Good afternoon,
My name is Iain Longstaff. I am a resident at Lambert Court in York – a community of 27 properties for those aged over 55.
You will be aware of the numerous concerns residents have raised over the management of Lambert Court going back many years.
Over six weeks ago I presented a series of simple questions and requests for information to Robert Bloom your new head of homeownership. The majority of these questions and requests have been outstanding for many months, some for a period of years. These requests were passed on to Jo Mahmood in your legal department.
Since that initial email I received no correspondence either from Robert Bloom or your legal department. Not even a courtesy email to say it had been received and would be looked into.
It was again only on my contacting the Accent Group that a reply was forthcoming. I since requested a timeframe within which my questions will be answered. I have had no reply from Jo Mahmood. This has left residents with no options. As a direct consequence of the failure by Jo Mahmood to respond in a timely fashion Lambert Court will proceed with legal action against Accent Housing.
I am addressing this email directly to all board members at Accent Housing.
As a board you have consistently failed to provide a system of governance at Accent Housing that protects residents from financial abuse.
You provide no accountability to residents and there is no transparency in information presented.
Lambert Court has suffered over the past few years through the abuse of power by Accent Housing. This has had a huge detrimental affect on the financial well being of residents here – including some vulnerable adults with safeguarding issues.
Concerns were so great we had to request a section 21 notice in order to request a set of audited accounts. Initially these were not forthcoming. When they did arrive they were not certified by the accountants normally associated with the accounts at Lambert Court. They were presented by a firm Stevenson and Smart. They were not certified but only offered the opinion of the firm in relation to the figures presented.
Furthermore the accounting bill for the year 2019/20 was raised on behalf of a company Coppen Estates, based in Sheffield, which has no connection with Lambert Court. They are freeholders for 2 of Accent’s properties. Both these estates have invoked the right to manage based on the exploitative nature of their contracts with Accent. I am aware of others that have done the same. The reduction in both service charges and management fees since their move to independent management companies is staggering and only serves to emphasize the exploitative practices employed by Accent Housing. This is all documented.
The need for multiple estates to remove themselves from the Accent group is a direct reflection of the poor management practices for which you are ultimately responsible.
A section 22 notice requesting corroborating invoices and documentation was requested.
The information contained in that pack would not be adequate enough on which to base a set of certified accounts. It contained several hundreds of redacted pages and numerous duplicated invoices.
You have a repair and maintenance contract with ESH construction which was entered into in 2017.
Going through the material presented under the section 22 request I can state that every invoice presented by ESH construction for the maintenance/repairs to Lambert Court for that year was either fraudulent or incorrect.
I have asked the following questions of Darren Whitfield, Robert Bloom and Kevin White;
Can Accent provide any evidence that any work invoiced at Lambert Court by ESH Construction has;
In almost 6 months no reply has been received from any party to provide evidence to the fact. I believe that every invoice presented since the introduction of the contract with ESH cannot be verified.
Your main contractor for the NE region ESH construction submits fraudulent invoices.
They consistently employ the incorrect schedule of rates resulting in inflated charges to Lambert Court. Any work they undertake is well below standard. You do not have a system in place that can track these invoices, verify, if indeed, any work has been undertaken, justify costs or explain why they were raised.
I am aware that this is not specific to Lambert Court but occurs on other estates.
You have been made aware of the nature of the communal cleaning contract which subjected residents to seriously inflated charges. I know for a fact that the single operative who undertakes the cleaning at Lambert Court can complete the clean in around 1 hour, does not clean the internal windows as per the contract, and is on minimum wage which now is £8.91 per hour (£8.72 prior to April 2021). At present the projected figure for estimated costs Lambert court have been presented with for 2021/2022 is £2054. This equates to £171 per hour. Accent have proposed changed but nothing has been forthcoming.
There are serious concerns over recent section 20 notices for the scheme to replace windows and doors at Lambert Court. There appears to be a manipulation of figures to maintain the same resulting total figure. This is only one of many real issues we have with this project and the financial implications to residents which I will address elsewhere. Again this is an area where information is not forthcoming and yet it concerns the single most important spend by residents in their lifetime. A figure in the region of £100,000.
The system of governance for which you are responsible has failed. You have allowed this persistent financial abuse to residents to continue for years without any checks put in place.
I will also draw your attention to the procurement process involved in selecting the companies that undertake services at Lambert Court and elsewhere. This also involves cleaning contracts and grounds maintenance. A minimum of five tenders was required under the relevant regulations. In all these cases this figure was not realized. Accent have failed consistently to provide justification for this. Both Clair Stone and David Royston are on record as stating that the proper procument process was followed. I have this documented.
In regard to homeownership. 1 in 6 properties managed by Accent fall under homeownership. At full complement you have 5 staff that deal directly with homeownership responsible for around 35,000 properties.
You have employed your sales executive Robert Bloom to head the homeownership team. You would believe that this position would merit the full attention of one individual. Furthermore Robert Bloom declines to take any responsibility for the day to day running of the team. I am aware that in the coming weeks through the resignations of various members within the team the number of staff employed in directly running homeownership will be reduced to 2 - one of who is a surveyor who is responsible for 80 schemes alone and is not involved in the day to day running. The other staff member is based in Peterborough.
There is a serious management crisis at Accent housing which ultimately you are responsible for:
In recent months;
-Your head of homeownership has resigned
-The homeownership specialist for the northern region has resigned
-The administrator involved with home ownership has resigned
-The contracts manager responsible for signing off invoices presented by ESH to Lambert Court has resigned.
- other senior managers I am aware of have also resigned
This is a disturbing shift within your employee group.
I would argue that if your system of governance and structural organization of staff was robust these events would not be taking place.
This is a failure of the board members to take the responsibility for the governance of Accent Housing and to look after the welfare of their own staff. This raises serious safeguarding issues within your organization towards your own employees for which you are ultimately responsible.
Your head of procurement Chris Cuthell has recently been appointed to mentor Accent's Race and equality resource group. A role which, you would imagine, has great responsibility and would require serious focus.
In the words of Chris Cuthell;
I'm a male, white, middle class, middle aged ex colonial brat... what could possibly go wrong?
In the NHF code of governance regarding equality, diversity and inclusion
the board has to take an active lead..... a clear commitment is needed from the board to ensure that EDI is embedded in the organisation...and to ensure that a tick box mentality does not prevail’
I fail to understand how the above appointment provides a clear commitment to that cause. It is clearly pure tokenism.
This can only reflect on the values and integrity of the board members and demonstrates the lack of importance they apparently attach to these issues.
The recent NHF code of governance clearly states the responsibilities expected of board members – they include;
the board needs to be accountable to residents...openness and transparency are fundamental aspects of accountabilityIn all these aspects you have not only failed the residents at Lambert Court but residents throughout the entire Accent property portfolio. You have allowed systematic and persistent financial abuse to exist in an organisation whose primary role is to safeguard the interests of more vulnerable people within society.
Regards
Iain Longstaff B.Sc.