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CCTV

The CCTV system used across Hyde Southbank Homes is currently being reviewed following questions from the TA about its cost and its effectiveness. While respecting both the deterrent value of CCTV cameras and their usefulness to the police in pursuant of major crimes, residents have repeatedly expressed their frustration that no use seems to be made of the cameras when it comes to anti-social behaviour, whether it be dog-fouling, dumped or illegally parked cars and bikes, car break-ins or rubbish thrown over balconies. The general feeling seems to be that we’re hardly getting value for our money. We collectively pay roughly £25,000 a year for the monitoring and maintenance of the CCTV cameras on our Estate. This is about a quarter of the total cost for all the cameras across Oval and Hyde’s estates in Stockwell. Yet there are only 15 cameras on KPE, compared to 357 in Stockwell. We…

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Benefit Cuts

Massive changes are on the way this year to the benefits many Kennington Park residents receive – and these are on top of the much-publicised below inflation 1% ‘uprating’. The TA is committed not just to trying to help residents cope but also to campaigning with others across Lambeth and London against these attacks on the poorest and most vulnerable amongst us.   * The ‘Bedroom Tax’ Don’t be misled – it’s not a tax that you can refuse to pay, it’s a cut in the amount of benefit you receive. If you have an ‘extra’ bedroom empty for more than 13 weeks your housing benefit will be cut by 14%, more than one ‘extra’ then the cut is a massive 25%. ‘Under-occupying’, according to this government of millionaires in their taxpayer-subsidised houses – many of them just up the road – means you are only allowed one bedroom for…

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Service Charges

Last year, outraged at the size of our service charge increases, the TA demanded an explanation, highlighting in particular that residents in Blades House were paying more for a single light outside their front door than they did for the whole of their domestic electricity use. It emerged that for a number of years these residents had in fact been paying the electricity charges of the businesses housed in the old builders’ yard at 8a Harleyford Street, who had never even been sent a bill by Hyde. The TA had repeatedly queried Hyde’s failure to manage this property properly, but we’d been ignored. Finally the message got through, and Hyde was forced to pay more than £35,000 to the residents of the twenty flats in Blades House last summer. Now their bills for the coming year have been reduced by another £6,000! In future TA reps will be checking all…

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