Thread by @willmartin88

1/ Bitter sweet...after nearly £200,000 spent on waking watch and related works & surveys...it looks like our £7K a week waking watch is soon to be lifted!🤞Great welcomed news, but no thanks to @mhclg's inefficacious Waking Watch Relief Fund (aka 'alarm fund') here's why...

2/ @MetisBuilding was a prime candidate for the fund.

To lift our WW we either had to address the internal defects which instigated the WW or install an £89K alarm. When the fund was announced on 17/12/20, I hoped we'd get an alarm covered fast, buying time to sort these defects

3/ But it took until 31/01/21 for the WWRF to open and even then it didn't open fully (despite @team_greenhalgh saying it would)...

Whilst waiting for the fund to open we spent £46,125 on our WW...and every week that subsequently passed a further £7,166.88 was spent.

4/ And eventually (last week in fact) 87 days on from the announcement, our waking watch costs for that given period surpassed the cost of the very alarm the fund was designed to cover.

Branding the WWRF a complete farce.

5/ Unless you have an v high alarm cost + a v low WW cost (a combination that doesn't exist) then to provide any real benefit to leaseholders said funding must be swift.

If not, leaseholders may as well just pay for the alarm themselves to lift the WW.

6/ In our situation, our MA eventually decided to proceed on with fixing the internal defects - correctly suspecting this would lift the WW quicker than waiting for WWRF funding.

7/ Ironically these works have worked out less than the cost of our proposed alarm. Both options lift the WW, yet the cheaper option wouldn't be covered by the WWRF.

Note, these compartmentation defects didn't meet regulations when built - an issue worthy of its own thread.

8/ So we arrive at today...where a building that should have benefitted from the WWRF hasn't...where waiting for funding has cost us...where leaseholders have had to pay £££ to fix defects which didn't meet regulations...and where our sinking fund has been entirely destroyed.

9/ So whilst I'm delighted I may no longer have to pay for a WW (who sits and texts on their phone)...I can't help feeling that once again...I have been utterly shafted.

And if you're still not convinced the WWRF is just PR exercise from @mhclg @ChrisPincher @RobertJenrick ...

10/ ...The entire WWRF fund doesn't even cover the number of buildings with a WW in London - let alone the rest of England - it's woefully inadequate in size.

11/ ...It operates on a 1st come 1st served basis - entirely ignoring the fact that many buildings have yet to have T4 intrusive survey and subsequently discover the need for a WW.

12/ ...It's billed as "new" funding despite well over £30m (the size of the WWRF) having been paid in VAT on existing WW's since 2017.

13/ ...And finally it does nothing for leaseholders who were forced at their own expense to install alarms prior to the fund.

It really is not fit for purpose. #WakingWatch

14/ Also just to be really clear as a few have messaged saying I must be so pleased it’s all over...waking watch soon be lifted...but STILL no solution for the £6.2m unfunded work that still needs addressing externally. Too little, too late nearly 4 years on from Grenfell.