Gas safety, boiler servicing and residents left without heating and/or hot water.

A lack of heating and/or hot water is an ongoing issue that many GreenSquareAccord residents have had to endure. It matters not if you are elderly, have babies at home, or if we are in the midst of a global health pandemic; if you’re a GreenSquareAccord resident, heating or hot water are not guaranteed.

As this site grows, I have more examples to highlight the short falling without having to spend hours typing up; so for the families in Trowbridge you can read here, for those of you who has assumed our elderly would be supported you can read here, and this week another GreenSquareAccord resident has been in touch.

P J Jones Plumbing & Heating, an external contractor employed by GreenSquareAccord, have been to this residents home a staggering three times so far, to carry out pre-agreed, mandatory maintenance and testing. These visits are paid for with the pile of cash taken from GreenSquareAccord residents in the name of a ‘service charge’, which really has become the gift that keeps on giving to some contractors… Anyway I digress.

In a message my fellow GreenSquareAccord residents shared, they were without heating. P J Jones visited three times, they would order parts, install those parts and close the job. Not long after the boiler would fail again. This cold and worried resident then called GreenSquareAccord five times in one day, only to be put on hold for over an hour, and then cut off. Another example of why we can’t trust annual reports based upon GreenSquareAccord internal KPIs.

This resident has had to take time off work due to stress and spent at least one night in a hotel due to the cold, with plenty of time to worry about whether their recently serviced boiler was safe to use.

The service issue

A tenacious trouble maker I may be but an expert on boiler services I am not. So I had to reach out to some of my contacts for the necessary insight, thank you insightful contacts.

Here are some bullet points to offer some insight into why we may have a really big issue:

• Many GreenSquareAccord homes are fitted with a LOGIC COMBI C (24 30 35) type boiler. Here is the user guide, please take note:

  SAFETY Current Gas Safety (Installation & Use) Regulations or rules in force. In your own interest, and that of safety, it is the law that this boiler must be installed by a Gas Safe Registered Engineer, in accordance with the above regulations.

  &

  MAINTENANCE The appliance should be serviced at least once a year by a Gas Safe Registered Engineer or in IE a Registered Gas Installer (RGII).

• The Landlord (in this case GreenSquareAccord) Gas Safety Certificate has a tick boy that asks if the boiler has been serviced. This service needs to be carried out as per the manufactures instructions. GreenSquareAccord state ‘Yes’ to a boiler being serviced but this appears to not be true, as GreenSquareAccord may not have carried out the procedure as stated.

• Under UK law, landlords are responsible for the maintenance of gas pipework, appliances and chimneys or flues in their rented property portfolios. They must be kept in a safe condition and inspected annually by a Gas Safe registered engineer.

  Annual gas safety inspections are designed to check the following:

  • Appliances operating at the right pressure

  • Adequate air supply to appliances

  • Appliances burning gas correctly

  • Clear flues and chimneys so appliances can discharge gases and fumes safely

  • Safety devices in working order on each appliance

  All permanent and portable gas appliances and flues in a rented property require annual gas safety checks. A gas safety check must be repeated each year on the appliances and flues in your property. Before the start of a new lease, the landlord must ensure that the gas safety certificate is still valid i.e. within 12 months of the start of the lease.

• A full service would require the removal of the burner in order to inspect the heat exchanger. It is also not clear that this is something that GreenSquareAccord are carrying out.

• Many residents live in a hard water area, as such a Scale Inhibitor Combimate is installed. However these would require a yearly clean and change of Siliphos Crystals. It would appear this is also not being completed.

• Failure to conduct a full service would be a safety concern, and could be why so many residents are reporting issues with a lack of hot water and heating. Yet according to the GreenSquareAccord website, they are serious about Gas Safety and service these boilers annually.

If any of this information is inaccurate I will gladly work with GreenSquareAccord to ensure this post is updated, this is not a witch hunt, this is a concern. This is something Ruth Cooke addressed when the issue of resident health and safety was addressed by GreenSquareAccord on their website:

“The health and safety of our customers and their homes is GreenSquareAccord’s highest priority and, when we discovered this breach, we self-reported all details to the Regulator of Social Housing.

“We are genuinely sorry about this breach of standards. We understand that affected customers will feel let down – and we are committed to being open and transparent as we work to put this right.

Little comfort to residents without heating, but perhaps a sincere quote that highlights her true intention to be this aspirational ‘simply brilliant landlord’ - time will tell.

Simple repairs still an issue

How would you feel if the flat above you had suffered a leak? How would you feel when that leak caused damage to your home? How would you feel when your Housing Association made not one but two visits and agreed they needed to rectify the issue, but then didn’t?

The voice of this customer has fallen on deaf ears. How many more homes will be allowed to fall into disrepair?

Perhaps we can pin our hopes on the new Director of Repairs and Maintenance Andrew Rossiter, recently promoted. Now I’m sure Mr Rossiter is a very nice chap. This is not a personal attack, but hints at a worrying trend within GreenSquareAccord, the culture of ‘if your face fits’ - again something else already shared. What gives me the audacity to make such a claim? After all, he garnered so much support from his peers on LinkedIn.

Well for that answer we need to look a little deeper. Andrew will report into Rachel Crownshaw who has a background in primarily retail and banking. Her past experiences list her as a Director of Cheltenham Kitchener LLP which, in her own words from LinkedIn, was one of the UK’s leading and most respected independent cook shops. Here she was responsible for “broad-reaching, covering marketing, PR, finance, developing the e-commerce business and improvements to operational efficiency”. Cheltenham Kitchener however ceased trading less than a year after she was appointed LLP Designated Member. There’s no harm in this and no malice is meant by sharing here, but it forms part of the bigger picture.

Rachel then spent the next few years working for HSBC, a return to HSBC as she had worked as a bank manager for HSBC for over five years before leaving to work at her husbands family business, the aforementioned Cheltenham Kitchener. She then joined Pelican Business Services UK. However I’m still not seeing the required expertise to qualify her for her current role as Executive Director of Operations.

The last Director of Repairs and Maintenance was Ken Neale. Depending on who you talk to, he left because;

• he was outsourcing residential repairs to 3 Solutions which would have been problematic as he had a vested interest in this firm

• he couldn’t work for Rachel Crownshaw who kept reacting to repair requests on the whim of Ruth Cooke’s Twitter profile

I’m not sure which of these in true, I suspect it’s a bit of both. Whatever the reason, GreenSquareAccord needed someone to quickly fill his shoes. Back to Andrew.

There appears to be no conflict of interest unless you go by his LinkedIn profile which indicates he is still a Director at Fortum Facilities Limited. However this company appears to have ceased trading. So now he needs to be able to work with Rachel, this appears to be a given when we look at the comments made on the GreenSquareAccord website:

I’m delighted that Andrew is now our Director of Repairs and Maintenance. In the past few months seconded to the role, he has led the team from strength to strength and is a great advocate for the team and our customers.

Andrew has years of experience in the commercial sector before joining GreenSquareAccord, holding Senior Director positions in large organisations, delivering operational success on large scale contracts.

In his five years with us to date Andrew has role modelled many of the values and behaviours we aspire to in the GSA Way. His experience and strength of leadership will help us move forward to deliver our aspirations for this important service and help develop the fantastic talent we have within the team. I look forward to working closely with Andrew moving forwards on ensuring the services we provide are the best they can possibly be for our customers.

Executive Director of Operations Rachel Crownshaw

So let’s look at the successes Andrew has brought to the table during his tenure with GreenSquareAccord.

Well, surely his grounds team have kept up with the agreed level of service in regards to grounds maintenance? No, many residents have gone without (here’s another page link). When residents from another county raised concerns about the escalating costs, he responded with:

GreenSquare Estates, which is part of GreenSquareAccord, provide grounds maintenance to the Clackers Brook Estate in Melksham in line with the contract agreed with the consortium of developers in 2014. To ensure transparency, the rent charge schedule and increases are detailed in each home ownership document. Reviews of the rent charge are essential in order to ensure there is enough money to cover the works required on site.

“For example, in this financial year alone, over £32,000 has been spent on responsive repairs to the public open space on site. This includes repairs to play areas, knee rail repairs, fly tip removal, responsive tree works, responsive drainage works, vandalism repairs and other nonstandard works. This does not include regular and routine costs for grass cutting, play area inspection and hedge cutting.

“We have never been responsible for, or maintained, any areas relating to roads on the estate. These have been maintained by Brookbanks, on behalf of the consortium of developers, until such a time as they are adopted by Wiltshire Council.

As published in the Melksham Independent

Lacking any sort of apology, empathy, or any clear demonstration of the values and behaviours GreenSquareAccord aspire to, the foundations of the GSA Way according to Rachel Crownshaw.

Talking of cost, this year GreenSquareAccord will be charging myself and my neighbours just under £5,500 to have our grounds maintained. GreenSquareAccord have informed us in writing and verbally that the Grounds Team will visit on average once every two-weeks. When I asked GreenSquareAccord how many times the team had been to our block of flats during Andrew’s tenure, I was told (eventually having had to raise the issue on social media) the following:

Good afternoon Ben,

Thank you for your patience whilst I looked into your query.

With regards to ground maintenance, I can confirm that since April 2022 the team have attended Maureen Christian House on 28th July and are scheduled to attend the site this week and early next week.

At present there are no further dates confirmed for site visits from the grounds team before April 2023.

I hope this answers your query; however if there is anything else we can assist you with please get back in touch.

Kind Regards

Of course they didn’t attend last week or the week before, and as they are not scheduled to appear again this financial year we can make an assumption that for one days work GreenSquareAccord have charged their residents £5k!

Who did GreenSquareAccord send for this princely sum?

Good Afternoon Ben,

Thank you for your email.

I do apologise that you have had no contact. I have looked into this further for you, I can see that it was a contractor that we hired for a partial amount of time. They will no longer be carrying out any more works and our team in house will be doing the grounds maintenance works.

If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to ask.

Kind Regards

A contractor who arrived in a hired van from Cheltenham, perhaps he was a friend of Mr Rossiter. Nice little earner for a days work. Congratulations you have certainly embodied the GSA Way.

Resident Respect

This one should be even easier to maintain, it just takes common courtesy. However, this failure shows again the contempt GreenSquareAccord have for their residents.

GreenSquareAccord agreed to meet a resident at their address to help resolve an ongoing issue. On the agreed day, they instead sent an email stating that due to them having had COVID they would not be attending. While having COVID is a valid excuse, they would have known the day before that they were going to be unable to attend, and as such could have given the resident 24hrs notice.

The appointment was rescheduled and again missed. This time with no explanation.

This is GreenSquareAccord putting the resident at the centre of everything they do, this is the GSA Way!

in Conclusion

Residents are concerned about the safety of their boilers, as the cold weather comes in we can expect more boiler failures, and more GreenSquareAccord residents struggling to heat their homes; in part due to escalating costs, and in part due to faulty boilers.

GreenSquareAccord’s repair team are being managed by someone with a background in retail and banking, who is delegating duties to someone who has failed to manage the grounds team, and responding to repair request based upon Ruth Cooke’s Twitter feed.

Timeframes are seldom adhered to, and when they are the chances are it’ll be an external contractor employed by GreenSquareAccord who will be unable to complete the task.

The GSA Way appears to be, charge as much as you can, have an external contractor complete the work, share the profits amongst the senior leaders.