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Craftsman Jason Howard, who claims he was unfairly dismissed |
‘Repair jobs in council homes? Sling it in any old way – that’s what the bosses want you to do’
Housing department staff speak of a climate of fear, bullying and dangerous practices
THE department charged with rebuilding the council’s housing stock is itself in urgent need of repair, craftsmen and women who work there have told the New Journal.
The council’s Building and Maintenance Division (BMD), based at Holmes Road depot in Kentish Town, is the directly employed labour force which fixes the council’s 24,000 homes.
Workers there accuse management of allowing a culture of bullying and victimisation to take hold of the department whose role is at the forefront of the borough’s battle to create decent homes for council tenants.
Multi-trade craftsman Jason Howard, who claims he was dismissed from his contract fitting kitchens and bathrooms in council homes this month after raising health and safety concerns, said the BMD had become a rule unto itself.
“They’re not answerable to anyone on the outside,” he said. “Tenants just feel that they’re banging their heads against the wall. Staff are finding it so bad that they are taking out grievances against management. People are frightened for their jobs.”
There are more than 100,000 repair jobs in council properties each year. In 2007/08 the budget for repairs was £34million, and the BMD currently holds three out of the five repairs contracts run by Camden Council.
Increasing pressure on timescales has meant sliding standards, Mr Howard claimed.
“With the targets the way they are, you’ve got no choice but to sling it in any old way you can, unless you are a fast worker, like me,” he said.
“That’s what they want – just sling it in. It’s not difficult just to sling things in – no one checks – but this is someone’s home, they’ve got to live with this, and sometimes they’ve been waiting an endless time for it to happen.”
His contract for 11 months had involved fixing homes on the “legal list”, which he describes as “when the place is in such disrepair that the tenant is taking the council to court and they think: ‘We’d better do something about this’.”
In that time he said he had seen dozens of homes in which basic health and safety rules were not being followed, specifically the many pre-1970 flats in which asbestos tiling underpins kitchen or bathroom floors.
“There are no risk assessments,” he said. “No one inspects these places before they send you out. You would not believe some of the things that you find.”
Those still working at the Holmes Road depot will not speak openly because, they claim, it would mean the end of their jobs. But several have spoken privately to the New Journal over the past 18 months – including this week – citing an atmosphere of victimisation, especially where workers are on agency contracts, like Mr Howard’s.
And Mandy Berger, housing convenor for the Town Hall union Unison, said yesterday (Wednesday): “I’m aware of several grievances about bullying within BMD and I’m very concerned. We have got major issues there with bullying and health and safety. We need the hard work of BMD staff, who do a far better job than any private contractor who ever had a contract for the housing office.”
The value of an in-house repairs team was shown when private contractors Botes Building Ltd collapsed within six months of winning a £3.4million a year contract for repairs on homes in Hampstead housing district in 2006.
While the Town Hall puzzled over how it had missed Botes’ financial insecurity, the BMD stepped in and carried out repairs that would otherwise have cost the council millions more through an opportunistic private supplier.
At the council, Mr Howard’s complaints are disputed. He made no formal health and safety reports, and there is a manager at BMD who is in charge of health and safety matters, a Town Hall press official said yesterday. Staff, including agency staff, are given mandatory health and safety training.
While there are two formal grievances against management by staff members, these are being investigated.
The press official said: “Camden Council do not tolerate any form of bullying. If a member of staff, permanent or agency, feel they have been subjected to bullying they must raise it formally to enable the council to investigate it. All complaints of bullying are dealt with confidentially, fairly and sensitively. Mr Howard has not formally raised any grievances with the council and we encourage him to speak to us directly to enable us to investigate.”
But concerns about BMD are widely held. It is understood that a staff member yesterday called the Health and Safety Executive after finding asbestos while making a repair in a council home.
And several current and former BMD workers spoke to the New Journal last year about the scandal surrounding the removal and sale of possessions from the homes of the dead or the dying by Holmes Road-based “void clearance teams”.
After 18 months of internal council investigation, which found widespread rule-breaking and a BMD manager who misled investigators, Town Hall chiefs’ promises of disciplinary action nonetheless fizzled out. No one in the BMD was sacked and no police charges were brought.
Council surveys by Ipsos MORI published in September show that tenants’ satisfaction with repairs have dropped since 2006, and are below average for London as a whole.
A third (35 per cent) of tenants are not satisfied by their service. Residents are generally happier with the standard of the finished job when it is done by the BMD rather than a contractor – the standard of craftsmanship within the BMD is generally considered to be high – but they are less satisfied with reliability. |
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