The residents have been effectively living in a work site since 2019, reports Josh Mellor, Local Democracy Reporter
Tenants of a Leytonstone estate have accused Waltham Forest Council of wasting millions on a “badly mismanaged” building improvements programme that remains mostly incomplete almost four years after work began.
Since 2019, residents of Fred Wigg and John Walsh towers, in Leytonstone’s Montague Road Estate, have been living in a refurbishment and building safety project with an original budget of £20million.
According to the most recent budgets, at least £4m has been spent on new kitchens and bathrooms, a communal heating system, sprinklers, lift improvements and new fire doors.
However, almost four years after starting much of the work remains incomplete and, earlier this year, the council secretly began considering halting the refurbishments in favour of “comprehensive redevelopment” of the estate.
Work by Morgan Sindall on upgrading kitchens and bathrooms in the estate’s 225 flats “paused” more than a year ago – with about 20 complete – after tenants raised concerns about the quality and design.
The towers’ tenants and residents association (TRA) has said that the council “failed to act” to reduce spiralling costs, which it claims have now jumped to “circa £35m”.
In a statement to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), the TRA said: “In Spring 2023 [Waltham Forest Council] had promised to re-tender the badly mismanaged improvement contract after costs began to seriously over-run.
“First works were badly done if at all, now the council has junked the revised improvement works schedule to look at an option which would take years to complete.”
The TRA added that the 20 kitchen upgrades took “months” when they should have taken weeks and that many residents felt “unsure” after seeing a completed flat.
Concerns raised by the TRA included lowering the flats’ ceilings, replacing solid walls with plasterboard, weak heating and hot water, “haphazard” scheduling of works and smoke detectors that are triggered “randomly”.
The council denies the TRA’s claim that it is in a cost dispute with Morgan Sindall.
However, in a sign of concerns about the council’s housing team managing the works, responsibility has now been given to the regeneration team.
According to the most recently shared budget for works on the estate, between May and August 2021, the cost of refurbishing the small council-flat bathrooms and kitchens doubled to £6m – about £27,000 per flat.
Up-to-date budgets and details of the works have not been shared with the TRA since mid-2021 when the council cancelled future meetings due to a “protest” on the estate.
Secretary of the TRA Richie Stennett said: “That’s a huge jump – what would we get for that money if we were spending from our own pockets?
“We had asked these things to be looked at before the project – we had seen these things long before.
“We were asking sensible logical questions ahead of time and no answers had been given and we kept getting met with ‘you’re slowing up the works’.”
The council has blamed unfinished sprinkler systems running through tenants’ flats on issues with getting “access” to every flat.
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Waltham Forest Council, which has spent a decade deciding the future of the estate, again appeared to change its mind about spending further money on the estate earlier this year.
The council secretly sent out a “tender opportunity” for a planning consultant who could advise on the best “future investment plans” for the estate.
In the advert, which the LDRS later found on a public tender website, the council said it has already appointed an architect to “explore capacity” for more homes to be built on the site due to rising costs.
It added that the consultant should look at three options: the “minimum”, a major refurbishment with a possible “decant” of residents or comprehensive redevelopment with an “appropriate” relocation programme.
These options have been considered before. In 2018, after four years of considering its options, the council dropped similar plans for a “major transformational refurbishment” of the estate with a new “infill block” of housing between the two towers.
The TRA has called comprehensive redevelopment the “most expensive” and least tenant-friendly option.
They added: “For senior council officers it usefully diverts attention from why the improvement contractor was allowed to run riot financially with little supervision of how the works were done, and continuing damaging impacts on tenants’ lives.
“This expensive choice may leave tenants with an unsuitable outcome and, perhaps usefully for senior officers, diverts attention from the highly embarrassing improvement project performance to date.”
The TRA also said that secretly considering all options again is “an example of bad faith” from the council and disregards the Mayor of London’s guidance that tenants should be fully involved in regeneration “from the outset”.
The council’s review of its options appears to have come soon after the December 2022 death of the council’s director of housing assets, Sumitra Gomer, who oversaw refurbishment works.
In the same month, corporate director of housing Darren Welsh abruptly left the council to become chief housing officer at Dacorum Borough Council in Hertfordshire.
Last month, the council’s director of place Joe Garrod wrote to residents of the towers to say that building safety improvements to the outside of the buildings will continue “as planned”.
Fire safety installations such as sprinkler systems, which remain incomplete three years after work started, are also “progressing”, he added.
He told residents that “no decision has been made” about the future of the estate.
When contacted for comment in May, deputy leader and cabinet member for housing and regeneration Ahsan Khan claimed upgrade work had only paused at Montague Road to “get quotes for refurbishment”.
However, after information emerged about secret plans to consider redeveloping the estate, he admitted that Morgan Sindall’s kitchen and bathroom upgrades had stopped after hearing residents’ “feedback”.
He added: “In parallel with the building safety upgrades, the council is exploring options to invest in the estate and improve it further for residents.
“Subject to Greater London Authority funding, comprehensive redevelopment of the whole estate could be a potential option for residents to decide on via a ballot.”
“The same process has been used successfully on the Avenue Road estate where 91.5 percent of residents who took part in a ballot said they would prefer to see their estate redeveloped.
“This would provide the opportunity to go beyond addressing essential safety issues by delivering residents the high-quality new homes they deserve.”
A spokesperson for Morgan Sindall Property Services said: “There is no suggestion of any criticism of our workmanship.
“We are not, for example, installing or responsible for sprinklers or heating systems – works carried out by another contractor.”
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