Rabina Kahn ignored by EastendHomes

Cllr Rabina Kahn

Following on from our post EastendHomes fails to comply with Council resolution, this post highlights the letter sent by Councillor Rabina Kahn, the Cabinet Member with responsibility for Housing in Tower Hamlets to Paul Bloss, the Chief Executive and Martin Young, the Chair of EastendHomes on 21 December 2011.

MERA is currently trying to find out what has happened in the six months since the Council resolution on 29 November 2011 and Cllr Kahn's subsequent letter in December.  We do know that:

• there have been no elections and 
• this is now a matter of grave concern with respect to the governance of EastendHomes generally and resident involvement and accountability to residents in particular.

This is the first page of the letter from Rabina Kahn.  It recounts the process which led to the issue about the election of residents to the EastendHomes Board being discussed at the Tower Hamlets Council Meeting on 29 November 2011.

Below is the second page of the letter which reiterates the Council's resolution and expresses Cllr Kahn's view about the performance of EastEndHomes.

Note in particular Cllr Kahn's concern that EastendHomes attempt to marginalise complaints about their performance on the basis they come from a small troublesome group and are therefore "less meritorious"!

Cllr Kahn is very firmly of the opinion that:

• a broad cross section of members of the Council are unhappy with the performance of EastendHomes with respect to resident involvement and addressing residents' complaints
• complaints come from a broad constituency of EastendHomes residents and NOT a small number of "troublemakers" as EEH state is the case
• EastendHomes demonstrates a defensive and reactive approach to engaging with its customers
• Cllr Kahn is unhappy that Paul Bloss refuses to attend any meeting with residents convened by Cllr Kahn

You can view and/or download the full letter by clicking the links below and either downloading the pdf file or viewing the letter in your browser.  This letter was provided in response to a Freedom of Information application by Ares Zaimes who brought this matter to the attention of the Council and spoke at its meeting on 29 November 2011.

eeh resident involvement letter 21 12 11.pdf
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In future posts we will highlight what has happened since - and ponder on whether we need to call in the UN to achieve free and fair elections of residents to the Board of EastendHomes!

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