Church and State blog: Declan asks Peabody to escalate his Stage 1 complaint about new terms of tenancy. Last night we received their response from the Housing Ombudsman Service after our flat door had been vandalised earlier in the evening (crime reference no. 5304416/20)

Saturday, October 17, 2020

Declan asks Peabody to escalate his Stage 1 complaint about new terms of tenancy. Last night we received their response from the Housing Ombudsman Service after our flat door had been vandalised earlier in the evening (crime reference no. 5304416/20)

Our flat door was vandalised yesterday evening by two thugs with a crowbar. Declan reported the incident with Metropolitan Police Crime Reference No. 2425692/17. We were in the flat at the time and fortunately our double locked door held firm. It's my opinion that they just wanted to break the door lock but didn't have enough time. The communal door lock downstairs wasn't broken. See my blog post about this crime incident here. Last night Declan received through the Housing Ombudsman Service Peabody's response to his Stage 1 complaint about new tenancy terms - four months after he made the complaint. First thing this morning he escalated the complaint for consideration by their Customer Experience Team. If he does not receive a stage 2 response by the end of 18 working days, Peabody will again have breached their own complaints procedure and he will then be in a position to go back to the Housing Ombudsman Service and let them know. This is his request this morning that Peabody escalate this matter to a Stage 2 complaint for him, or, alternatively, provide him with a final response letter for the Ombudsman to consider:

What is your complaint (Please add as much detail as possible including any reference numbers you may have)?

Ref: CAS-506345-C3J0K0

I am not satisfied with Head of Specialist Housing Management Sonia Palfey's response dated 7 September 2020 to the Stage 1 complaint I raised with Peabody about new terms of tenancy. I received Ms Palfrey's response through the Housing Ombudsman Service last night. I respectfully ask you to escalate this matter to a Stage 2 complaint for me, or, alternatively, provide me with a final response letter for the Ombudsman to consider.

By way of background, my wife and I have been living in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiate (RSI) property that is owned by Peabody. Our tenancy has been twice renewed like for like as requested. The original two-year term expired in 2016, and again in 2018 but Peabody agreed to new tenancies on like-for-like terms on both occasions. In an email of 27 April 2020, Housing Officer Rukia Khatun asserted in relation to the third agreement offered that "the terms are the same and a like for like as requested". In a further email of 1 May 2020, Ms Khatun falsely accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement.

On 27 May 2020, I received an email from Area Housing Manager Rosealeen Sogunro about the third renewal of our tenancy. By way of supporting evidence, after I have submitted this form, I will email you this email from Ms Sogunro, the Stage 1 response I received last night from Ms Palfrey and an updated document titled 'Comparative Screenshots'. It is my contention that, given Peabody's apparent ongoing insistence that we have been offered a tenancy like for like as requested, it is only fair and reasonable that you produce such a document. Instead, my wife and I have been previously falsely accused of not signing a like-for-like agreement and continue to be provided with assurances that are not reflected in the new tenancy agreement.

My wife and I are currently not protected from a 'no fault' eviction in a weekly periodic tenancy. Despite Ms Palfrey's apparent assurance that no action of this sort will be taken, our legal position in respect to Section 21 possession poses a direct threat to my life. It also has a destabilising effect on our tenancy and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. For example, my wife cannot resume a volunteer position she held in the community for four years. I am also forced to maintain a suspension on my voluntary work in the community. The level of pressure and uncertainty connected with our tenancy is not only unfair to us but also to the community centre my wife has been volunteering in since June 2016. The centre obviously wants someone who is reliable and able to commit to set days and times.

How would you like us to resolve your complaint?

To resolve my complaint I request a tenancy like for like as requested, as has been issued twice before, and not a tenancy agreement that is not remotely the same document. Substantial and/or adverse variations include: unspecified visiting support that neither I nor my wife wants or needs; the removal from the agreement of the rent cap for social housing; the both of us remaining liable for rent and service charges until the end of the fixed term if Peabody does not agree to the termination of the tenancy despite our one month's notice in advance; and the stipulation of a much shorter length of time in rent arrears for possession.

Consider, for example, that the stipulated time in arrears for possession has been reduced from 8 weeks to 14 days. This in itself renders unsignable the new tenancy agreement, thereby destabilising our tenancy and inhibiting our ability to exercise our rights. Newham Council has already twice suspended our housing benefit because of erroneous notifications from the Department for Work and Pensions that we had vacated. We have not had any contact with the Department during our tenancy due to us both having been part-time employed.

I reiterate in conclusion that my wife and I have no legal protection from a 'no fault' eviction in a weekly periodic tenancy, and to assert otherwise is both factually disingenuous and unsupported by law. I have sought and received legal advice from a UK lawyer on this point, and a Housing legal advisor such as Shelter concurs on their website. I am a 60-year-old asthmatic with a long history of serious respiratory illness, thus placing me in the high-risk group for COVID-19 and other viral respiratory infections. That my wife and I should be forced to live under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction in an RSI designated property seems to us to be unconscionable. There is no question that such an eviction would return us to the streets for the third time through no fault of our own, and this time with little or no prospect of ever being housed again.

Submitted 17/10/20

17 October (newer post): Part 1: Housing Ombudsman Service. Two days ago Declan complained to Lyn Brown MP about this statutory service. Yesterday our flat door was vandalised. And ISAF's letter to Facebook's COO last month has gotten no results

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

Saturday, October 17, 2020

Declan asks Peabody to escalate his Stage 1 complaint about new terms of tenancy. Last night we received their response from the Housing Ombudsman Service after our flat door had been vandalised earlier in the evening (crime reference no. 5304416/20)

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