Thistle Housing – The Regulator Marches In

Day 961 since Thistle’s Major Works Programme Started
Now 629  days after Thistle’s E.ON contract failed on 30/11/16

More information here and here

Download The Scottish Housing Regulator’s statement here

“…outwith the Association’s control“? Yet again, lies. Now we know why or is there more?

Financial Irregularities, Lack of Governance
So, residents’ and the media’s fears regarding Thistle Housing’s senior management have been recognised and vindicated.

There is, however, no ‘I told you so‘ moment here despite the fact that constant hammering away was (and is) necessary to combat the dire failures of Thistle Housing’s senior management.

Thistle’s dictatorial management was offered engagement and dialogue by and with residents on many occasions. They refused. Not only did they refuse but they commenced a series of unfounded and nasty base allegations towards those who disagreed with them. Residents were accused of bullying, barred from Thistle’s office, telephone calls slammed down, emails and letters ignored.

Now, there is a situation whereby others, in the guise of the Scottish Housing Regulator, consider that there are a multitude of gross failures in Thistle management’s administration of the Toryglen estate. Between that and Glasgow City Council having appointed external auditors to examine Thistle’s methodologies and work practices, whatever actions Toryglen residents have instigated pales into insignificance compared to the fears and opinions of those who have the required abilities in monitoring housing associations. That and the investigations of Thistle Housing’s management by the media have now resulted in the Scottish Housing Regulator being forced to take action.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Thistle management’s expensively paid PR company

The less that funny bit is that when the media contacted Thistle’s expensively paid for by you public relations consultants, the Beattie Group, today, they had no clue of what was happening within the bowels of Thistle Fort. It would be assumed, given Thistle management’s huge expenditure on a PR company, that they would inform them of the dire circumstances which have been brewing for several weeks within Thistle Fort. But no. Their self interested desperation and lack of management skills let them down here too.

This dreadful investigation and the inevitable process, all of it, has been Thistle management’s own doing.  Note, management. Not Thistle’s staff who have clearly been aware of the problems engrained within Thistle but have constantly attempted to maintain a veneer of regularity.

However, a weak, vicious, self interested and actively avaricious management, the uncontactable, aloof and frequently absent (“on holiday”) Grace McColgan, Thistle’s director, responsible for all aspects of Thistle’s functions (and grossly over paid to the tune of £90,000 per annum), Daniella Sprott (termed as constantly ‘Not Available’), the self admitted “non technical” Operations Manager, similarly frequently absent and endowed with an over generous annual financial package heading into the region of £70,000 per annum, anyone involved in the financial aspects of Thistle Housing as well as the shady, unknown and unexplained chairperson, Patricia Jamieson, will now have to go as their positions are thoroughly untenable.

They have, in their profound mismanagement, poisoned the well. In discussions with those in other housing associations, Thistle is, apparently, considered a laughing stock.

Everybody’s favourite energy company

How could any management structure be
so wrong, so often, so continuously, for such a long period of time
and make so many mistakes?
Surely, no management could be so much of a failure.
Unless there’s something more sinister.
Corruption? Is there more to be uncovered?

Apparently bought by Thistle without advising shareholder resident members

For example, the apparent purchase of the Cornerstone Hall in Glenmore Avenue adjacent to Thistle Fort, a structure opened fifty two years ago in 1966.

Thistle Housing Association Limited is a limited company with shareholders, those shareholders being Toryglen residents. It would be expected that those shareholders would be consulted. Furthermore, it would also be expected that any ‘surplus’ generated by Thistle would be used to reduce tenants’ rents (or reduce the increase of rents) or invested in the estate, possibly redoing back courts, painting fences, provision of seating for the many elderly. struggling to and from ASDA, etc.

Alas, no. Thistle management allegedly purchased this non housing property and, as a consequence, has weighed down the Association with ongoing and increasing maintenance charges, ground rents, power bills, staffing, security, etc.

How much did it cost? That’s important as it was your money. Did you know about this? Nothing has appeared in the few Thistle notifications. It’s all a bit rich by a housing association which, unlike the majority of its peers, has never built as much as a shed in Toryglen. Its own palatial bunker headquarters aside, that is.

Thistle management have been asked about this. The result? Silence.

In the regulator’s words, “However, delivering the change needed at Thistle requires strong leadership and expertise. In our previous engagement Thistle has not always delivered“.

Palpably, there is neither “strong leadership” nor “expertise” in Thistle’s management given the profound failure of its enforced Major Works Programme which has been saturated with lies, stories and, for example, unending delays and possibly fraudulent actions whereby the Minute of Agreement (to the Major Works Programme) forced and upon owners (who were threatened with legal action if they didn’t cough up cash with only days’ notice) without any consultation or discussion, is now suspect given that the legal requirements of witnesses’ signatures were not adhered to, ostensibly due to “a clerical error” and that’s not including the suspicion that signatures were actually forged. A “clerical error“?  What, 700 times?

See more on this here

Thistle management. A box of snakes.

Thistle management and their pliable, never changing Management Committee have attempted to delay or refuse residents’ applications for shareholding membership of the Association so as to reduce the chances of residents casting votes against management decisions and actions. Crass manipulation on a grand scale.

By any measure, there has been no value for money for Toryglen residents given the constant utter failures of Misses McColgan, Sprott and Jamieson, not to mention their dubious actions.

They have tainted Toryglen residents’ Association for far too long and poisoned the relationship they should have with their customers, both tenants and owners. They have lied, deflected and diverted from the truth on countless occasions blaming all and sundry for their gross ineptitude and, at the same time, desperate to maintain their over inflated salaries which are based on anything but success and performance.

They have wasted residents’ funds, they have carried out a programme of ignoring residents’ questions and requirements and run a bullying cabal based on secrecy and self interest from within Thistle Fort all for their own self aggrandisement. At no time have they paid due respect to residents, treating them like inconveniences.

Now, they must go and go soon as must the compliant poodle Management Committee (the committee which revolves around the same names year after year after year) so that the residents’ Association can be drawn back onto the straight and narrow path which it should always have been on.

A piece in the Thistle News propaganda magazine.What has this ‘association’ done, exactly? They were asked but refused to answer.

They have lied about the so called “South Toryglen Tenants’ Association”, unknown to local political representatives, despite claims that they frequently discuss issues, chaired and run by elderly friends of Thistle’s management with the pretence that it was an organisation set up to maintain residents’ requirements but, as it was discovered, funded by Thistle. An association which, since Thistle signed the grant funding package from Glasgow City Council in September 2015, has done precisely nothing for the residents of Toryglen when it would have been considered that they would have been active during the disaster that the Major Works Programme has been. Residents have been deafened by their silence.

From the leader of Glasgow City Council today, 23 August 2018:

“The Housing Regulator has sent me a copy of this press release today. They have put in place probably their strongest level of intervention at Thistle, imposing a statutory manager and five board members. I understand Thistle may appeal against the severity of the intervention but the Regulator is confident that it is a proportionate response to the scale of the problems.”

The statutory manager is going to speak to residents as part of their work to overhaul Thistle’s governance. I said I would help facilitate meetings with groups of residents, including obviously yourselves. I’ll be in touch when I know more about how that process is going to work. They may well contact you directly anyway, given you have made your own representations to the Regulator.”

Thistle’s senior management and the useless Management Committee have ignored the fact that the Association belongs to residents, not to them. Maybe not for much longer.

Toryglen residents deserve better.

The newspapers are aware of this situation so no doubt, more on this later.

If you require any further information at any time, please send an email to
grabthethistle@hotmail.com

An aside…

Wonder if they will consider this wee blog site? The funny and ironic thing is that quite a few friendships have been formed during this period of strife.