We are slowly building a strong team of people with diverse skillsets that are able to form small working groups of campaigners, analysts and advisors around them in order to tackle the major challenges we face on the estate. We call these efforts campaigns because they are a continuous scrutiny and struggle for gains in the short term, medium term and long term on a multitude of smaller and larger issues that might last years. Our strength is going to be based on our patience to persist with an issue and the clarity to see what is not being provided or not reasonable. Our goal of solving problems or addressing unmet needs goes hand in hand with building good working relations and best practice all round.
London and Quadrant (L&Q) are our managing agents. They are responsible for maintaining the apartment buildings on the estate and the estate grounds including gardens, trees, roads signs and lighting; we the residents pay for this service through the Service Charge. Burnell House (the building) is no longer managed by L&Q but they still maintain the estate grounds on behalf of all residents.
The Chobham Manor ELE working group has the following to report. Regular meetings with the London Borough of Newham (LBN), LLDC, Councillors, ELE and the CMRA are enabling us to gain better transparency. Following the major outage w/c 11/12/23 the CMRA have requested an independent investigation to be completed to include the design, redundancies, resilience, Quality Management System, Planned Maintenance and historic major outages.
Ofgem have announced that they will be transitioning as the District Heating regulator in 2024. Any hot water or heating issues contact ELE directly on 08009993080
Enquiries eastlondonenergy.co.uk@equans.com and copy committee@chobhammanor.org.
The Chobham Manor roads system is, as you may know, still private and not quite so well integrated with the neighbouring roads.
CMRA's Giulia Meloni helped establishing a relationship with Newham Council and the Mayor herself and has been instrumental in assuring Tfl funding to Newham to ultimately address a number of unresolved road crossing issues all around Honour Lea Avenue. As a result of this work, a number of improvements were made and the zebra crossing was completed. In addition, the committee has liaised with the roads officer in ensuring a controlled road adoption for Abercrombie road and Olympic Park Road.
As Giulia is stepping back, the committee is keen to carry on her work and keep improving our road system. If. you are interested we have a longer story celebrating her work.
A working group of the residents association executive committee has been challenging the park charge. Over the year we immediately challenged and defeated the plan by L&Q to make it an annual collection. We have submitted our objections to the unfairness and arbitrariness of the charge to the Competition and Markets Authority and have had two meetings with Jules Pipe the Deputy Major of the GLA following his report and most recently we have made public our position paper on the charge and in combined action with the residents association from the East Wick Estate we have written to the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan to request his ruling on the RPI escalator on the park charge which we think should be removed. We are continuing to investigate the workings of the park charge in forensic detail, for instance, see our Freedom of Information Request to LLDC.
Well over a quarter of homes on the estate are housing association tenants with L&Q as the landlord. It is a central commitment of the residents association to be the voice and champion of all types of resident whether freeholder, leaseholders, tenant or shared ownership and housing and association residents. Many issues of concern are common to all residents but to be sure all voices are heard equally, we have set up the Housing Association Residents Campaign and Support Group. We have had two meetings and will have quarterly meetings from now on with two members of the group co opted on to the committee. Helen Alleyne and Helio Cruz are co-leadeing this group in partnership with the chair of the residents association.
Chobham Manor residents association is promoting a campaign to abolish leasehold. Residents are invited to an open meeting 7.30-9.30 June 13th to explore the pros and cons of a leasehold campaign and form a campaign group. An initial briefing paper with FAQs is available here. If you are interested in supporting a campaign, please register your interest and we look forward to seeing you at the meeting by emailing chair@chobhammanor.org.