Church and State blog: Mail Boxes Etc. UK: Declan writes to the Information Commissioner's Office in a last desperate attempt to try and resolve the issue of our registered office address without a court order (WITH UPDATE 19/12/2016)

Friday, December 16, 2016

Mail Boxes Etc. UK: Declan writes to the Information Commissioner's Office in a last desperate attempt to try and resolve the issue of our registered office address without a court order (WITH UPDATE 19/12/2016)

Unbelievable.

Donald A. Collins, President of ISAF, Washington DC

RE: Mail Boxes Etc. (UK) Ltd (MBE)

Complaint about MBE under the Data Protection Act 1998.

To the Information Commissioner's Office:

12 December 2016

Dear Casework Team,

I refer to the below email from Royal Mail in respect of the new postcode on my mailbox which prevents me from receiving mail from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC). Please note that my problem is not with Royal Mail but with Mail Boxes Etc (UK) Ltd (MBE).

Royal Mail have subsequently made it clear that their hands are tied and that they were merely following instructions on 21 October 2016 when they changed the postcode on the mailbox I rent from MBE Kings Cross from N1 9JY to N1 9FQ. Consequently, HMRC have continued their stop on any correspondence being issued automatically to me because the building number of my mailbox at 254 Pentonville Road does not show on Royal Mail records under postcode N1 9JY.

In response to my letter before claim (please see attachment), MBE changed the address on their website to N1 9FQ. However, this postcode has subsequently been rejected by Companies House because they only accept the postcode N1 9JY for a building name or number on Pentonville Road; the postcode N1 9FQ is unique to the MBE business name. Royal Mail have told me that they would be happy to have 254 Pentonville Road listed on the postcode N1 9JY, but that they must receive this instruction from MBE.

The Retail Ombudsman cannot investigate a business-to-business context. However, this matter is also relevant to the Data Protection Act 1998 as principle 4 states that "personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date". I am considering court action and, given the problems with my mail from HMRC, time is of the essence. By way of alternative dispute resolution, can you still consider my concern as I did not receive a satisfactory response to the issue raised with MBE?

With reference to the below email from Royal Mail, please note that I cannot add my business name to the new MBE address as an alias identifier for the simple reason that N1 9FQ is not recognised by Companies House.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey
Managing Director
Network for Church Monitoring

UPDATE 19 December: Declan sent the email above to the ICO on 12 December. We are waiting to hear back from them. Depending on how HMRC respond to Declan's email to its chief executive on 29 November (see link below), we may not be able to wait much longer without issuing court proceedings against MBE for breach of contract. Currently we are paying for a registered office address with MBE Kings Cross that Companies House will not accept as amended by MBE on 21 October, meaning we cannot register an address for the company with HMRC that HMRC will not render invalid with their "automatic data cleanse" every 6-12 weeks, according to HMRC themselves on 19 October. You couldn't make it up!

29 November: Will it take the Independent Police Complaints Commission to protect our address with HM Revenue and Customs?

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

Friday, December 16, 2016

Mail Boxes Etc. UK: Declan writes to the Information Commissioner's Office in a last desperate attempt to try and resolve the issue of our registered office address without a court order (WITH UPDATE 19/12/2016)

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