Porter Services

Tue Oct 30 22:29:45 GMT 2018

Hi Team,

Having had discussions with Jane Lowe, representing Nkolika, and listened to
your various opinions I am outlining a plan, or at least options, to address
the porter issue.

1. Firstly, we really need to decide what we want in future. The choices are
primarily between the current Eddie/Aziz situation, with a lot of
responsibility falling on the Management Agency or defaulting to directors,
or engage a higher profile Porter/Caretaker/Building Manager. The latter was
my assumption, based on what I understood from our earlier discussions,
resulting in the Job Description we discussed at the last board meeting. 

2. I understand the concerns of some of you that we do not want an all
powerful Building Manager who is out of control but I think this is a matter
to be addressed by setting out the ground rules at the outset and then
managing him in a way that ensures he has to abide by the rules or risk
dismissal. I think a key area would be what he is allowed to do for
residents outside of his Job Brief and whether he is allowed to ask for
payment. Similarly, we can make it clear that he is not allowed to accept
any payments from suppliers for referrals etc. In addition we should make
sure he sticks to the reporting schedule we will give him so that the
Management Agency, in particular, and Board are always informed of what is
going on, within reason. Any other ideas welcome.

3. If we decide that Eddie/Aziz can cope with support from WB19 and an out
of hours service, we need not do anything else except monitor the situation.

4. If we decide on a more experienced person we have to first amend/accept
the Job Description and move forward on that basis. 

5. We already have two options presenting themselves, Stephen Branch and
John Shervill. We will need to discuss and decide which are acceptable and
whether we feel it is necessary to also advertise the position. 

6. At this point let me refer to the legal advice. Please see attached the
email discussion I had with Jane Lowe if you want to see everything she
said. Key points include that Adrian can claim Unfair Dismissal within 3
months of his departure, therefore until 31st December 2018, or he can claim
False Redundancy within 3 months of finding out that we are looking for or
hired someone to do the same job as he did. There is no deadline so, no
matter how long we wait, he can always claim against us within those three
months, if he chooses to do so. 

7. If he were to successfully claim, we would have to pay between £15240,
the minimum basic award for unfair dismissal, and a maximum of £83,682 if,
for example, the loss of flat etc was taken into account. It would be a long
process. 

8. To mitigate against any claims we need to ensure the new role is
sufficiently differentiated from Adrian's role. One obvious difference is
that it is non-resident, another is that the cleaning is now done by another
company. We can find other criteria where the job is clearly different. We
can choose to pitch the new role lower than Adrian's and offer a gradual
increase in responsibilities to the new porter or we can pitch it clearly
higher than Adrian's role.

9. The other way to mitigate is to wait as long as possible on the
assumption that, even if Adrian can claim False Redundancy, the longer we
wait the less likely that he will. In fact, Jane Lowe believes that, even
now, the chance of Adrian making any claim is very low because he will
immediately lose the right to approx £8100 of his Settlement payment. 

10. So the advice is to wait a while and do nothing very visible until three
months have passed, therefore no hiring or advertising till January next
year, possibly longer. It depends on what we perceive to be the risk.

11. We also need to consider the risk of losing Stephen Branch who is held
in high regard by Delia and Peter since their meeting. 

12. And we need to consider the risk of not having adequate porter/caretaker
support, especially if something goes badly wrong. Ultimately we are
responsible for the services we implement.

13. If and when we hire a higher level, more capable, permanent
Porter/Caretaker/Building Manager we know that he will not cover all the
hours of the day, so we will need a second porter. Here we have to decide
between Eddie and Aziz or find someone else completely. If we decide against
Eddie we can ask him to leave at the end of his contract. 

However, with Aziz, it is not so simple. In the absence of a contract of any
sorts, it seems that Aziz would be considered a permanent employee and we
would have to go through various steps in order to ask him to leave.
Basically, the legal advice is to conduct reviews and highlight areas in
which he is not performing and try to get him to improve and, when he
doesn't, we have grounds to terminate his employment. Not nice, I know.
Alternatively we could just tell him as soon as possible and offer him a
significant payment and a Settlement Agreement. In theory Aziz could also
give us cause for concern but it's not likely if we handle it well.

14. Lastly, I realise that Mr Album is a source of concern and I think we
need to address this issue. I do not think it is enough to combat his
anticipated attempt to get elected to the Board. Even if we succeed he will
still be a leaseholder and perceived as a constant threat, interfering with
our ability to handle the Porter Service in an optimum manner. Personally I
would like to talk to him with another Board member but this is not a
popular option with some of you. 

I was hoping to provide a more concrete plan based on our last board
discussion but it seems there are different opinions which are not yet
reconciled. Therefore I think we need one more discussion at the next Board
meeting, as a result of which we need to make decisions and develop a clear
and concrete plan.

If you think I have got anything wrong or if you wish to add any
information, please feel free to inform me. I know some of you have also
been in contact with lawyers on these matters over the last few months. 

But I would suggest that we do not exchange opinions or try to have the
discussion by email, but wait till the Board Meeting.

Cheers,

Glenn.

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