An interview with Randall Anderson

An interview with... Randall Anderson

DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMUNITY AND CHILDREN’S SERVICES COMITTEE

Interviewed by Mohamed Hussain, IT & Systems Manager for City of London Housing. Mohamed utilised his love for MS Teams to interview Randall online to find out about the work our members do in shaping your Housing Service.

Could you tell us a bit about yourself? Well, I’ve been a lawyer for 30 some odd years, no 40 or so. Time flies. As you can tell from my accent, I didn’t grow up here, although I did go to school for a year in Scotland. Before moving to London I lived in New York for 20 years. When we moved to London, we moved to the Barbican Estate so I’ve lived on a City-run estate ever since we moved here - slightly over 20 years.

What were some of the differences living in New York and living in London? In New York we lived in a condominium, and I ended up being chairman of the condominium board. It was an interesting time in New York and there was more than a fair bit of corruption in the building management and building trades at the time, and we encountered a bit of that ourselves with the window contract, which was extremely frustrating. So, having experienced something like that, you know the City is honest. This is quite a quite a benefit.

Having been involved in governance both in New York and the City, what personally drives you to want to be involved to help residents? I think it’s a lot easier to do than to stand on the outside and carp about things being wrong. You will never get it all right, but at least you feel like you are getting things moving in the right direction.

As a Member what do you see as your role in improving the resident experience? When I became Deputy there was a general view that the City had not been on top of maintenance. And one of the things that I was very interested in doing was getting some of that moving. We are very definitely moving on all these things, so doors, windows and roofs are being replaced. General maintenance of these estates is getting better, and I think that is largely because we have Members who wanted that to happen.

What improvements would you like to see residents benefit from in the future? We are beginning to put real focus on the Climate Action Strategy and to what extent we can improve

the insulation of homes. Window replacements will be better - modern windows are more efficient than older windows. We are also looking at where we need to replace heating systems by looking at systems that do not rely on gas. In the long run, better insulation and moving to less volatile energy, and away from overpriced energy will really help with fuel cost for people.

How keen would you be to see residents virtually attending public parts of our committee meetings? I think one of the few real silver linings of the pandemic is that we have made all our meetings available on a YouTube channel, so people can watch it live when it is convenient for them. I think that is just brilliant. Our meetings are always open to the public, but very rarely did people come to Guildhall to attend them, whereas we now routinely have at least 20 or 30 people viewing it live. It is always good to have the public understand what is being done with their money.

As Chairman of the Digital Services Sub-Committee, what role do you think technology could play in improving the resident experience? Fibreoptic cabling is now in all our estates. One of the things we found early on was that it is not a cure-all because not everyone can afford it. Not everyone has it, nor sufficient means to buy it, even if they could afford it. It is reasonably clear that going forward virtual is going to be a significant part the way we live. We are going to have to figure out a way to ensure that everyone is digitally connected. I am confident that there are things that we will be able to allow people to do digitally that will just be quicker and easier for them.

You’ve seen two issues of @home, what are your thoughts on the magazine? I like it. Our COVID-19 working party concluded that we’re still insufficiently communicating, so I think anything we can do to improve our communications - and @home is certainly part of that - I am all for it.

Watch live and recorded committee meetings on the City of London Youtube Channel