All Owners

Greenland Place is a very good place to live but it could be so much better.

The costs of living here are increasing above inflation, with higher service charges and higher energy costs – this is adding to the general cost of living crisis for owners.

It is hard to hold FirstPort accountable. Their obligations to owners, as set out within our lease agreements, are deliberately vague.  For Shared Owners, the position is even more complicated, having to make sense of the charges applied by L&Q.

We have seen poor management with companies caring only about their profits and not the concerns of owners:

• Barratt Redrow (Barratt) seem to have failed to take responsibility, following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, in ensuring that the construction achieved required standards. Far from staying involved in the development they made as much money as they could, selling the freehold, setting up the ESCo (energy service company) with E.ON and then selling Barrett Residential Asset Management (BRAM) to FirstPort. They are now dragging their feet in progressing with necessary remediation (although we think that this is limited and should easily be addressed).
• FirstPort has failed to implement a robust and reasonable response to developing building safety legislation.  They have not implemented a coherent strategy in response to the Building Safety Act. They have engaged some companies not on the basis of their competence or value for money (Knight Square for the building insurance and Innovus in progressing the building safety cases for affected buildings and conducting door checks and FRAs) but because they are part of the Emeira Group, FirstPort’s parent company. They are not managing the development and service charges in accordance with professional standards (RICS or other).
• The landlord (Adriatic) is managed by HomeGround. They collect the ground rent and charge high fees for meeting the minimum Landlords’ obligations under our lease, but otherwise are not interested in Greenland Place.

While there are so many talented individuals living at Greenland Place, there is a lack of coordination. Owners react to specific issues that concern them directly and find it is difficult to work together so that we can use the legal rights we have in a way that would benefit all of us. Whether we are owner occupiers, owners who sub-let their flats, shared-owners and tenants and other residents we should work together.

We need to be more organised. Therefore, if you are an owner, whether that is a leaseholder in one of the blocks managed by FirstPort, or a shared owner in the blocks managed by L&Q, please join our residents association.  Joining commits you to very little beyond providing a few details so we can verify you are an owner and have some contact details.

By joining Greenland Place Residents Association you will have access to further information about who we are, our strategy for achieving our core objectives, progress updates and information on key issues that concern you.

If you feel that you would like more information before you register, then please contact us.