Tonight we held a tenant's meeting at Flat 4 to discuss the impending change in management of the block.

We introduced Karen Hill , who is familiar with the block and who will be the contact point for local , emergency and small repairs and maintenance. We will give you her contact details in good time

I will be the Managing Agent  responsible for Karen's work , for budgets , for organising major works and for collecting service charge. Karen will provide those services to me as Managing Agent

I am walking around the block tomorrow with Mittons and with Tim Harrison to try to make some headway on creating a four year budget. I will run this past Peter Wilson as soon as possible and I'll then email copies to those with email and provide hard copies to others.

Briefly , the result of the walkarounds is that Tim Harrison and I agree that the most urgent need for repainting is in the rear East Courtyard and that he will give me a price for repainting and patch repointing in this area as a major project for mid 2013. It will go to competitive tender ; of course. There are other windows which need work but the vast majority of those can be reached without a scaffold and I'll get a price for this too. There are a few slipped tiles on the roof and he'll get a price for a cherry picker to fix these over the course of one day. There's a leaking downpipe outside flat 23 and we'll take care of that in the near future

I walked around with Nick of Mittons and agreed that the carpeting in no 2 and in no 8 are priorities for replacement. He will give me quotes (rough with some choices) for no 2 , no 8 and no 4&6 combined (the carpet there could last another few years). It is likely that Celia and I will elect to replace the carpeting at no 2 ourselves as we'll want something quite different from that which we'd normally lay for Common Parts 

I will also create an inspection schedule to take care of HSE and fire issues.

I have two volunteers to become directors. I have appointed Phil Thomas of Flat 20 and I am happy to have more volunteers. Phil is already assisting me with the budget which I hope to get out in early November

there is already a blog area for comment on management of the block so please use that for debate and comment

Haward