UPDATES: the bad room tax and High and Mitie.

Bedroom Tax: follow up to this post

As Lewisham/Lewisham Homes lost my forms for ''underoccupation'' back at the very beginning of May, it has taken until today for me get my application processed.  But, because the council have evidence of me ''being on the transfer list for a suitably sized property'' they have awarded a Discretionary Housing Payment.  It's not a full rebate on the unrebated amount but it gets me closer to survival, and staves off eviction.

The fact that back in 1984 the flat was not considered unsuitably sized, and the fact that I have to be actively searching for a smaller property that, more likely than not, will cost more in public subsidy than the present one is costing, that there are publicly funded grants for removal payments, redirection of mail, payments for removing and reinstalling cookers and washing machines, phone connection, an assistance payment of £300 for the extra room I'm giving up - in short, that all this extra public expense to move someone against their will to a more expensive smaller property - does not seem to have occurred to any of those with a responsibility to keep down public expenses. 

Following the transfer list path won't solve everybody's problem but it may be worth it for some.

Housing policy: you know it makes no sense.

Mitie Major Works: follow up to this post (further posts about Mitie, here, here and here)

After the end-of-my-tether post about Mitie, Crosswhatfields received an email from Lewisham Homes' Corporate Communication Manager asking:

Please could you contact me to clarify the issues so that I can ensure this is dealt with properly?

So I did and wrote a partial list of of the surreal chain of events that had happened to me.  And got absolutely nowhere.  I even learn that I have not made a complaint.  Mitie apparently agreed to deliver a report to her about the issues:

Mitie are delivering us a full report on all the issues you've detailed.

 ...but there again, the Tenant Liaison Officer and Site Manager agreed to produce a written explanation of why my door was left open and mail removed from the property to me, and I've heard from neither.  In the end, I got a highly unsatisfactory

You have had an unfortunate run of luck it has to be said.

Followed by

I'll give you a call on Monday to see how things are if that's ok?

As that call never materialised I assume she considers it job done.

The moral of this is that, if you experience problems with Mitie, they won't consider it a complaint unless you go through the ''official'' complaints procedure, which is

1 contact resident liaison officer who will endeavour to resolve the issue

2 if still unhappy contact the Lewisham Homes' Project Coordinator (0800 028 2 028) and ask for major works (or email majorworks@lewishamhomes.org.uk)

3 Still unhappy, step 3 is the Customer Relations team (0800 028 2 028) and ask for customer relations (or email complaints@lewishamhomes.org.uk)

Whatever you do beware of people offering to get things ''dealt with properly'' or dealing with Mitie's Property Services people.  Their interest is not the tenants, job done for them is circumventing the complaints procedure and managing reputation.

At least go through the ''proper'' complaints channels or email the blog and we'll try to help.

Bedroom taxidermists - who's stuffing who?

So, being unemployed and therefore dependent on the state, I eventually gave up waiting for Lewisham Homes to process (or lose) my ''underoccupation'' forms and went down to the Trading Places event held at the Civic Centre in Catford to see what kind of properties came up.  You see, I've had £15 knocked off my benefit each week because the flat I've lived in for 29 years, which was let to me as a single person in the olden days when the estate was ''hard to let,'' was originally designated as having 2 bedrooms.  Sooner or later, I'm going to start getting letters about arrears, threats of eviction leading inevitably to eviction proper.  Because, maybe I should be able to but I can't live, light and heat my flat on £50 a week.

A Saturday morning, take my bike from the study - sorry spare bedroom, because there's no safe provision for bikes outside, or indeed any storage room whatsoever, and cycle down to Catford.  As my 80-year old mother lives just over the Ha'penny Hatch and I don't run a car, I don't want to go too far out of the area where I've lived for 45 years, and I need to be able to get there quickly as she grows frailer.

Right, I set to searching for nearby one bedroom flats with owners wishing to move to two bedroom flats.  And, guess what, all the one bedroom flats available bar one were more expensive than the flat where I am now.  The only cheaper place was a tenant on the 4th floor of another Crossfields flat.  I contact the tenant but my flat, also top floor, was unsuitable because of the difficulties getting shopping and children and buggies, etc, up the stairs.  Clearly they need somewhere closer to the ground.  Or a lift. 

It looks like, in order to save money from the housing benefit bill, they've come up with the so called bedroom tax, but the only smaller places coming up on offer are more expensive, so the housing benefit bill will increase, on the smaller flat because the bedroom tax doesn't apply, and if my 2 bedroom flat is let to a claimant with children, then the bedroom tax won't apply here either.  It's the tax payer who ends up paying more.

Ironically, a big part of the reason I never bought my flat at a discounted rate (when I was earning money and had good health) was because I believe in social housing.  But this is not so for many others and I believe a good number of smaller flats around here have disappeared from social housing altogether.  New social housing stock has not replaced them either.

The result for me: no security of tenure, nowhere cheaper to go to, potential loss of the home where I've lived for a tad under 30 years, potential loss of quick access to my elderly mother.  The personal solution, of course, is to simply move somewhere more expensive but, with the meds for my dodgy kidney, I'm unlikely to be in full time work for a while and the increased financial burden will fall on, well, you all.

You'd think that Lewisham Homes would help tenants out on this one.  Indeed, they appear to have paid someone to come in on a Saturday morning to phone round tenants in April this year.  And post the application forms for the underoccupation scheme - help with removals, etc.  But, having filled in the forms, physically delivered them to the address on the forms (Eros House) and got a date-stamped photocopy of them, those forms – together with personal passport details and billing details – never got to where they were supposed to.  The lack of care over personal information, in an age of identity theft, is truly astonishing, but that's by the by.  So more forms posted out, more journeys, this time to the Pepys Housing Office back near the beginning of June.  Since then, nothing.

The fruit of 2 journeys to Catford, 2 journeys to Pepys, postage costs, form printing, photocopying, paying overtime for weekend office work, and dealing with an increasingly irate Marmoset is absolutely zero.  Well, it's less than zero, actually, because someone has to pay for all that.  I wonder who.