Page 2 - ISHA Annual Report 2019-20

Respect for everyone
Pride in team ISHA
Ruth's foreword
Ruth Davison, Chief Executive
This is an odd foreword to write – in a very odd year. Annual reports are, by their very nature, backwards looking.
safe. Not all of them, but many, and it will take
a long time to investigate and put them right if needed. Understanding this, lenders have sought to minimise their risks and are asking for forms certifying homes (the EWS1) before they’ll lend, leaving many residents unable to sell or re-mortgage cheaply.
So, although the EWS1 form was only invented towards the latter part of this annual report period and Covid, although present, wasn’t understood, to talk of neither would be odd indeed.
When we went into Covid lockdown, ISHA, as others, needed to adapt. We didn’t furlough
staff, but most needed to work from home. We continued with emergency repairs, neighbourhood visits, and compliance work to ensure your safety, and obviously stepped up cleaning. We also called older residents and those we knew may be at greater risk from Covid. We know we didn’t reach all who needed help. We also know that some of you have waited a long time to get through to us on the phone and we are very sorry.
We have had problems with our IT and phone systems during the pandemic, and while we
They usually, as this one does, cover the period
of the last financial year. So here the numbers we are using apply to the financial year that ended in March of 2020. That’s exactly the point at which all our lives were turned upside down by a global pandemic and the need to adapt in ways we could never have imagined.
The time since has been hard for many, with lives blighted by grief, loneliness, anxiety, worklessness or merely sadness at missing some of the things that punctuate our lives and make them fun.
Equally, lives are being blighted by the continued fall-out from the Grenfell fire, three years ago now, which exposed the mammoth failure of
the building industry, government and safety regulators. Put simply we now know homes across the country have been built which are not
2 Islington & Shoreditch Housing Association