The Dispatches programme on Monday night is not the first time McCarthy and Stone has been in the eye of a storm. In 1991 it launched a disastrous High Court action against the Daily Telegraph claiming £800,000 damages over articles about service charges. The fallout of the affair was that the housebuilder sold off Peverel […]
Archives for September 2012
McCarthy and Stone proud of 35 years of ‘fairness and respect’
September 26, 2012 By
McCarthy and Stone has replied on its website to the exposé carried out by Channel Four’s Dispatches on Monday evening. You can read the page here It says: “Treating our customers with fairness and respect is at the cornerstone of what we do and over the course of the last 35 years, our staff have helped […]
Brilliant exposé of retirement leasehold on Channel Four Dispatches
September 24, 2012 By
Tonight’s Dispatches programme (September 24 2012) on retirement leasehold was a brilliant example of television journalism that was extremely damaging to both McCarthy and Stone, and to Peverel. It is excellent that Peverel’s disgraceful treatment of the pensioners at Strand Court, Rye, has been given a wider airing (search Strand Court on this site). But […]
Pensioner ‘spy’ to lift the lid on retirement leasehold 8pm tonight
September 22, 2012 By
On Monday night (8pm) Channel Four’s Dispatches carries out a special investigation in the fraught world of retirement leasehold with much of the material provided by an undercover pensioner ‘spy’. Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation activists have been interviewed for the progamme, and we have given the filmmakers, October, every assistance over the past few […]
After Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation, the Daily Mail takes an interest in Grant Shapps’ colourful business career
September 18, 2012 By
Full article can be read here or http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2204292/How-Labour-want-probe-Grant-Shapps-family-business-potential-fraud-claims.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
How to handle your ‘right to manage’ – by a leading managing agent
September 14, 2012 By
Rob Plumb, CEO of HML Holdings, explains the dangers that lie within the Right to Manage process Normally a written contract works well to keep an agreement in place because both parties to the contract want the same outcome. “Right to Manage” isn’t a normal contract. It sounds, initially, so straight forward. RTM enables leaseholders to […]
Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation activist told OFT exit fee deal with Tchenguiz also includes Proxima
September 14, 2012 By
OFT website outlining the agreement is here http://www.oft.gov.uk/news-and-updates/press/2012/77-12 Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation’s concerns that the Office of Fair Trading’s deal with the Tchenguiz Family Trust over exit and sub-letting fees would be restricted to Fairhold, as indicated on the OFT’s press release of September 6 (see below) appear to be unfounded. Campaign against retirement leasehold […]
Channel Four documentary on retirement leasehold on September 24
September 13, 2012 By
Channel Four’s Dispatches is to broadcast its documentary on retirement leasehold on September 24. Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation activists have given full assistance to the programme and Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation chairman Sebastian O’Kelly has been interviewed. Dispatches aired a documentary on residential leasehold on August 26 – Property Nightmare: The Truth About […]
Mechanised plagiarism and psycho-babble are Grant Shapps’ little earners outside politics
September 10, 2012 By
Michael Heseltine it isn’t … but ex-Housing Minister and Tory chairman Grant Shapps has a flourishing little publishing business to fall back upon in the event that his political career comes to a grinding halt. Run out of squalid little offices in Enfield, north London, the Shapps family offer codswollop Freudian analysis of dreams and […]
Grant Shapps cuts Wikipedia references to property tycoons’ donations to his private office
September 10, 2012 By
The Observer revealed yesterday that the former Housing Minister and new Tory party chairman Grant Shapps deleted Wikipedia references to donations from property interests to his private office. He did so secretly, breaking the online encyclopedia’s code of practice which urges that those changing information in personal entries first identify themselves. The original entry, the […]
OFT does deal with Tchenguiz to cut sub-letting fees to £85 at retirement developments – but exit fees on sale still stand
September 6, 2012 By
OFT website outlining the agreement is here http://www.oft.gov.uk/news-and-updates/press/2012/77-12 The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has secured undertakings from Fairhold Homes Ltd and associated companies (Fairhold) owned by the Tchenguiz Family Trust to change how they charge and enforce transfer fee terms in their 53,000 retirement home leases. The OFT has been investigating exit fees, which are […]
OFT announcement on exit fees not as “substantive” as we all hoped … oh, and the timing has “slipped”
September 5, 2012 By
OFT website outlining the agreement is here http://www.oft.gov.uk/news-and-updates/press/2012/77-12 When the Office of Fair Trading finally says something about the issue of exit fees, it won’t be concerning the whole leasehold sector but only one single company. This information has been given to a Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation / LKP activist in an email from one […]
