Next Meeting: Summer 2024

Resident Meetings

Once a season we meet in the Boiler House to discuss life on the estate, identifying where important improvements can be made.

What to expect in a meeting

Each meeting begins with brief introductions followed by the group Chair feeding back updates and developments. We discuss the updates and residents share opinions, experiences, thoughts and ideas. Then there’s a window to share any other issues that have not yet been raised.

Moving forwards we will add some different discussion and idea generating formats; firstly breaking into smaller groups where residents can focus on particular subjects. Those that wish to create campaigns around specific issues can get support and assistance.

EVERYONE IS WELCOME
It’s important that residents feel free to be as involved as much or little as they wish.

  • Spring meeting

    Monday 20th May 2024

    This was our first residents meeting for six months, as the focus has moved to estate walk-arounds with Southern Housing representatives.
    We heard about adjustments being made by Southern Housing and shared feedback from the walk-arounds. Residents feel that while there have been some positive developments, Soutern Housing’s service remains unsatisfactory.

    We also heard from the Interim CEO of Boiler House Spaces who gave an update about their proposed development.

    Read the meeting summary here.

  • Autumn / Winter meeting

    Wednesday 22nd November 2023

    Southern Housing’s Director of Repairs and Estate Transformation came to the estate to meet with residents.

    There was a high turnout in the Boiler House with residents keen to explain their issues, demonstrating the serious range of problems we’ve been experiencing and our frustrations regards Southern Housing’s current standard of service in managing the estate.

    There were productive discussions with some actionable outcomes.

    Read the meeting summary here.

  • Summer / Autumn meeting

    Wednesday 27th September 2023

    Having discussed the impacts of Southern Housings failure to act on our estates issues, we went over the SH complaints process (which unsurprisingly seems to go nowhere) and the following step - the Housing Ombudsman.

    We then discussed ideas and recommendations about how we could further escalate our response, including legal possibilities, along with more creative ways to get our voices heard.

    We also received an update from the Boiler House on the planned development.

    Read meeting summary here.

  • Spring meeting

    Spring meeting

    26th April 2023

    The presence of representatives from SH was appreciated - residents were able to express their frustrations and highlight common themes and failures that have been affecting us all. We were also joined by a resident from another SH estate who’s researching the process around the kitchen refits, and our local councillors, all of which made very helpful contributions.

    Read meeting summary

  • Winter meeting

    Winter meeting

    25th January 2023

    We focused on the growing list of unaddressed issues on the estate. Residents are having serious difficulty reporting issues. We collected experiences and updates to share with estate management and our local councillors, who made the Mayor of Hackney aware of the situation. Southern Housing has informed us that a formal complaint has been raised and they’re now working with United Living to improve the situation. We hope this will lead to an acceptable level of service and will continue to gather resident feedback.

    Read meeting summary

George Downing Estate Residents Association, GDRA, is an informally constituted association, set up to represent all residents whether leaseholders or tenants. We aim to meet once a season, supporting one another in making our estate a better place to live and work.

  • Findings from meetings

    Through meeting and discussing we’ve been able to identify key issues; those which are most pressing and affect the widest number of residents.

    Dissatisfaction regards the management of the estate by Southern Housing and maintenance by United Living is at a high, and continues to rise. Continuing lack of engagement and inadequate action is creating serious problems. Residents report feeling unsafe, ignored and frustrated.

  • Communicating to estate management

    This has been shared with Southern Housing via ongoing phone and video meetings. More recently our meetings have been attended by representatives from Southern Housing on four occasions.

    We would like to see more Southern Housing presence on the estate, attending meetings, participating in walkabouts, inspecting issues, listening to residents concerns and being more accountable regards actions needed.

  • Results and next steps

    We’re gathering results and feeding them into the main estate issues list, adding updates as they arise. We’re making this list publicly available and sharing it with Southern Housing. We’ve passed it on to our local councillors and to the Mayor of Hackney, following a request from his office. A formal complaint about the state of their communication system has also been registered with Southern Housing.

    Further actions may include making a formal complaint to the Housing Ombudsman and potentially pursuing legal action.

What we’ve gained from meeting

We share our experiences and connect to our neighbours. We gain knowledge from one another and develop awareness of what’s happening across the estate - the first step towards creating change. We’ve picked up local wisdom, tips and techniques, while supporting one another. We all benefit from the spectrum of skills held by people that live on this estate.

The evidence we’ve gathered has been presented to estate management and other external bodies, illustrating the full picture of our issues.

We can combine our voices over shared issues, collectively or via synchronised individual actions. As the saying goes, communities are built together.