Lewisham Council Leaseholder alliance

Dear leaseholders, few Lewisham Council leaseholders came together and decided to establish a leaseholders support group. What we will be trying to achieve together:

• leaseholders to be treated fairly by Lewisham Council and Lewiaham Homes/managing agent (if any different in the future)

• Lewisham Homes/managing agent to work properly (cost effective, transparent, fair, quality services, etc)

• members of the group are active members and work together to support each other, participate in variouse group activities that will benifit their rights as a leaseholder, producing long term positive changes for its members and consequently Lewisham Council leaseholders overall.

• activities: monthly (possibly quarterly after establishing) meetings of all members; active engagement with local councilors, MP, Lewisham Homes/managing agent, various local and national groups, legal advice organisations and government bodies; activities that aim to improve memebers’ knowledge of their rights, their leases, their skills and confidence to engage, challange, question Lewisham Homes/managing agent, Lewisham Council; active support in each other individual challanges; preparing dossiers, reports for local and national government bodies, the press, etc. in order to make long term positive changes in protecting and enhancing leaseholders rights and conditions.

• the group is currently in the process of establishing

• the group has a representatives stracture, i. e representatives of each part of the borough. The structure provides the best oportunities for broad and comprehensive engagement with councillors, MP, etc, allowing to have full knowledge of leaseholders problems in the borough at the same time.

• the group is non political, not for profit union and formed to protect their members.

• the list above is not comprehensive and subject to changes depending on circumstances

Lewisham Council leaseholders are welcome to join. Our next meeting will be in June, date TBC. We will be comparing and discussing our leases. There are also plans to meet Lewisham Homes CEO in Autumn and variouse councillors to discuss leaseholders issues.

Please contact myself for more information: kat.standlake.point@gmail.com

Hi Kat,

I would like to become involved however I am not sure how active I can be in regards to attending meetings as I am a night worker and generally live in a different time zone to most people.

Hi Zoe, why dont you come for our next get together. At the moment we are at the stage of finding how is the best to get organised. We also dont have a definite time and date for the next meeting yet. Please email me so i can put your email on our mailing list and we can all discuss our attendance possibilities.

Our group is open for active leaseholders as we will not be dealing with issues on smbd’s else behalf. Our initiative is purely voluntary and we, for one, cannot represent those who did not elect us, and secondly, we will not be doing work for smbd else while people are waiting for their problems to be resolved, handing over their problems to us. I have to be straight in that. We just simplly dont have time and resources for these kind of activities.

What we can do is to get involved and support a leaseholder who is dealing with issues, beside that act together at the meetings including meeting with variouse official people that require attendance of many. We wont be able to change things if only 2-4 leaseholders will turn up for discussions with councillors, for example, it has to be many of those who concerned attending so people in power can see there are problems of many, not few. We are aiming to create an active force, not passive.