March 29, 2024

Archives for July 2014

Nine months late, the ARHM makes ruling on Cirrus scandal …

… and accepts Peverel’s assurance it REALLY won’t happen again ARHM STATEMENT INTO PEVEREL PRICE FIXING / COLLUSION FOLLOWING INVESTIGATION BY FORMER OFT. Starts The ARHM Audit and Regulation Committee has been working with Peverel to review the outcome of the OFT investigation into collusive tendering in relation to the supply and installation of certain […]

SFO scroungers who cleaned up along with Tchenguiz

Three SFO incompetents who also cleaned up over Tchenguiz – with bumper pay-offs! The Serious Fraud office has just paid Vincent Tchenguiz and his companies £3 million, plus another £3m in legal costs, but what of the other payments made by the SFO? Bumper pay-offs to its incompetent staff who messed this case up, that […]

Serious Farce Office messes up again, with £6m of your money to Vincent

By Brian Rix Nearly three and a half years after the Tchenguiz brothers were arrested on March 9 2011, this farcical case at last comes to an end. Vincent gets a groveling apology plus a £3 million bung from the Serious Farce Office, which also has to pay an initial £3 million for Vincent’s legal […]

ARHM rejects complaint that Peverel pushed Mere Court residents into agreeing house manager’s flat sale …

  … a flat that, it emerged, Peverel itself owned The daughter of a resident at Mere Court in Knutsford who believed Peverel was urging the sale of the house manager’s flat for financial gain has had her complaint rejected by the ARHM. Alex Ellison was appalled to discover that Peverel was encouraging the sale of […]

McCarthy and Stone float: before we expand retirement housing, here are a few urgent reforms …

COMMENT So the sharper end of the City reckons its punt on retirement housing may pay off next year. The Sunday Times article on the possible float of McCarthy and Stone was preceded by one in the FT, here According to the FT a number of investment banks have been in contact with McCarthy and […]

Will hedge-funders clean up in £500 million float for McCarthy and Stone?

Both the FT and the Sunday Times are suggesting that the hedge-funders who took on the debt at McCarthy and Stone could be in for a killing if it floats next year for £500 million. Both papers report that says hedge fund owners pumped £367 million of equity and a five-year loan to slash borrowings.

Ground rent doubled on mum’s flat

Q: My sister and I inherited Mum’s flat in Poplar Court, St Anne’s, Lancashire at the beginning of 2013. I noticed a large increase in the ground rent just before Mum died when it jumped from £250 pa to £527.17 pa (111% increase), which is very high when compared with the £60 pa ground rent […]

Family ‘horrified’ at £30,000 price difference between new and resale Churchill Retirement flats

  Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation has received an anguished communication from a family considering a purchase of a flat from Churchill Retirement at Elgar Lodge in Malvern. It is priced at £172,000, but the family says it is “horrified” to discover a very similar resale flat in the same block, advertised by Churchill’s own […]

Judge Siobhan McGrath apologises to pensioner over the Benjamin Mire debacle

Judge Siobhan McGrath has apologised to the pensioner whose complaints led to Benjamin Mire losing his judicial appointment. The apology to Colin Dennard, 73, of Ferndown in Dorset, is an acknowledgement that the Residential Property Tribunal Service (RPTS), of which McGrath was the Senior President, bungled the issue. (She is now president of the new Property […]

Why are housing associations exempt from Freedom of Information Act?

Why are housing associations exempt from Freedom of Information Act? Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation has received inquiries concerning a disastrous investment by the Hanover housing association of £500,000 in Smartsource Water. The supplier offered 8.3 per cent “guaranteed savings and price protection” to consumers, but it went bust in October last year. Some Hanover […]

ARHM action over Cirrus has ‘involved ONE inquiry to Peverel’

The cosy insiderism at the heart of retirement leasehold management is displayed in an email exchange by Peverel to a Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation reader. It suggests that the resolve of the Association of Retirement Housing Managers to hold Peverel / Cirrus to task over the collusive tendering scandal is a rather less robust than the […]

Seller at Felbridge Court expresses frustration at unending sales fees

Adam Schmidt, who inherited a retirement flat at Felbridge Court in Feltham, has written to the Sunday Times and to Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation about his frustrations at the raft of fees payable when the flat is sold. He has written to 10 MPs, the ARHM, ARMA, FPRA, OFT, the Leasehold Advisory Service, Campaign […]