It’s been just under four months since Gas Call Services took over the gas heating and hot water repairs and maintenance and once again issues with Landlord Gas Safety Records (LGSR’s) are fast becoming an issue like they were with P & R.
Gas Call Services Limited took over the gas heating and hot water repairs and maintenance of all 17,000 plus homes managed by East Kent Housing for and on behalf of the four Councils of Canterbury, Dover, Folkestone & Hythe and Thanet on November the 1st 2019.
It has taken some time for reports to reach us, but reach they have, that Gas Call Services are not doing their job properly and they are getting paid for it.
Once again Landlord Gas Safety Records come under the spotlight, across all four districts covered by East Kent Housing. Below is a warning notice of an unsafe boiler.
The family who received the above warning notice are still without hot water and gas central heating. This family has children and have been waiting three months for the issue to be rectified.
We have seen up to 70 LGSRs which are technically incorrect and issued across all four districts of Canterbury, Dover, Folkestone & Hythe and Thanet.
Also, the warning notice of the unsafe boiler, Gas Call Services Engineer has put EKH as the landlord. EKH is not the landlord, one of the four Councils is. As such it is not compliant.
All four Councils are failing to comply with significant pieces of legislation that they are required to adhere to and which could result in a financial penalty or prosecution.
We have taken the liberty to report all the LGSR’s we have seen to the Regulator of Social Housing. We hope the Councils will self-report again for failing to ensure their LGSR’s are compliant with the law. We also hope they will openly and publicly apologise for this second fiasco to all tenants affected.
This time round there is no blaming Deborah Upton as she has gone. The persons responsible are:
Vivien Knibbs – Chief Executive of EKH
Colin Carmichael – Chief Exec Canterbury City Council
Nadeem Aziz – Chief Exec Dover District Council
Dr Susan Priest Head of Paid Service Folkestone & Hythe District Council
Madeline Homer – Chief Exec of Thanet District Council
None of the Chief Exec’s – who are all paid in excess of £115,000 can oversee their contractor to do the job properly. Yet the Councils continue to pay Gas Call Services and have paid them in excess of £100,000 plus to date according to publicly available data.
It would appear that those in charge do not seem to learn from past mistakes and as such, they should all step down and be replaced with competent people who can and do know how to do the job and spend other people’s money wisely.
