes recruited many of its staff from previous Council departments, and the Housing staff should have known the position on insurance.

*****

The walkway side of Farrer House

A side view from Creekside shows the extent of the flat roof and tiled pitched roof

The top floor's walkway canopy

When Major Works began on Farrer last year and the roof was surveyed, AJ pointed out the problem with the walkway canopy which was sagging even then. Within days of commencing work at Farrer, MITIE painted the walkway canopy's ceiling. Water stains appeared soon after. On other blocks, the walkway ceilings were painted after "concrete repair" work had taken place – cracks were dug out around metal joists, the joists painted with anti-rust, the lot filled in and painted over. These concrete repairs were done to avoid all possibility of balcony walkways ever collapsing on people's heads.

Later on, when the subcontractor arrived on site to resurface everyone's balcony walkways, the flat part of the roof at Farrer was given a coating of the same waterproofing product.

Eventually, with all work supposedly completed, the scaffolding on the entire block was taken down. Then almost immediately and at enormous cost, scaffolding was re-erected to address the walkway canopy problem, which the surveyors Baily Garner had finally decided had to be completely demolished and rebuilt.

This work should have been anticipated at the beginning, during the surveys, or before estimates were even issued to leaseholders months earlier in May 2014. The requirement for such extensive structural repairs might have been picked up if anyone had ever actually bothered to look at the repair logs for the 8 year period since Lewisham Homes had been in charge.

******

So the omnishambles that is Lewisham Homes Major Works continues, despite MITIE having been given the push. 

MITIE are effectively saying most of the damage was already caused by Lewisham Homes' failure to repair, whilst seemingly failing to acknowledge it has been made significantly worse by their own neglect. Meanwhile Lewisham Homes were happy to pass to the leaseholder the responsibility for interior repairs necessitated by their own neglect to properly repair the structural fabric of the building.

When AJ mentioned legal proceedings, the Project Manager revised Lewisham Homes' position, declaring that they were responsible for repairing the roof and that they would "make an informed decision on how damage to individual property can be remedied".

No urgency, no mention of when. No word about renewing the loft insulation. In the meantime, some of the rooms in the top floor flats are almost uninhabitable. But that's OK. If someone is hurt, Lewisham Homes is liable.

Today, the second lot of scaffolding (which was erected for rebuilding the previously undiagnosed walkway canopy as well as tile repairs to the pitched roof) was being taken down.

With access to the roof now removed, it will be impossible to examine those roof repairs at the "handover" next week. It is likely that Baily Garner have already been up to have a look and signed it off anyway and the walkabout next week is just a formality, or even, as with other handovers, a bit of a sham. For AJ, there will be no reassurance that the problems have been solved.

That's why she nipped up there yesterday to have a quick look for herself before the scaffold was struck. She was worried by what she saw in a relatively small area and short space of time – blocked gullies, large poolings of water on unevenly laid waterproofed surfaces, big gaps between the pitched roof tiling and brickwork...and had the walkway canopy actually been rebuilt?

Still, when it all fails the next time, at least Lewisham Homes will not be asking her to claim on her own insurance to pay for the repairs. It only took 20 years to get that far.

Castell House stairs experiment

This notice appeared at the foot of Castell House stairs a couple of weeks ago. Nothing happened for a while and people wondered what was going to happen. Were they going to paint the stairs? Whatever Lewisham Homes was planning, it was long overdue since the stairs have been in a right old state for a very long time now. Repairs Rep Raphael will tell you that the main problem is the cleaning procedure that leaves behind the remains of the mop and the residue of a highly corrosive detergent (that has also stripped the paint off the bannisters), and there would be little point in repainting the stairs if this procedure isn't improved upon. Anyway, later in the week, some guy spent four hours (according to the caretaker) sanding off the old paint surface, down to the original granite, on the first flight of stairs. We wonder what will happen next –  will there be paint going on top? Are all the stairs to be sanded down? That would take an incredible amount of time and labour!

Tenants have no water for 6 days followed by water torture

We reported on Monday 8th August that on one side of Wilshaw House, tenants had been without water to flush loos and cold water in the bathroom for three days. We also reported on Friday 12th that this matter had been resolved by Wednesday 10th.

However, we learned yesterday that the matter is far from resolved. For some tenants, normal service was resumed on Tuesday, but others could not flush their loos till Wednesday evening. A leaseholder called Lewisham Homes on Wednesday afternoon and was told the problem was because the ball cock in the water tank had stopped working, and they had no spares to replace it with. They had sent off for the part and it would take a while but perhaps be fixed by Friday.

The choice was whether to keep the water turned off (no toilet flushing) or turn it back on – but, said the LH guy, 'there might be some leaks' – if the water went back on in flats where people were out but had left the taps on, they might experience flooding.

The water was turned back on. And so from Wednesday and ongoing, there has been water cascading from an overflow pipe onto the porch roof below then bouncing onto the area in front of the porch, necessitating the use of an umbrella to get to the first floor or to access the ground floor flats either side of the stairwell.

This is equivalent in noise levels to five days of non-stop rain.

The very same thing occurred at the end of June at Castell House. Stickman posted on June 30th that the water tank in Castell had been leaking for three days. Both he and the caretakers had reported it. He'd been told by Repairs that it wasn't 'an emergency' and would be fixed the following day. Nine days and gallons of wasted water later, on Wednesday July 6th he reported that Repairs had denied that anyone had contacted them the week before, suggesting the first time it had been reported was the day before. They told him it was now classed as an emergency and someone would come and fix it on the following Monday, making it a total of 14 days that residents had had to endure the sound of water crashing onto a tin roof and splashing onto the forecourt.

After that, any sane person would expect Repairs to have a few spare ballcocks, valves and other plumbing necessities in reserve for just these sorts of occasions. But they quite obviously do not. If the job is contracted out, then the contractors should be sacked.

We are also alarmed to realise that our bathroom cold water comes from the water tank rather than direct from the mains, and is therefore not drinking water. What have we been cleaning our teeth with all this time?

Update Tuesday 16th August: The water was turned on this morning, apparently, although it was not clear then whether the problem was actually fixed. But ground floor residents were able to flush their loos. It is probably a co-incidence that Cllr Paul Bell (who sits on the board of Lewisham Homes) was referred to this post yesterday afternoon.

Bins and weeds etc #2

The bins, the bins...

On Wednesday 27 July we got a letter from Caretaking Services telling us: "As part of our continuing drive to improve the standard of cleanliness on your estate, we have appointed a contractor to clean the Rubbish Chute, Bins and Bin Chamber to your block. The cleaning will be carried out on 1st August – 5th August between 9am and 4pm. Please do not use the chutes while cleaning is in progress."

And about time, too, we thought (see post on 29 July).

But alas, no Rubbish Chutes, Bins or Bin Chambers were cleaned in the week of 1st-5th August. What with the riots an' all, we forgot to ring Caretaking and find out why it never happened...

All weeds are wild flowers...

On Friday 29 July we also reported that Glendales hadn't shown up for a while and our estate was getting greener by the minute. The Monday after, a Glendales truck was spotted parked up next to Holden at around 2pm. The guys were hanging by the van, smoking and doing something with their phones. They were still doing this 20 minutes later...then it looked as if there was some action – one of them was seen with a long gardening tool over his shoulder. This is part of the area they were supposedly dealing with:

BEFORE (Monday 1st August):

AFTER (Friday 12th August):

Not much change there then. 

Here's a nice Dandelion (Taraxacum aggregate)...or is it Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris)?

Concrete flowerbeds

We also reported two weeks ago that the ugly concrete that was badly laid into numerous empty tree-beds around the estate was to be removed. But nothing's happened...

A week ago, two patches of badly laid concrete were covered over. Turns out they had been dug up and relaid – more neatly this time, but still an ugly solution, when the beds could have been used for plants.

Morrisons – gone but not forgotten

British Gas sub-contractors Morrisons finished work on the estate on 22nd July (three weeks ago)...we wonder if they are coming back to pick up the stuff they left behind...(a huge pile of hardcore, several plastic posts, and a few large boxes containing big yellow pipe joiners)...?

 

Finally, water...

We reported on 8th August that Wilshaw House had had no water in the bathroom and loo for 4 days. Water was finally turned back on after six days on Wednesday this week.

Right. That's enuf moaning. (No it's not – see the next post!)

castell update

emergency- noun.

A sudden, urgent, usually unexpected occurrence or occasion requiring immediate action.

Just spoke to LH repairs again who, as well as denying I had ever contacted them regarding the leaky overflow pipe over a week ago, (and in fact going so far as to suggest that the first report was logged yesterday), have now said that as this is classed as an emergency someone will come and fix it on Monday.

Scaffolding

Scaffolding has been up for a while now (over four weeks front and back of 1-20 Wilshaw and a bit less outside Castell) but no one knows what it's for. During all this time one workman has been spotted with one roof ridge tile.

He was asked if he'd been detailed with clearing the gutters while he was up there – maybe pull out the tree that's growing up on Wilshaw, but alas no. A zoom lens reveals it may be a bird's nest, so probably best to leave, eh.

Concrete jungle

I'm told it was after there was an estate walkabout on June 6th with a certain Chief Executive that this happened:

I'm also told there was nothing discussed in the walkabout that had anything to do with the forlorn little boxed in areas where trees have been chopped down that suggested they might in the following few days be filled in with concrete by probably one of the most inept concrete filler-inners that ever worked for Lewisham (Homes)...

Some residents were very upset by this, especially the gardeners, who had been planning some guerilla planting, having waited in vain for the useless Glendales to do anything – planting not being Glendales' strong point. But with the loving care of residents we may have had some sweet little beds, possibly growing the sort of stuff that looks after itself and can survive the kids and weather. I'd be happy with some long grass rather than this merangue of sand and cement. Truly awful.

No one asked for this shoddy work, no one wants it. This is what happens to it after a year:

We'll probably have to live with the above since cars drive over it, but the little squares that were once tree beds should be got rid of as soon as possible. And nobody should pay for it being put there or being removed.

castell house

I just asked the caretaker why the water tank in castell house is still leaking after 3 days. He said he was really annoyed and had rung them himself 6 times to report it. Apparently one person from LH came out to 'fix' it today but its exactly the same. I rang up myself to be told that its 'not an emergency' and would be dealt with tomorrow which means it has now been leaking gallons of water for 4 days. When I questioned the period of time it has taken to plug it I was bluntly told that this was a 'good turnaround.'

VIP Estate Walkabout - Monday 6th June at 4.30pm

All Crossfields residents are invited to an Estate Walkabout next Monday 6th June at 4.30pm.

In attendance will be some Very Important People, including Lewisham Homes' Chief Executive Andrew Potter, Lewisham Homes representatives from Caretaking, Estate Services and Repairs, plus Lewisham Homes board member Cllr Paul Bell.

This is your chance to tell the senior managers any concerns or issues you may have with the services on the estate. Remember, some of these people have never set foot on the estate and need us to tell them what it's like and point out problems they may not see. The last 'Walkabout' (distinct from Estate Inspections) was in 2009 and not much has changed since.

The walkabout will meet at the estate entrance between Browne House and Castell.

If you cannot make it at this time but want to raise an issue, please get in touch with Crosswhatfields or the TRA Secretary, or your block rep (see this page), or leave a comment below.