Patrick Franco is leaving Notting Hill Genesis. In doing so, he tried to cover himself in glory in a ‘pass the sickbag’ style….quoting President Obama, no less!
with thanks to thisisnorthkensington.wordpress.com
FTHN: From the Hornets Nest
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FRANCO OFF…No Surprise; The BIG surprise was that he was ever considered suitable….
23 responses to “FRANCO OFF…No Surprise; The BIG surprise was that he was ever considered suitable….”
So, Helen Evans is to become the new boss at Notting Hill Genesis.
Evans was the Chief Executive of the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Mis-Management Organisation after Gordon Perry (who was the worst ever CEO) and Robert Black (the Art Student from Aberdeen who was in charge when disastrous decisions over Grenfell Tower were made ).
It ends in tears for everyone in Housing.
Helen Evans’s personal grooming is exemplary. This Franco blooke looks like a Hells’ Angel.
The TMO’s first Chief Executive, Martyn Kingsford, was a very autocratic, high- handed man who enjoyed his battles. Baroness Hanham seemed to like him. It is no surprise that the staff who worked in the TMO were in the same authoritarian mould. They had to win at all costs and had to show tenants that they ruled with a rod of iron.
The hostile environment filtered through the ranks from the top down. Gordon Perry was too weak to deal with that deeply engrained, dysfunctional, culture.
As for Robert Black, this is the bloke who told the local rag, in response to the Memoli Report,
…………”We have to rebuild trust in people who have lost confidence in us”
He the told the Grenfell Inquiry that he did not remember reading the Memoli Report.
Hornets can now judge the calibre of TMO Chief Executives.
Martyn Kingsford rode the crest of a wave under Joan Hanham’s leadership at the Town Hall. When Merrick Cockell took over leadership of the Council, he was sent packing. All that malarkey is over 25 years ago!, now He looked devastated at his final AGM of the TMO.
I hoped Gordon Perry would be much better or at the very least different but, alas, no.
I would not employ any of the TMO staff in my business.
I would like to have been a fly on the wall in Myers’ office when Martyn Kingsford attended like a naughty schoolboy to face his final caning and expulsion. After that meeting, he sent an email to all TMO staff saying,
“There is never a good time to go but I am retiring.”
Gordon Perry was a total mess! He was typical of someone who started in Housing as a Rent Collector and got promoted beyond his capabilities in left wing councils.
Robert Black when he started at the TMO told me, “I’m not Gordon.”
That much is true and thank god for that I thought. Black was a disaster.
Is it true that Gordon Perry jumped ship and got another job of a lower status in Housing because he knew that he was about to be shown the door by the Council.
Merrick Cockell was perspicacious. He definitely had sharp powers of judgement.
He saw through Martyn kingsford’s fluent, showy, ebullient style and realised that the Council flats were falling in to a seriously rundown state. As a good Tory, this is something that Cockell could not abide. Hence, Mr Kingsford’s fate was sealed shortly after Merrick Cockell took over at the Council from Baroness Hanham.
I do not believe that Merrick Cockell was impressed with Gordon Perry. I am sure that a dossier was being compiled for Mr Myers to use as a prelude to Gordon Perry’s resignation. Myers was good – a no nonsense man. Mr. Perry must have known that his days were numbered and jumped ship before marching orders were issued. He was also very concerned if tenants told Merrick Cockell about their dissatisfaction with the TMO.
I would like to know how the Blair Government’s Housing Inspectorate awarded the TMO a three star rating and an extra £12 million of public funding for repairs to Council flats on the back of that rating when the TMO was failing so badly. A few months after that Government Inspection, the Council had to bring in
Miss Memoli, a Solicitor, to investigate the TMO. She found things out that the were shockingly bad. The Housing Inspectorate’s Inspectors must have been shockingly bad to award a three star rating to an organisation that was a complete and utter disaster.Why the Housing Inspectorate overlooked all of the TMO’s failings beats me.
Robert Black never cut the mustard at the TMO. I always knew that the TMO would implode one day.
This Franco bloke at Notting Hill Genesis sounds equally bad.
Maria Memoli’s investigation team included a retired police officer with secretarial and administrative support. When Miss Memoli turned up an issue the retired Bobby investigated and looked for evidence to see if any of the allegations made could be substantiated. It became known that this former copper identified fraud. This evidence was suppressed and never made public in Maria Memoli’s report.
The police have now reported 54 individuals to the Crown Prosecution Service so that criminal charges, if any, may be formulated for the personal failings of individuals over the sub-standard work at Grenfell Tower. According to Sky News, some people have been reported to the CPS for fraud.
The TMO had so many inadequate Chief Executives in its 21 year history. It is hardly surprising that this miserable excuse for a housing service ended in disaster with such dreadful consequences – 72 dead residents at Grenfell Tower.
Social Housing is full of inadequate people who get good, well paid, jobs in the sector because they would not cut the mustard in any other sphere of economic activity.
Helen Evans wasted a lot of time, when she was at the TMO, to bring about the expulsion of TMO members who had fallen out of favour with the Company’s senior executives and the “inner sanctum” of the TMO Board.
It wasn’t a good strategy because the Council’s Director of Housing, Health and Adult Social Care slapped a breach notice on the TMO because it was doing a lousy job in managing tenancies.
Jean Daintith, the Council’s Director of Health and Adult Social Care, was fuming after she observed a Board Meeting when the expulsion of one Board Member did not come to pass. That expulsion was demanded by Helen Evans and Juliet Rawlings and the “inner sanctum” of the TMO Board. A Breach Notice was served on the TMO under Helen’s leadership. It was the Council’s only Default Notice of the TMO’s Modular Management Agreement in the twenty year history of the Organisation. The Breach Notice was withdrawn shortly after Robert Black took over – a big mistake because the TMO did not improve, it got worse under Black just like I always knew it would. The TMO had reached the point of no return and Councillors, Labour and Tory, were full of intense pride and too stupid to acknowledge the TMO’s many failings about the only Council-Wide TMO in the Country.
Notting Hill Genesis has reached the end of the road. It is too big to manage and is an almighty mess. Another monumental disaster!
Now don’t forget, the resident members of TMO Board were for the most part completely useless. TMO Chief Executives ran rings around them and sent them to Oxford Brooks Poly for training. One of them told me that this meant she had a degree from Oxford. I just laughed in her face! These resident Board Members were on the TMO Board to top up their social security benefits with a very generous monthly allowance. One ended up in prison and two of them were mentally unstable and took their own lives.
The TMO even paid for the Leader of the Board’s Inner Sanctum to have private counselling sessions courtesy of funds given to the TMO by the Council to run the housing service.
Under Gordon Perry, the TMO Board enjoyed lavish hospitality at Ashridge Souse in Hertfordshire, the “Bespoke Executive Retreat:” At this former Grand Stately Home, these Council tenants on the TMO Board focused on reflection and leadership alignment, using the place’s strategic workspaces with custom wellness to promote team-building. The Directors of top FTSE 100 Companies get this decadence. To think, the TMO paid for Council tenants on the social to get this whilst it shafted the many who needed housing services.
Ashridge is lavish self indulgence.
Councillor Ms Dent Coad made the case during “austerity” that Ashridge was a luxury too far. Thanks to her, the TMO Board stopped going there for their jollies.
I don’t suppose she knew about the dining out in top restaurants in Town but she got it right about Ashridge.
Councillors Elizabeth Campbell, Quentin Marshall and Maighread Condon Simmonds know all about Ashridge.
Maigread Condon Simmonds told me that she paid for “all of her own drinks at table” which means that other TMO Board Members lived it up on the TMO.
The Council and the TMO thought the cladding for Grenfell which met proper safety standards was too expensive, so, they “economised” in the best traditions of Tory penny pinching. The cladding which they used did not meet proper safety standards. It was approved and fitted with catastrophic consequences.
What a shower !
Franco and that lot at the TMO.
Emma Dent Coad tried very hard to put a stop the so called Expenses’ Allowance paid to TMO Board Members. She was outraged when one Tenant Board Member bragged that the so called Expenses’ Allowance paid for the cost of her FAGS every month. So, the Council gave the TMO money to provide housing services and actually paid for a Board Member’s addiction to FAGS. No wonder we had such a crap barrel people on the TMO Board.
Expenses which are usually paid to people in the not for profit sector cover refunds of bus and tube fares to attend to official business, the cost of reimbursing a light meal if someone is away from home on official business at a time when lunch or dinner would have normally been eaten.
One ethical Board Member did not accept that this monthly stipend courtesy of the TMO was really an Expenses’ Allowance. He considered it “earnings” and reported these earnings to HMRC who charged him Income Tax.
Dear Dame,
The Department for Work and Pensions were told that the TMO paid its resident board members an EXPENSES ALLOWANCE.
Social Security Officers decided as this allowance reimbursed out of pocket expenses, the recipients of it should not have their means tested social security entitlements reduced. A single parent earning anything like that amount of money for doing a part time cleaning job would have their entitlement to the social substantially reduced.
It may be called an expenses allowance but it was in reality EARNINGS which is which is how the Inland Revenue treated it when its details were reported to them by a Resident Board Member who had a taxable income and who was not drawing the social.
Is it true that the TMO got rid of a woman Housing Worker who was convicted at West London Magistrates’ Court in the 1990’s for drawing Social Security and for failing to declare the good salary that she earned at the TMO?
Michael Gove was right.
Social Housing is a mess owing to the people who work in it!
Gove advocated that formal qualifications should be mandatory for everyone who works for a social housing landlord. This approach would ensure that consistent standards and competent practices are maintained by all social housing providers. The standards required for the formal education process would be decided nationally with rigorous examination requirements.
The current recruitment practice in social housing is not fit for purpose. Social housing landlords publish a person specification for every vacant position in their organisation. Applicants are invited to write detailed statements to support their job applications by addressing requirement in the selection criteria. The claims which people make in these written statements are often false and far from accurate and honest. Some candidates have been known to boast that they have used examples of something they have done at work in their written statement when what they have really done is claimed the experience of a colleague as their own. This recruitment practice favours confident bullshitters.
Why did it take the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire before it dawned on anyone in authority that the TMO was “not fit for purpose?” Theresa May made this statement to parliament a few days after the fire and announced the winding up of the company.
Tenants across Kensington were relieved to hear that the failed, disastrous, excursion of tenant management was no more. On my estate we hosted the TMO Memorial Dinner.
I suspect that Notting Hill Genesis’s tenants are celebrating the departure of Franco. Not sure that Helen Evans is the one to sort it out.
So, Helen Evans is taking over at NHG on a temporary basis.
She ran the TMO on a temporary basis when Gordon Perry jumped ship in the run up to Robert Black installing himself in the place. She spent her time at the TMO “firefighting.” The TMO was in crisis management under her and even worse under Robert Black.
Ms Evans is the only TMO Chief Executive to oversee a campaign to expel members of the company. She managed to expel three TMO members, two of them were on the TMO Board. She wanted to expel one other Board Member but she could not pull it off. Messrs. Kingsford, Perry and Black never went down that road. She just did not get it. Expelling people from a member led organisation is failure. A good Chief Executive should be able to find a way of working with difficult people.
Franco has presided over an enormous mess at Notting Hill Genesis. It is probably impossible for anyone to turn it round. The Association has over 80,000 homes to look after.
Black presided over a god almighty mess at the TMO with just 9,000 homes to run. The Grenfell Tower fire puts TMO incompetence and mismanagement in to a league of its own.
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