Croydon flats - on the news

[Blinkinblimey]

I just saw a family in sopping wet flats where they were at risk of electrocution.

Fucking horrendous. You wouldn’t want to visit let alone live there.

How do housing teams allow this to happen? It really shouldn’t take the 10 o’ clock news to highlight appalling living conditions.

Feel so sad and angry.

You mean dodgy tendering processes @PurpleTrilby?

That's terrible. My heart goes out to them both.

I live and work in Croydon. A lot of my clients (I work in MH) live in private rented accommodation and I have heard terrible experiences about that too. One family lived for months with no electricity on the upper floor of their rented home. They had to go to bed/loo/bath by candlelight. My client was so used to it she didn't see it as much of n issue. Most of these people were also BAME and I have no doubt that was a factor in the landlords negligence.

That's heartbreaking. I feel so awful for all the people who have to live there, but especially the mum with her two kids cramped into one room. It must be awful for her to constantly be worried about them but have no way to leave.

Croydon council quite clearly couldn't give two shits about its residents. The fact that they were rehoused only after this went on tv proves it. Too little too late.

@abstractzebra I nodded all the way through your post I think you will find this an interesting read.

From a review from a HA employee Taken from glass door

"OneSanctuary SAP is the name of a multi-million pound software system brought in by Sanctuary in 2016, designed for use by all areas of the business. It has been an unmitigated failure, and is a huge drawback of working for this company.
The issues caused by SAP are staggering and difficult to keep track of. Because SHA tried to implement SAP in a cost effective manner, they ended up vastly under-investing in critical elements. There is no tailoring of the generically presented system ('vanilla SAP'), which is an issue as social housing is a unique environment from a service delivery and CRM perspective, whereas vanilla SAP is more geared towards providing a solution for manufacturing industries. Thus, the system uses corporate nonsensical buzzwords and methods of handling accounts which absolutely do not reflect industry practice.
Here are just some examples of the more specific issues faced by staff:
No rent statements have been issued since it was implemented in August 2016, and if a resident insists on a rent statement it has to be prepared manually in a spreadsheet.
The rent and calculations for accounts are hard to use, and often completely wrong. Mostly because the system was never designed to understand housing benefit payments, and this has a very convoluted workaround which a computer cannot make sense of.
SAP cannot interface with Local Authorities Housing benefit systems so payments are missed, lost or misattributed.
Direct debits do not work reliably, and for a long time following the implementation did not work at all. Front line staff are now preferring standing order.
The front end system of SAP requires far more testing and money spent on it. Each customer account is a total mess of information, with no discernible way to separate notes left between differing departments, with information left by staff often going into the wrong account entirely. This needs looking at as from a compliance (DPA) point of view the breaches are serious.
From a usability point of view, the view of a customers account within SAP CIC does not display appropriate information to the user (as stated before this is likely because the system was never designed to be used by a HA) and the user often has to go trawling around back end systems to find obviously relevant data (e.g tenancy start date, account balance, property type etc). This is a seemingly minor but considerable waste of resources"

www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/north-east/peterhead/1529383/eviction-threats-after-housing-agency-policy-change/

It made Private Eye as well.

twitter.com/timburness/status/1141712839717130241?s=20

The thread i posted at the time. When i posted it i assumed it was something to do with UC. This was before i knew they had installed the new system. Some of the reactions i got were interesting to say the least..

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2978114-URGENT-Do-you-rent-from-a-HOUSING-ASSOCIATION-Do-you-claim-HB-Then-please-READ-THIS

I particularly love the post telling me not to stress about the computer system they use. How many more sub postmasters would have been wrongly sent to prison because of Horizon if that was serious advice. The problem here is that tenants are seen as some sort of sub species.

@Sparrowfeeder The attitudes shown in that article are disgusting. And threatening to charge them as well. Croydon Council have obviously got the hump about the truth being exposed.

It must be really frustrating for those who are working in housing who chose to do that career because they care and want to make a difference. As seen by some posts on this thread. Im aware of the bullying culture that goes on in some HAs We have a couple of ex employees in the tenant group im an admin of.

@MattDamon

There is zero accountability for HA/LA and they know it, so they do fuck all.

Can tenants no longer take proceedings against the council for disrepair? That was the standard procedure for getting shit fixed in Lambeth when I was a legal clerk. A couple of firms I used to work for did loads of disrepair cases. (I later went to work for Lambeth council as clerk to ... the housing committee)

Those are truly appalling conditions. I've seen some dreadful places in my time, but nothing that comes close to that. I actually thought this was going to be about temporary accommodation, which one council that I know of frequently leases, unseen, from private landlords, and they went through a spell of placing people in awful accommodation.

I know Croydon well (lived there until I was 36), and I know that there are many identical blocks of flats across the borough. I wonder if these other blocks face similar issues.

Ironically, MIL lives in a Croydon council house and she has nothing but praise for the council's housing maintenance. Her house is in really good nick, and whenever she needs a repair done, it's always carried out quickly and effectively.

Horrific
How the hell did they cope during the lockdowns when we were stuck in the house all day?
The whole thing is bloody depressing

@LakieLady your MIL's experience doesn't surprise me. There are still lots of lovely council homes, well maintained by the landlords, and cared for by the tenants. The situation in those flats is way beyond the worst I've ever seen when I was a housing officer.

People are in touch with councillors, CAB, Shelter when they have problems much less serious. I wonder why no one got involved to help these tenants? Perhaps they were unaware of outside agencies. Lets hope they get plenty of support now, although given the lack of available housing in London it might take a while to get permanently rehoused.

@Seymour5, it just seems weird that the same council that's responsible for this appalling state of affiars is the same as the one that does such a sterling job of sorting out MIL's house.

I suspect that the difference is that MIL's house has only ever needed minor repairs, whereas the flats these poor people have been living in probably need demolishing and rebuilding.

Croydon council seem to have a rolling programme of improvements. MIL had her windows replaced a couple of years ago, even though the existind sealed unit, double glazed windows were perfectly fine, and she's had 2 new kitchens fitted in 20 years.

They haven't managed to persuade her to have gas CH installed though, she won't have gas connected to the house, she thinks it's dangerous.

@MercyBooth

The SAP thing doesn't surprise me at all.
I'm not sure what system other HAs use but everything seems to get lost or not logged properly and even when one department passes on a query to another, when they contact you, it seems to have got changed to something completely different!

I forgot to mention in my last post and was reminded by a news article I read earlier.
People in blocks with lifts.
I must have seen at least 5 news stories about broken lifts. Do the HAs fix them in a timely manner? No! They leave elderly and disabled people stuck in their flats for weeks and even months ignoring calls and promising repairs which never come.
I know we all know what it is like not to be able to leave home at the moment, but can you imagine being stuck inside not being able to go for a walk or get a bit of shopping because you can't manage the stairs?
These situations almost always end up with a story in the news and the HA 'suddenly' are able to get someone round immediately, which suggests up until then, they haven't even tried.

Is it possible that you MIL lives in a marginal ward, where votes really count, whilst the squalid flats are in a safe Labour ward and therefore there is no electoral impact from losing 50 or so votes?

That was aimed at Lakielady

This shocks me and I can't believe social housing is like this. Shame in Croydon those poor people makes me so sad for them

@abstractzebra Yep. The lifts thing seems to happen a LOT.

This was the ceiling in my sons room when I had a council house. Just suddenly caved in. Turned out the roof had leaked. The mould was awful, despite cleaning it off, opening windows and spending a fortune on heating.

I left when I bought a house but it was truly awful.

Not a poor council either. Warwickshire.

@Babysharkdoodoodood - awful. So glad you were able to leave