Important - Important - Important

Peabody admit deliberate concealment of ASB from incoming tenants.

YOU WILL NOT KNOW IF AN ADDRESS YOU ARE OFFERED HAS AN ASB NEIGHBOUR!!

If you are a new Peabody incoming tenant, or if you are transferring to a Peabody address, George Kirby (a main manager for Peabody) has confirmed at a tenants meeting in 2012 that The Peabody Trust will conceal even long-term and serious ASB problems with neighbours at any of their addresses from incoming tenants!

We would advise anyone taking or being offered a Peabody address to THOROUGHLY check with neighbours at the new address to find out if any nearby flats have issues with ASB. However, even enquiring with neighbours may not 100% ensure you will be moving to a quiet address. It may be that noise from a neighbour above ONLY effects the flat you are moving into. Even if Peabody have long-standing complaints about noise from a flat above, this will be concealed from you as a new incoming tenant!

WE WOULD ADVISE THEREFORE TO TRY AND MAKE ALL POSSIBLE ENQUIRIES ABOUT THE NEW ADDRESS BEFORE ACCEPTING!

Check our Tenant forums here for more discussion about this.

Important advice for all tenants

Peabody will soon be asking all tenants to sign a new tenancy agreement.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO SIGN IT

The proposed new tenancy agreement will seriously reduce your rights. For example it will:

Make it easier for Peabody to increase your rent through the service charge
Reduce your right to have decent quality repairs
Increase your responsibilities unnecessarily

If you are an assured tenant, without your signature the new agreement cannot be applied to your tenancy. Peabody staff know this very well.

If you are a secure tenant, Peabody don't need your signature to change the conditions of your tenancy, but there you may be able to challenge some of the changes in court.

Check our Tenant forums here for more discussion about this.

2nd May 2008 - Here's another letter of support from a tenant who has discovered the site - This is typical of the sort of comments we get:

I think this site is a great idea.

Having been a Peabody Tenant for over 20 years the complacency of the Peabody Trust, never ceases to amaze me. All it seems the Trust is interested in is ticking health and safety boxes and making everything look good with initiatives that have no teeth, i.e., like for instance their policies on nuisance neighbours' etc.

As a tenant in spite of all 'the spin' the Trust puts on it, I feel voiceless.

My experience of the Tenants Associations has been disastrous and I've belonged to two. They just don't put enough pressure on the Trust to make a difference. They're slow and lumbering and the perceived wisdom by most tenants is that they are 'just a waste of time' which I think is probably true. The problem, I feel, stems partly from the fact that the TA needs to be centralised in order for it to become a force to be reckoned with by the Trust. It needs to become a pressure group. At the moment I think most of the Tenants Associations are just another one of the Trust's 'let's make this look good politically' initiatives, particularly as they part-fund them and have a great deal of input into most of them.

So I think this idea of an unofficial Peabody site is a great idea but Marketing it seems, from what I have seen so far to be your biggest problem. Well done though!

Mrs X, estate tenant (name & estate witheld by request)

27th March 2008 - Peabodytenants.co.uk is now on page-one of both Google UK and the .com Google global site - That's actualy quite an acheivement! - Big companies pay big money to get ranked on page one of Google, it's the holy grail of all promotion companies! - How do you get a site on page-1 of Google the worlds hugest search engine? - Well we did it!! - WE'RE ON PAGE ONE PEOPLE! - We are ranked Page-1 (position 9) on Google global, and Page-1 (position 6) on Google UK - Anyone searching for Peabody Trust is going to find this website! They cannot NOT find it! - Think who that means? - If things were brought out more on this site by the TA's everyone would see it, and most importantly The Peabody themselves would see it and that'd give tenentas more leverage because right now the Tenants have no public face and nothing they say ever comes out because there's no public place for that to happen.

17th March 2008: - Well here we are into 2008 - 2 years now the site has been up and running, and you'll be pleased to hear as a tenant that exactly nothing has been heard from your wonderful TA's who are supposed to organise and work for the best interests of tenants! - A new tenant has appeared on the forums who is suffering neighbour harrasment - and yet again despite the huge goings on with our situation here at Chelsea Gardens over the previous 6 years; and despite the fact the Peabody yuppies said; "Lessons have been learned", yet again another tenant is having their life ruined by the Peabody failing across the board to enforce and protect their tenancy (even though Peabody has a LEGAL obligation to do so and comply with the law)

Sad indeed that this issue is still with us, but predictable; because with no TA leadership whatsoever and with a perceived TA absence on any estate the Peabody obviously feel they can do as they like... and they'd be right! - NO tenant representation leads to this sort of thing every time. It's time maybe for the TA's to get up o date and do something new? - COLLECTIVE BARGAINING? no-one remembers that idea? - for that to happen the tenants as a group need a unified collective approach in my opinion to maximise their potential. If people thought the TA was a large group comprised of tenants from all estates, rather than as tiny, dispondent, fragmented groups on individual estates, then people might be more inclined to participate. And another thing to realise is that Peabody is now centralised so the individual estate approach might therefore be past it's sellby date. What Peabody does is central and effects all estates in one way or another.

Oh yeah!... We still didn't get sued! (as threatened by the Peabody before Christmas), for using the official Peabody logo on this site (albeit modified, ooo-er!) - I think I know why they didn't sue... Because it'd simply bring MORE publicity for this site and the Peabody are scared of any negative publicly! - But how do you take on an organisation like Peabody? You have to go public that's for sure, but that means some sort of way of making your cause public - Well what better way that this website?.. why?... because it's right up on page one of Google now!

Autumn 2007: ok... it's been drawn to my attention thats there's possibly some confusion regarding this site... let's clear the air then - I beleive the peabody tenants should have their own proper website, independantly of the peabody as only makes sense for any tenants group... I beleive we need a website simply because every single action group (and even hobby groups) in the world now have websites!!... but we the tenants do not!... If the local karate club or sailing club and all sorts of other small organisations can have a website, then surely the tenants of peabody trust which number possibly hundreds of thousands should surely have a collective website?

And surely that website should be run by the TA's... ??

I built this site as a gift to the TA's after a prolonged serious ordeal with my own tenancy - The events made me want to do something to support the TA's because I felt that through them and with support, perhaps tenants can better make their voices heard, and that perhaps tenant leaders can organise support for better estate management etc.

That's it... there is no other agendas. I have suggested various ways this site system can be used... i suggested that even the peabody could use it.. and that was theoretical, and I admit perhaps I got got carried away (as we techies do) in terms of what it could do... Yes the peabody could use it; but I'm not suggesting they would or that in any way this site is endorsed by them. So I'm sorry if this wasn't made clear and that somehow people thought the site was requesting official peabody involvement. it isn't supposed to be something over the top.

All I'm interested in as a tenant is that the tenants have a website where they can contact their TA head and get news relevent to them as tenants... I'm offering this site to the TA's to own and use. I am willing to add to it any sections the TA's request for communication with each other and tenants. if they want to add documents, fine I'll add that ability to the site for them. I just think we need a site where we can come and get news from TA's about what's going on within the Peabody.

Also, another potential issue - If the TA's want this domain to manage themselves, then fine, I expected that to happen!... this was not built as MY website, I built it expecting the TA's to jump on it as a freebie!... the domain needs to be held by some sort of trust or company the tenants association has setup. I'll do the site code de-bugging and admin work for free if required.

Regarding threats of litigation by Peabody over use of the logo, I'd suggest surely you can add the logo to a tenants newsletter if you are TA?... I dunno, mebbe you can't, but this site has more members than I've seen at any tenants meeting so why is it a problem?.. would we get hassled by (for example) Range Rover, if we had an 'owners-club' website and had a 'range-rover' logo on it? It seems a bit off to me, but we'll see what happens. I spose a 'cease and desist' order will arrive.

Anyways, to the TA's, please please take this and do something with it. As a tenant i would like to come and read news about Peabody which the TA's know and which pertains to my tenancy and future in Peabody dwellings, as well as local estate issues and minutes.

16th March 2007: More updates added! - Estate pages have been started; they now display added news items and recent forum posts (only chelsea gardens shows any test data, so load the ESTATES page and then select 'chelsea gardens' for a demo) - A dedicated forum can now be added for each estate - Admin news addition & edit is done, etc - more to come.

For more info about the site please click the ABOUT link at the bottom of this or any page on the site which is currently functional.