Progress on SECAB and the garden has been a bit slow over the last few months. While it is a shame we did not manage to get it all sorted this year, we now have some time to get things ready for next summer.
The main thing we need to set up to make this work is a bank account which is controlled by multiple people across the back green. This means that people can have more confidence that their (albeit small) contribution towards the garden cleanup and subsequent plans would not go missing.
Bank accounts are available for community organisations which have not registered as companies or charities. Setting up as one involves a lot more paperwork and liability than anyone here will want to take on.
The main requirement for a community organisation to set up a bank account is a constitution document setting out the rules of the committee. For us a good template for the committee is an Owners Association. Many groups of owners in tenements set these up to better manage maintenance spending. Under One Roof has a template constitution freely available on their website.
I have taken this template and amended it for SECAB. The main difference we have is that we need to include tenants as equal partners. The other difference is that it needs to apply across multiple tenements, rather than just a single one.
SECAB Constitution – Google Docs
Most of the text is standard for any committee. What matters for us are the objectives:
The objectives of the Association are as follows:
To promote and protect the interests of all residents and owners of properties within the Twelve Tenements on matters concerning the management and maintenance of the buildings and the immediate area around them.
To help establish and maintain Owners Associations set up within each of the Twelve Tenements.
To make recommendations to the owners of the Twelve Tenements regarding communal maintenance of their area of the back green.
To ensure that everyone resident within the Twelve Tenements, including owners and tenants, has an equal opportunity to become involved in the Association and its work.
To promote a positive community spirit within the Twelve Tenements.
To establish a Common Fund to hold monies in advance of communal repairs and maintenance relevant to the some or all of Twelve Tenements in common and to make regulations governing expenditure from that account.
SECAB Constitution draft
SECAB cannot have legal force unless all the title deeds are changed. So, the way we can get things done is by recommending things to the owners in each of the tenements. Once the 50%+1 threshold is met in each one, it becomes binding on everyone.
Of course, the only things which will receive that 50%+1 majority vote are things which the owners in each tenement believe to be in their own individual interests. No one is going to vote in favour of fixing the roof of someone else’s tenement. However, people may well vote in favour of fixing their roof at the same time as part of the same contract to save time, effort and money.
To set up the bank account we need at minimum three people on the committee to be the chairperson, treasurer and secretary. If we wish, we can also create vice-chairperson, vice-treasurer and vice-secretary roles as well. Once the committee is established, we can use it to decide how we want to manage the back green. Of course, with modern communication methods like email, it may not be necessary for us to have committee meetings very often.
Setting up the account requires the three elected officers to submit the same sort of information they would need to set up any bank account, alongside documents such as the committee constitution and some meeting agendas and minutes.
Once the account is set up, it can be used like any business current account. It would not have a debit card, but it would have a chequebook and online banking. Receiving money from others is totally standard. Cash and cheques can be deposited at the business section of the relevant bank branch, and the account would have a standard sort code and account number. To pay money out, multiple signatories would be required to approve it. On a chequebook, that would literally mean two or more signatures on the paper. Online, it means one person can create a transaction (e.g. a one-time BACS transfer, or the setup of a standing order) and then others would need to log in independently and authorise it.
We would want to use the account primarily for schemes relevant to all twelve tenements. However, if we choose to, we could allow it to be used for communal repairs to single tenements, in lieu of an individual tenement Owners Association bank account. This may be useful in the cases of tenements where there are too few owners able or willing to participate in running their own Owners Association and bank account.
SECAB 
.
I should respond to Hugo Sanders’ somewhat bourgeois comments of 20th August 2020 filed under “A response to an anonymous letter” by Mark Provan 26th May 2020 in his blog section on website https://secab.scot which was some kind of response to spending plans put forward by Mr. Mark Provan. It is clear that neither he nor Mr Sanders tolerate views other than their own. Mr Provan got “upset” at the letter he received while Mr Sanders sees the views of others as “allegations”. Is he already planning legal action against us ? Mark Provan claims to want to address concerns about his spending plans but instead launched a “them & us” campaign of public shaming against the letter writer who chose to remain anonymous for what has since emerged, as very good reasons. It looks as if he wants to pitch one resident against another in order to push through his plans. Divide and rule. It would actually be useful to hear more from the letter writer if they have not been frightened into silence (and have access to the internet) but I fear Mr Provan has stifled debate rather than pretending “to make sure the entire community is happy with this project before we decide to go ahead” as he says he would. This is not democracy. It looks as if he and Hugo Sanders have already decided it will go ahead regardless of the “entire community” and Mr Provan’s positively colonial attitude emerges from his subsequent assessment “I expect only a handful of difficult cases” when it comes to bullying residents to pay up or with legal action. No doubt he will press for evictions too.
Presumably by “difficult cases” Mark Provan is referring to inconvenient residents who get in the way of his spending plans and it is these that I am concerned about. I am not talking about the comfortable furloughed classes but residents who, even at the best of times, have trouble meeting unbearable housing costs on zero hours contracts. The folk who routinely have to choose between heating or eating, whether or not to switch the lights on or buy shoes for their kids (does Mr Provan even know how many children go to bed hungry ?) and because they were already disadvantaged, are now finding they do not qualify for coronavirus bailouts on zero hours contracts which themselves are even more scarce due to huge unemployment. Are these the “freeloaders” referred to in Mark Provan’s comments ? I would like to see Mr Provan survive on Statutory Sick Pay of less than £100 per week including housing costs while Universal Credit does not cover full housing costs anyway (especially not all of the rent or council tax with millions already in “arrears”) as well as innumerable other exceptions which do not qualify for benefits, such as bills and subsidising Mark Provan’s spending plans. He has referred to this as a mere “pittance” (he does not actually know how much his plans will end up costing and his estimates have already doubled) when he has clearly never had to count every single penny. He disparagingly dismisses the “nominal” monthly service charge which PoLHA residents pay for back green maintenance. This amounts to more than his total projected maximum annual cost and he clearly regards this as inadequate as “ it’d leave the back green only half done”. So if £12 a year from each household is only “half done” this means his initial “pittance” figure of £10 a year is completely untrue and he is planning much more. It is particularly tenants (including PoLHA) who stand to lose most. He admits to deliberately avoiding tenants and displays a breathtaking ignorance as to how landlords exploit service and management charges. Mr Provan also admits to seeking to increase the value of his property, expecting owners and tenants (through service charges ) to subsidise this while offering no part-shareholding in his wealth; especially tenants who have no future stake whatsoever. Hugo Sanders completely sidestepped the issue of his investors having a share in his future profits and it is Hugo Sanders who is rather sensitive about paying for his own repairs out of his own pocket. But that is the whole point of home ownership. You get a SURVEY. And on the strength of that survey you decide whether or not to go ahead with the purchase and when you sell, you reap the profits. If they want all residents to increase the value of their properties then they must share the profits and sell shares. Hugo Sanders ignored this. They both look as if they have saved themselves a fortune by buying “downmarket” and now want to impose Morningside values to boost their property value while some of us just want a place to live. Soon, only the comfortably off will be able to afford to live in cities with everyone else pushed into ghettos on the outskirts, like Paris for instance. That’s if they are lucky. What does Mr Provan think about when he passes homeless people on the street ? He reveals a shocking ignorance of repossessions and evictions, seeing them both purely in monetary rather than human terms, and has not even a tenuous grasp of the rental market. But then he is only interested in Owners, not tenants who actually make up two thirds of the residents affected and will be paying for Mr Provan for the rest of their lives here through ever increasing exploitative service charges (which do not qualify for Universal Credit along with many other things). He speaks of food banks so he knows what they are, and in the next breath, describes his spending plans to re-landscape the back green as not being an “extravagance”. He speaks of tenements, not human beings.
Even a quick glance at Mark Provan’s “community” website (set up in secret without any discussion) reveals his spending plans encompass far more than a bit of weeding on the back green. His projections will run into tens of thousands of pounds, not to mention repairing Hugo Sanders’s roof, stair windows, gutters, door entry system etc, etc. Maybe HIS tenement is now reaching the end of its life but there is no reason why the rest of them should be. Mr Sanders has made it perfectly clear that he wants a monthly maintenance fee and saving scheme to cover all of this when in fact this is the responsibility of each individual tenement block. It sounds like he wants to set himself up as some kind of bank without credibility or qualifications (do you trust them with your money ?). Mark Provan gives the example of subsidence at No. 3 – 5 Cadiz Street. I’m not paying for somebody else’s subsidence. That’s why surveys are done before purchase or did neither Mr Provan nor Mr Sanders bother to get a survey and now expect the rest of us to pick up the bill ? Some of us already maintain our tenements, considerable repairs have been carried out (will these residents be paid back from their proposed bank ?) while other tenements it seems, have not even bothered with a secure entry system. Surely these are the freeloaders in expecting everyone else to come to their rescue. It is down to each tenement owners to replace a few roof tiles every now and again. Not tenants. Mark Provan even shows ignorance as to why back door locks were fitted..
There are numerous contradictions in his spending plans. Mark Provan’s letter claiming 100% approval of these costs from some tenements are shown to be false by his own figures that show that not one single tenement approved 100%. It says the minimum approval rating in any tenement is 68% and then shows that some were as low as 50 or even 46.15%. Mr Provan is “economical with the truth” and spinning figures like some sort of self-appointed “community organiser and public face in the community “ trying to pull one over on us. I would suggest a career in politics might be more appropriate. There is no independent verification of any of his figures and Mr Provan mis-represents them to suit his purpose. They have no legitimacy. His replies have been obsessive in detail almost to the point of fanaticism in what comes across as loneliness during lockdown, while claiming to be a self-appointed representative of the community even though we did not ask for his representation. Hugo Sanders correctly identifies our neighbourhood as working class yet Mark Provan speaks of decorum, admits to being privileged with precious little insight into much else; while quoting Latin (do we really want yet another ex-privately educated schoolboy lording it over us from their ivory tower ?).
And the Port of Leith Housing Association is not an owner like any other as Mark Provan tries to make out. They are a law unto themselves and as anybody who has lived here any length of time knows perfectly well, they will charge as much money out of this as possible. They have huge overheads to cover and while Mr Provan thinks he is acting on their behalf, they will disgard him without any control at all over future service charges or projects. More likely than not, our back green will be consumed by one of their subsidiary companies
The back green will not fall into disrepair as Mark Provan believes. It has actually improved in recent times and there are no weeding charges at present. No reason why there should suddenly be charges either. Residents do it because they want to. They don’t have to be burdened with unsustainable costs and legal action. There is nothing to stop residents organising community projects without trying to make money out of it. Already, the most precious commodity of all has been sacrificed to the deafening noise of men playing with their power tools (to little advantage) as the peace and quiet of our back green is to be industrialised. What’s next on Mr Provan’s agenda, leaf-blowers ? Why not turn it into a construction site ? The peaceful haven of our back green was actually the BEST thing about moving here. It already is a nice place to sit out in the sun and we do not have to be charged for something that costs nothing. He may seek to charge for fresh air next. Mr Provan’s claim that only one dog owner uses it is patently untrue as this seems to be increasing under his spending plans, as if they suddenly feel entitled to use it when in fact it is contrary to by-laws. He is not speaking the truth in his pursuit of imposing charges on us.
If Mark Provan truly cared about his community he would withdraw his proposal in its entirety and move to Morningside. He claims to be acting on behalf of the community but in reality, acts on behalf of himself and his property value
.
LikeLike
Hi Barry,
The back green has got better over the last few months because some of the residents have volunteered their time to clean it up. The owners in 8 Salamander paid for someone to come and clean up their bit of the back green. I’ve spoken to the people who did this work and they like what I’m trying to do here and how I’m doing it.
Honestly, you seem just as obsessed about this as you criticise me for being. It doesn’t seem that any of my explanations have helped. I’ve explained that the only thing we would organise between tenements would be the back green. If the roof of one tenement needs sorted, then it’s up to that tenement to do that. An owner would only be compelled to pay for the back green costs if the majority of other owners in that tenement wanted to pay for them too.
In practice, these tenements are now worth enough that they will probably never be demolished for economic reasons short of catastrophic insurance loss. If and when another big bill (like a new roof, or subsidence repairs) comes knocking (possibly courtesy of the council’s statutory repair notice powers) the owners will be forced to pay up. I can’t change that. Me moving to Morningside will not change that. These are 100-year-old buildings and they do need ongoing maintenance. If those inevitable maintenance costs are going to make life a misery for residents, then I don’t know how you’re going to be able to change that. The only thing you can do is keep on top of things before costs get larger. The alternative to hundreds of pounds of maintenance costs a year might be being forced to remortgage or sell up completely when an even bigger bill arrives. Tenants can’t be stuck with these bills. Renting just doesn’t work that way, as shitty as life as a private tenant may be.
I can understand why someone who is profoundly upset by the way that poorer people are treated in society would take offence at someone like me coming in and trying to organise things. All I’m trying to do is to make things a little bit better. I don’t really see how anything can be made better here, in this situation, without someone doing fairly similar things to what I did. You can’t rely on certain people volunteering to do hard work to keep the whole back green clean. It’s been tried before, and it does not work. The only other way of getting things to happen is to make use of the laws which are in place, to force *owners* to pay up for maintenance costs.
Do you have an alternative plan?
I do assume you were the one who left the letter at my door. No one else seems to care as much about this.
Mark
LikeLike
.
.
.
That’s just it though
To make things a little bit better is not ALL you are trying to do. Your obsession, as if you have nothing better to do, is there for all to see by your online presence and website which details a 5 phase plan towards
• Providing new semi-permanent planters
• Installing and equipping a communal toolshed
• Creating a water source for cleaning and plant watering
o Rainwater collection from the gutters?
o Installing taps off the water main within tenements ?
All very expensive and unrealistic luxuries during the deepest recession for 300 years, mass unemployment which has already begun and cuts on the horizon for the rest of our lives. Apart from the ones who you “say” responded to your wishes, there are numerous other residents (owners and tenants) who may have spent every penny on keeping a roof over the heads and not be aware of the full costs you are about to “force” on them which run into tens of thousands of pounds including a suggestion of relandscaping the entire back green. Your website speaks in terms of “schemes” and suggests:-
“parties or BBQs. These will require a much higher level of organisation and likely funding”
Really. And who is going to pay for that ? You already report wrangling (which you dismiss as squabbles) over certain payments and who pays what (how would WE ever know if they pay anyway ?). Evidently the figure of £10 is not seen as the “pittance” you rather patronisingly say it is. You might also like to check that most title deeds and tenancy agreements include at least a passing reference to the occupier having the right to “quietly” enjoy their occupancy. Are you proposing a breach of the peace and mob rule to make us pay for it ? The peace and quiet from the back green is actually one of the main advantages of living here. Folk may also wish to live without their privacy being breached under your public glare but you are not offering them any choice.
There is even a suggestion in the legislation which you present, that charges be made according to the size of the properties which would all need to be measured ! You are opening a contentious can of worms and never ending discontent. At one point you even say that some areas of the back green will remain PRIVATE after your so-called “community association” is imposed so what kind of “community” is it that you envisage when there would be “no-go” areas ? You appear to be avoiding registering as a company or charity and regulation of either yourself or the online bank account, let alone annual audited accounts which are essential for public money and would themselves cost thousands. You are not proposing to have committee meetings or any public meetings and the “constitution” which you wish to divert from its true purpose is being drawn up in isolation by yourself without public consultation, behind closed doors. It is not clear if any of this is legal. At one point you announce “WE will be firm in exploiting the laws of Scotland” and that certainly seems to be what you are doing but the laws of Scotland exist for good reason.
The owners in 8 Salamander have provided actual PROOF that they are perfectly capable of organising maintenance if they are not too lazy to do so. This was their responsibility and nobody else’s as has been the case well enough for the past 100 years. It falls within their legal obligations under their title deeds (which was their responsibility to check upon purchase) which have worked perfectly well since property ownership became mainstream and 8 Salamander prove that they still do; but you wish to circumvent title deeds and the expense of altering them (“SECAB cannot get things done unless all the title deeds are changed”) through a constant stream of “recommending” owners to comply with your luxuries using the most extraordinary violation of privacy and data protection legislation which is there for very good reason to prevent, among other things, online abuse and bullying; and a kind of “them & us” mob rule mentality depriving all of any legal rights and making everyone responsible for everyone else’s title deeds including TENANTS who make up two thirds of residents but have absolutely no future stake in these properties.
Up until now there has been no difference between owners and tenants and the latter make up the massive majority of residents. It simply had no relevance with regard to the back green and each has equal access. Now you are creating a two-tier system of “no-go” areas and you have not even bothered to consult tenants on sweeping changes to their expenditure in your mistaken belief that they will not have to pay for your spending plans. But they will. Their landlords will simply impose service charges on them. Most tenants will be unaware of this because you admit to having excluded them and the first they will learn of it is when the bills start arriving. Bills over which they have absolutely NO choice or control. You have a naïve view of the tenant/landlord relationship. I don’t suppose they have even had cause to look at your website or even know about it.
This makes a complete nonsense of your figures which are not independent and you seem to make up to suit your purpose; because you have excluded 67% of residents i.e TENANTS and until there is an independent survey of every single resident (tenants as well as owners) your spending plans do not even qualify as a “community” association for the simple reason that you have not consulted the whole community who are unaware that they are about to have service charges imposed on them. Yours is not a community association at all but a private club of owners for whom tenants may be tolerated as they will be paying service charges, but are largely reduced to second class bystanders. [And by independent I do not mean YOU or “online surveys” or the Port of Leith Housing Association (or any other landlord/landowner) who are clearly interested parties and therefore not independent. I mean genuinely independent. Indeed if Port of Leith Housing Association gain any kind of controlling stake then we are all doomed to unrestricted spending].
You have already complained that the £12 a year paid by PoLHA residents is not enough because “ it’d leave the back green only half done” so you want to double it at least. This also belies your £10 “pittance” figure as false and presumably these are social housing tenants who by very definition are “in need”. Do they know that your luxuries are about to at least double their service charges and do you have the decency to tell them ? Yours is not any sort of association that has grown out of the community because two thirds of the community do not even know about it yet. If it were a community association there would have been public meetings long before Coronavirus which is a feeble excuse as you would have done something about it in the previous two years that you have lived here. As you say it was not your main priority when you moved into your property so it really was not that important and you could just as easily leave it alone. This was an idea that came out of your head in response to your boredom in lockdown. All of a sudden you want the back green to count as part of your home as a garden in order to get around coronavirus restrictions but the lockdown is temporary and expected to be over by next summer (if not before) when everyone can return to Leith Links. Like most of us when moving in, your main concern was securing somewhere to live and this, unlike you, remains the case for many.
You say the only thing “we” would organise between tenements would be the back green but you have already let it slip that you expect owners to be forced to pay for repairs across tenements by circumventing title deeds. Hugo Sanders has made it very clear he wants a monthly savings scheme to compel residents to pay for other’s repair costs. Maybe you should consider having “the tree growing out of the soil pipe” that serves your own bathroom removed at your own expense instead of waiting for everyone else to pay for it (what else are you waiting for ?).
And who is “we” that you refer to over and over again. This “we” is actually “you”. It is “you” that came up with these luxuries. Nobody else.
Just “maintaining” the back green extends to Phase 5 of your spending plans with never ending, unreasonable costs while residents are still expected to do the “strimming” (so what are we being asked to pay for ?). Even now you are still saying “The only other way of getting things to happen is to make use of the laws which are in place, to force *owners* to pay up for maintenance costs”. I’m not sure the laws are in place to do that when you are fully aware that the LEGAL way of doing it is to change the title deeds but you are simply trying to avoid it.
You say you “can understand why someone who is profoundly upset by the way that poorer people are treated in society would take offence at someone like me coming in and trying to organise things” so as to say you are going to impose extra charges on everyone regardless. You clearly don’t give a damn about some of your neighbours who are seriously struggling to make ends meet even though they are part of the community (“OUR determination to make this PROJECT happen” etc, etc, etc) so what sort of “community association” is this ? This is why it would be better were you to move to Morningside where you might be among like-minded people. Leith is predominantly working class and not given to posh gentrification or divide & rule colonialism. We are not something to add to your c.v or online profile.
I must admit to scepticism at first but now I can see exactly where your anonymous letter writer was coming from. Far from being our saviour and some kind of arrogant authority on every subject known to mankind, it is indeed people like you that lead to other’s debt problems and ultimately homelessness
.
.
.
LikeLike
Hi Barry,
What is quite clear is that you don’t like me. It really doesn’t matter what I say. When you read what I write, you pick out words and phrases and piece them together into a story which fits what you want to be true: that I’m some evil gentrifying prick who rubs his hands with glee at the idea of chucking people onto the streets.
For the record, the only way that owner is going to be forced to pay up for something is if the other owners in their own tenement decide to do it (or the council comes in with an statutory repair notice). If you have a dispute about that as an owner, then your first point of call is the other owners in your tenement (or the council). No one else.
The £12/year paid by PoLHA tenants can over do half the back green because PoLHA only control half of the back green. PoLHA aren’t going to clean up the Salamander/Elbe Street half because they don’t own any properties on those streets any more. Why would a housing association spend their tenants money on tenements they don’t own?
This isn’t a working class vs middle class battle. No one wins by having a back green they can’t use. Judging by the way you spell naive with a diaeresis I’d guess you aren’t from that different an educational background to myself. I haven’t experienced any opposition to this based on social class.
The constitution on this page is basically copied from the standard Under One Roof template for an owner’s association, but made applicable to tenants as well as owners. There’s nothing really that novel about it. I’m just suggesting it as a draft. If people want to change it then they can. Hell, if someone wanted to create an entirely separate community group covering the same idea then there’s nothing I can do to stop them. You could start it yourself if you want.
Using me as a lightning rod for your (many, well justified) frustrations about the world isn’t going to make the world better.
Mark
LikeLike
I’m glad you like the computer spell checker
They are invaluable and now I have learnt yet another new word from you, diaeresis. Is it Latin ? All words and phrases that have been quoted, appear on your website.
Your spending plans do not meet the criteria of a legal “community” association on at least 3 grounds:-
a) Legal, both in its foundation and transparent operation with public accountability and fully accessible meetings
b) Financially, as above especially with regard to audited accounts
c) Inclusiveness. You discriminate against two thirds of residents (tenants) creating a two tier system with “no-go” areas and increased service charges which did not exist before
I suggest you give up empire building and misleading members of the public down some sort of fiddle over title deeds. Perhaps develop a hobby that can keep your evidently over-active mind busy until coronavirus restrictions are lifted.
The back green can be used and IS used in its current form with access to all who want it. It works as it is and would be best left well alone. Were any “association” to arise in the future it will come out of the community itself (the WHOLE community) and not one person’s head in secret isolation
LikeLike