Three tenants from the block complained about the actions of the TMO with grievances related to their individual tenancies. The local government ombudsman found the specific complaints in most cases justified and recommended small payments to the tenants by way of compensation.
Management problems
But what was of greater significance was that the tenants complained about mismanagement of Toynbee House by the TMO and said the council had failed to deal properly with any of their complaints, including those of harassment, unfair treatment of tenants and criminal activity.
The council agreed that its monitoring of Toynbee House had not been as robust as it would have liked. The ombudsman said this was a very considerable understatement. Toynbee House had not submitted any monitoring information, apart from its audited accounts, to the council for four years and the council had not even noticed.
The audited accounts were not examined by anyone familiar both with accounting practice and with what the TMO was supposed to be doing when carrying out the functions delegated to it by the council. Furthermore, the council had not undertaken either annual reviews, or the more substantial five-yearly reviews that were required under the management agreement. It had published none of the information it should have produced annually for tenants and for the council's wider electorate.
The ombudsman pointed out that the council had signed a management agreement with the TMO under which it had accepted heavy commitments for monitoring and support. Over a four-year period, it had failed to honour those commitments.
Running of the TMO
The TMO had a board, a management committee and a salaried administrator.
The ombudsman found that both the administrator and board habitually ignored many of the requirements of the management agreement and the memorandum and articles of association of the company.
They held meetings at which elections took place but restricted who could stand for election; did not consult tenants about major decisions; denied tenants access to the management agreement and allowed the administrator to determine formal complaints on the board's behalf, despite there being a conflict of interest if the administrator was implicated in the complaint.
It was alleged that the TMO administrator publicly accused a tenant of being a paedophile, and as a result he and his daughter had to be rehoused elsewhere
The ombudsman commented that the administrator and the board clearly did not regard themselves as servants of the tenants but their rulers.
The TMO had taken on more of the appearance of a dictatorship than a democratically run organisation, with the chair and administrator feeling justified in subverting democratic processes in order to see that their views prevailed.
The ombudsman also found disturbing evidence that some tenants who complained or even asked awkward questions had been subjected to various forms of harassment.
Complaints to the council
The ombudsman found that tenants had complained many times to the council over three years. The council's handling of the complaints had been abysmal.
In particular, the ombudsman deplored the council's failure to investigate an allegation that the administrator publicly accused an elderly tenant of being a paedophile with the result that he and his daughter were abused and threatened by other tenants and he had to be rehoused elsewhere.
The man asked the police to investigate and the police said the accusations against him were groundless. The ombudsman found that the failure by the council to investigate the man's complaint under the harassment procedure was nothing short of disgraceful.
The council's response
The council agreed to carry out a full investigation of all the complaints made to it about Toynbee House TMO over the previous three years.
Source
Housing Today
Postscript
Patricia Thomas is the local government ombudsman
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