The Story of Thistle Housing, Asbestos and the Sanctuary Housing Bully Boys’ Threats to Toryglen Residents

1,871 DAYS – 5 YEARS + 1 MONTH + 13 DAYS
since Thistle’s mismanaged Major Works Programme started on 7th January 2016

1,542 DAYS – 50 MONTHS + 20 DAYS
since 30th November 2016 when “all of the works to all of the houses in Toryglen will be complete“. Today, 19th February 2021, still incomplete, work proven to be shoddy and more importantly, dangerous and now possibly hazardous to life and limb

In August 2020, the Scottish Housing Regulator, by way of its Statutory Manager, had expressed a desire that no more blog entries would appear so that the mechanism of the then possible takeover of Thistle Housing by Sanctuary Housing could proceed without any external influence or comment.

This site received an email on grabthethistle@hotmail.com requesting such cessation. It was thought wise to comply with the request, at the time, therefore this blog’s activity more or less ceased. Big mistake.

UNFORTUNATELY, now that Toryglen tenants have voted for Sanctuary to gobble up Thistle and its tens of millions of pounds of property assets, all for free, and the takeover date being 1 March 2021, Sanctuary has now decided to flex its corporate muscles and started bullying residents.

As you may know, amongst other horrors Thistle forced Toryglen residents to endure, was the discovery of asbestos in attic spaces.

This was revealed by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in July 2016, just at the very start of Thistle’s soon to fail Major Works Programme when, only coincidentally, the bottom dollar foreign workers on site vanished for five weeks or so leaving roofs wide open to the elements. Would you work in and amongst asbestos?

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In summary, residents forced the issue, the then Director of Thistle, disGrace McColgan and her sidekick, Daniella Sprott who was responsible for the Major Works Programme, attempted to belittle residents and, even in writing, denied the existence of asbestos and even blamed it on “gas fires” which they claimed residents had dumped in so many attics. Of course, no “gas fires” were ever found but asbestos was. Miss Sprott even told staff to spout that lie to residents. The hapless and useless Larry Kilkenny tried that one on and was laughed out of court. That was a conspiracy to hide the truth and was illegal.

To rattle on, Thistle was censured by the HSE and let ‘off the hook’ by the Scottish Housing Regulator (which, in practice, regulates for the benefit of housing associations and itself and not for residents) but now that disGrace McColgan had been deservedly booted out of Thistle for her mismanaging and manipulating the association for years, Daniella Sprott continued with the lying denials regarding asbestos. She even lied to the First Minister of Scotland.

Perhaps that’s one of the many reasons why she is deservedly getting kicked out of Thistle as Sanctuary takes over on 1 March.

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Anyway, all the things Thistle promised unsurprisingly never came to light but Sanctuary, to bribe tenants (owners were not considered), made its own promises, such as new kitchens and bathrooms (which is going to result in some disappointment with not a few tenants and were going to be replaced in any case) and to complete the Major Works Programme now well over four years late (which would also have to be done, in any case). One of the situations to be resolved was the asbestos in attic spaces.

Sanctuary has in practice taken over the reins of running Thistle even although it does not have the power to do so prior to 1 March but has now conceded that there is, in fact, an asbestos problem, despite Thistle’s constant and massively mendacious denials. They commenced an asbestos removal programme to be started last week and quite simply, they cocked it up big style.

The removal of asbestos is no small feat, (maybe why Thistle couldn’t be bothered) the methods of which are surrounded by legal requirements which must be adhered to. Asbestos can be extremely hazardous to health but can take years and decades before any effects are seen, very often they are deadly.

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The company Sanctuary employed did not follow legal procedures, they did not wear the correct protective clothing, they did not have hazard warnings on their unmarked white van, they did not follow COVID requirements, they used normal disposal bags which, in any case, they should have been immediately taken out of the closes to their vehicle but left the bags in closes next to residents’ doors for hours at end. They did not deep clean the closes. They used water from the probably contaminated attic tanks to through over some closes, in others they did not go even as far but merely brushed some of the contaminated debris away, spreading dust everywhere. In addition, there seemed to be no oversight by any Thistle employee, no one from Thistle onsite. Of course, that’s nothing new.

When some residents discovered that all of this was happening, they contacted Sanctuary and Thistle, although Thistle refused to return calls. No change there then. Within literally minutes, the asbestos removal company involved was offsite and apparently sacked. Quite basically, they were endangering residents’ lives.

You would have thought that this being the first task handled by Sanctuary that they would have gone out of their way to ensure the job was done well and curry favour of Toryglen residents. But no. They failed at the first hurdle which doesn’t exactly bear well for the future and very necessary major repairs required to Toryglen properties. Is it perhaps that Sanctuary just doesn’t care now that tenants have chucked away the lifebelt and are now lumped with them?

Residents called and emailed Sanctuary and some posts were placed on Facebook. As a consequence, Sanctuary has now made threats of legal action against FB posters and demanded that the posts be taken down even although there is not a single libellous claim made on Facebook. Remember, Sanctuary sacked the firm responsible. Why would that be?

So, there you have it. So much for Sanctuary’s insidious plea to trust them. Almost the very first thing they do is to threaten legal action when they were utterly wrong and had nowhere else to go. That’s plain and simple big corporate bullying which gives rise to the thought that this does not look too good for Toryglen if that’s the type of tyrannical tactics Sanctuary is more than willing to adopt. They appear to expect Toryglen residents to buckle under and meekly accept their bullying, strong arm diktat, even more so than the soon to be dead Thistle Housing and do not want any dissent or discussion.

Click above for more

This is an English MP’s take on Sanctuary Housing.

Click on the links below for more.

https://www.markfrancois.com/news/mark-francois-mp-holds-leaders-sanctuary-housing-account
and
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2019-07-18/debates/0604D7C5-68DA-406E-917D-F4B8F04780E5/SanctuaryHousingGroup

For example –

“The Group provide a poor repairs service to my constituents“

“Mark pressed Sanctuary’s management hard on their need to improve their maintenance service to tenants“

“I have had numerous complaints from Sanctuary tenants about shoddy workmanship, missed appointments and a generally off-hand attitude towards them when they complain“

“The company’s record is so poor that in March this year it was the subject of an absolutely scathing Channel 4 “Dispatches” documentary entitled, “New Landlords from Hell”.” Click below for an extract from that documentary.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=497849124078454

Full version below, if you sign into Channel4. It’s a real eye opener.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/new-landlords-from-hell-dispatches/on-demand/69156-001

What the soon to be tenants of Sanctuary Housing don’t know is that this is the call centre repairs service, based in Worcester, England they will be eventually dealing with. Best of luck with that one.

Let’s see how all this pans out.