Thistle Housing – Two of the Principal Actors Who Dragged Down Thistle Resign

1,646 DAYS – FOUR YEARS + 6 MONTHS + 3 DAYS
since Thistle’s mismanaged Major Works Programme started on 7th January 2016
1,318 DAYS – THREE YEARS + 7 MONTHS + 10 DAYS
since 30th November 2016 when “all of the works to all of the houses in Toryglen will be complete“. Today, Friday 10th July 2020, still incomplete, work proven to be shoddy and more importantly, dangerous and now possibly hazardous to life and limb with millions of pounds required for rectification work. Thistle Housing has hardly lifted a finger to rectify their misdeeds

Brenda Wilson, the long time member of Thistle Housing’s decrepit,  inept, under educated and until recently never changing, all pals (after they were found out) Management Committee, has now at long last resigned together with Pat Cannon, her useless partner in crime.

Read the article below from Scottish Housing News, regarding the utter waste of money in Thistle all spent in a vain attempt to maintain the expensive salaries and life styles of its senior management, a senior management which has been proven time and time again, to be useless, corrupt and self interested, a senior management in its entire tenure of Toryglen, has built not even a shed and, through its clearly corrupt arrangement with E.ON and the yet to be completed, shoddy and dangerous Major Works Programme, has wasted millions of pounds.

Yet those responsible still retain their unjustified salary packages. DisGrace McColgan, the nasty previous Director was eventually sacked (or, if you like, ‘resigned’) leaving the bookkeeper, Jim Naismith (who recently vanished from the scene for some time) and Daniella Sprott who, allied with McColgan and the well known infamous mendacious Sandra McGillvray (who quickly vamoosed to Charing X Housing Association when she was found out but, inexplicably and unacceptably, it has been discovered, recently and quietly rehired by Thistle), was the prime cause of Thistle’s failure not just the Major Works Programme but all the way back over nineteen years, as proven by the Scottish Housing Regulator’s mind numbing discoveries.

Thistle’s annual accounts are complete are are said to be “shocking” and that’s not including the millions of pounds desperately required to undertake the massive repair schedule to fix dangerous roofs, leaking gutters, substandard window sills and cracking roughcast. This work has clearly been deliberately delayed so as to keep the huge costs out of the latest and terrifying accounts up to the end of March 2020.

Is this why Jim Naismith the bookkeeper apparently vanished for a few weeks? Is this why Brenda Wilson, no longer even a tenant of Thistle, together with Patrick Cannon, decided to resign before the rest of this can of worms is exposed?

Has any of this to do with Sanctuary’s demand that Thistle’s office space be rebuilt (to suit Sanctuary’s own needs for a building project not in Toryglen) reported to be at Thistle’s (hence Toryglen residents’) expense, even before any approach has been made to Thistle Housing shareholders and residents regarding any proposed takeover of Thistle?

Has any of this to do with Thistle Housing documents being shredded and email accounts deleted in an attempt to hide the facts from the Scottish Housing Regulator, shareholders and residents?

Has this anything to do with the previous ‘Interim Manager’, Bob McGuire the pointless and ultimately useless Interim Director, a self employed contractor to Savills, instigating hundreds of thousands of pounds of so-called investigations into the £8.5 million E.ON  contract, a contract strangely with no penalty clauses, the hundreds of thousands of pounds paid to a plumber, Jeff Poulter, to oversee the Major Works Programme, a plumber with no Clerk of Works skills assisted by an equally knuckle dragging painter, Paul Nolan, both remarkable failures and of whom had not the merest of clues and who singularly failed in their task but were handed buckets of loot by Daniella Sprott the laughingly termed ‘Project Manager’.

(As an aside, you may wish to peruse Mr Poulter’s company accounts to September 2019 here which would indicate that his accounts may not reflect the sums of money extracted from Thistle Housing. Wonder where it all went or was it paid in cash or into a fly personal bank account? Wonder if the taxman knows? More fiddles than an orchestra).

Is this anything to do with the £300,000 in cash retained from E.ON to repair the substandard window sills, an amount of money which appeared nowhere in any accounts and now seems to have vanished?

Is this anything to do with the £560,000 claimed to have been spent on residents’ gardens following the unwarranted vandalism during the failed Major Works Programme, none of which can be remotely justified or accounted for?

Is this anything to do with the money allocated for site security during the Major Works Programme (according to Miss Sprott) which disappeared, there being not as much as a janitor’s hut in place?

Is this anything to do with asbestos riddled attics in blocks which Thistle’s management denied, then lied, then ignored despite the Health and Safety Executive demanding that the asbestos be removed at huge expense?

The results of these ‘investigations’, together with the result of the residents’ opinion study expensively undertaken by Arneil Johnson, have been withheld from shareholders and residents. Why when the results were promised by Bob McGuire by the end of September last year?

A bit more on ‘Bob’s Bargain Basement Bazaar’ this from January this year here.

Is there anything of this on Thistle’s amateurish website? Not a word.

Is there any mention on the Scottish Housing Regulator’s website? Not a word.

Did she resign or was she pushed?

Mrs Wilson, who is neither an owner nor a tenant of Thistle Housing, knew fine well what was happening in Thistle even before she was part of the failed Major Works Programme. Why has she never, until now, made comment regarding the hundreds of thousand of pounds wasted on ‘investigations’? She’s left it pretty well late in the day therefore her previous silence condemns her particularly as ALL of these investigations were the result of the actions of Toryglen residents, as was the entry into this festering morass by the Scottish Housing Regulator in August 2018.

She states, “But it has been getting harder and harder to understand why investigations are needed almost two years after statutory action was triggered“.
Ehm, maybe as all of the thousands of residents’ complaints, the desperate attempts to hide the truth by management and the simple fact that none of the severe (and potentially expensive) faults has been attended to except for the repair of chimneys, again due to the unrelenting efforts of residents, certainly not by Thistle management and staff. There you go Brenda, your question is now answered and if you didn’t know in the first place, you should never have been on any Management Committee.

She announces, “Thistle then commissioned an independent review of its compliance with the regulatory standards of governance and financial management, which identified widespread compliance failures across all six standards when it was completed in March 2018“.
Oh jings, that is the point, having failed on ALL six of the Regulator’s requirement, where Brenda and the rest of the greedy and incapable misfits in management should have held their heads in utter shame and resigned. But no. They have stayed grabbing their undeserved wads of loot ever since. Such brass necks!

She knew, she was aware and as titular chairperson and vice chairperson of the poodle Management Committee (after disGrace McColgan’s pal, the erstwhile Patricia Jamieson was forced to resign), she had been presented by residents since September 2016, of a whole host of concerns, all of which, in association with McColgan and Sprott, she deigned to ignore. Her resignation now comes far, far too late.

“In light of the regulatory engagement, Thistle took the decision to transfer its homes to another Registered Social Landlord (RSL) and announced in February 2020 that it had selected Sanctuary Scotland as its preferred partner for a transfer of engagement expected in 2020/21“.
Another dictatorial standpoint, so typical of Thistle. Any takeover has yet to be presented to Thistle shareholders and residents, none of whom have had the merest input into this proposed takeover. Thistle seemingly takes this to be a fait accompli. They might be better not putting too large a bet on that lame dog particularly after any takeover by the massive Sanctuary Housing, which carries a huge debt (hence they want Thistle’s equity to reduce their borrowing costs), there will be no shareholding by any Toryglen residents. No power, little say, only an emasculated local wee residents’ gathering.

Mrs Wilson states, “There were never any reports presented to the management committee regarding the purpose or outcome of this activity“.
Why? The Management Committee is supposed to run Thistle and she as the chair/vice chair, on and off for years, of the Management Committee didn’t ask questions? Och Brenda, come on!! Are you that dim?

She further states, “Meetings were held with committee members, staff, owners, tenants, elected members and their constituents, partner organisations, and also with the tenant committee members at that time“.
Meetings? What meetings? Just amongst your pals Brenda? You certainly have held NO meetings with owners or your own tenants unless you mean the fake ‘South Toryglen Tenants’ Association’, which was unknown to local political representatives, in actual fact was no more than a figment of Thistle’s controlling management. More stories, more lies.

Click here or below to see more on Brenda’s fake tenants’ association in a piece entitled:

She continues that she “couldn’t understand why“, in May 2020, yet another investigation (into the shambles and mismanagement of Thistle) was to be rolled out?
Is that because the damning results of the previous (and expensive) investigations, the results of which were due last September, were not to the taste of those in Thistle who caused all of the problems in the first place? Or were these previous investigations just again, a calamitous waste of residents’ money?

She cites the requirement of “strong regulation within housing” but that seems to have been sidelined, especially over the past four years, when it didn’t suit her and her partners in crime in Thistle. Like them, i.e. the senior management, she was horrified when the Regulator marched into Thistle’s office in August 2018, even more so when it swiftly became more than apparent that their mismanagement of the Toryglen estate was being revealed over the entirety of their nineteen year period in Toryglen, not just as a consequence of the failed Major Works Programme.

She breathlessly states, “Obviously things needed to be put right at Thistle“.
Oh, really? She ignored that for quite some time, years in fact and only now states the “obvious” after her and her inept senior management pals have been found out especially as huge amounts of documentation and emails have been deliberately shredded or deleted. Or did they just accidentally fall into the shredder? If they same people stay in Thistle (which they mostly have), the ethos of the failed and poisoned business will never change no matter what sign is nailed up above the front door.

She ignored residents’ pleas, she ingratiated herself in endless stories, fibs and lies, she allowed McColgan and Sprott to tear down the association for their own avaricious gain, she ignored shareholders and residents even to the extent of banning residents’ applications from shareholding membership of the association as this troupe of greedmongers were afraid that residents, through a one pound shareholding, would hold them to task. Well Brenda, they eventually did all that and more.

She lied to shareholders at Annual General Meetings, she in her grossly inarticulate fashion, disallowed shareholders’ legitimate questions, and, at the rabble which was last year’s AGM, rolled in Thistle’s solicitor and two police officers, thus emulating a fascist dictatorship where no dissent was allowed.

Sorry, this from Mrs Wilson is no more than a footnote of too little and far, far too late.

All that money wasted. Besides the £8.5 million, all gone, there’s the the £300,000 for window sill repairs vanished, the £200,000 or so gifted to Jeff Poulter, the fake Clerk of Works (who clearly did not fulfil the requirements), the £500,000 on useless so-called investigations with no published outcomes, the several millions of pounds to undo the damage caused by a useless, corrupt management and the yet unknown amount of Regulator’s fees (probably around £400,000 at the end of the day).

Investigation and Regulator fees totalling a possible £900,000, none of which was required or necessary had Thistle’s inept management listened to residents. But no, they knew best. That worked well.

Why are the same people who caused the problems, who have driven Thistle Housing Association into the ground, still being employed?