Not Quite a 'No-Evictions' Policy

According to 'Inside Housing' magazine, Nottingham City Homes and a number of Housing Associations have come up with a protocol for dealing with people subjected to the Bedroom Tax. The only provider to announce themselves so far is Asra HA but there is no extra information provided.

It should be emphasised that this is not a 'no-evictions' policy so it falls way short of what campaigners are asking for. Instead, it is intended to set up an agreement with the tenant and the landlord whereby, as long as the tenant is engaging with debt advice agencies and has applied for a Discretionary Housing Payment eviction proceedings will not go ahead. The fact that there will be renewed impetus for tenants to apply for DHPs is a plus at least. Mind you a side effect will probably that those in private renting will be told to go and whistle but, hey, nothing new there.


It's a start but there are still many gaps to fall through. Unfortunately, debt advisers cannot actually perform miracles. Most of the effectiveness of debt advice is identifying debts which are lower priority than the rent, e.g. non-secured loans, catalogues and the like and negotiating lower repayments freeing up cash to go on the rent. However, if you haven't got other debts then opportunities for freeing up income are limited. If a single person under 25 on Jobseekers' has to find £10/wk bedroom tax you're only going to have £46/wk left to live on. That's what's known as a challenge.

And to an old cynic like me who's been to countless meetings and watched agreement after protocol fall by the wayside it is difficult to raise too much hope. People will still be unreasonably refused DHPs, there will be issues of awareness among housing staff and of course, there will be people who are simply unable to find the money. But, as I say, it's a start.

Of course, what we need is for Labour to make a firm commitment to repeal the bedroom tax. This will give campaigners a stronger bast to argue for a true non-evictions policy as any pain will only be temporary. As yet, Labour is shying away from promising anything. The fact that Labour NCC is refusing to entertain the possibility of no evictions may suggest they have inside knowledge of what the party's plans are in this area.

The IT Crowd

Nottingham City Homes has someone running a public blog providing updates on social housing issues and the like. It's quite useful if you're interested in the field so I've added it to the blogroll (thought I'd added it ages ago tbh but it wasn't there so must have removed it, heaven knows why).

I did have to giggle at a recent post. The City Council does their IT for them and runs a blocking feature for social media to stop those naughty council worker scamps spending all their time on Facebook*. Apparently it randomly blocked Phil Meadows, NCH's blog admin, leaving him unable to update the blog.

Took NCC's IT mob 10 days to fix it back, presumably by turning it off and turning it back on again.

I'm sure you'll agree, Phil hides his frustration very well!

*Blocks you from Facebook but not, apparently, from Google Mail. Although I do remember that when I worked for NCC all webmail services were blocked. Does make you wonder whether certain employees were given special permission to use Google Mail and what for...

Now Nottingham City Homes Gets It in the Freedom of Info Neck

A rather encouraging decision from the Information Rights Tribunal (the body to which you appeal if you are unhappy with a decision by the Information Commissioner) has come to my notice. It concerns Nottingham City Homes who, as I'm sure you all know, serves as the housing wing of Nottm City Council.

There are a couple of interesting aspects to this case. The applicant had asked for information about repair and improvement spend on two other properties in his block because he apparently suspected that was being denied repairs when others were being provided with them. It was initially claimed by NCH that such information was personal data because it concerned personal details of tenants. However, this was dismissed on the basis that there had been a number of different tenants at the property and so the information, if provided, wouldn't be necessarily linked to any one tenant.

The second interesting point was that the Information Commissioner found that the original request was 'vexatious', a fate that has befallen one of my own requests.

One of the reasons for this that was accepted by the Information Commissioner was that the applicant had used 'threatening and intimidating' language in his correspondence. The Tribunal prefers to describe it as 'intemperate' and says that -

"...experienced members of staff receiving such a letter would be unlikely to significantly concerned by its contents..."

In other words, get a bleedin' grip. It is quite offensive how large public authorities turn into fragile drama queens alleging 'harassment' when people understandably get upset and complain. It's encouraging that the Tribunal have a sense of proportion on this.

But perhaps the most important issue here is the Tribunal's disapproval of the way that the background to the dispute was taken into account when deciding the 'vexatious' issue.

Some background. It is an accepted principle that it must be the request for information itself that is vexatious, not the requester. On the other hand, caselaw has long accepted that the context of a request can and should be taken into account when deciding the vexatious issue.

Now there is clearly a very fine line between the two and you might argue that the two are contradictory. It can and does mean that campaigners can easily get caught up in the 'vexatious' quagmire.

Happily, this particular Tribunal has moved things a bit more favour of requesters (prior to this no appeals on vexatious requests had been accepted by the Information Tribunal) and said -

"The Tribunal is satisfied that in its response to the request for disclosure of information [NCH] has focused too much on the history of its relations with the Appellant and has not considered the request on its merits.'

Quite right too.

Riots # 4 - The NCH Tenancy Agreement and Eviction

There has been a lot of political bluster by local politicians threatening fire and brimstone, in particular the threat of eviction for any council tenants found to be involved in the riots. Oh, and their parents, even though they may have had no idea what their kids were doing at the time and no reason to suspect they would be up to no good.

Some people have wondered whether this could actually happen so I've dug out what seems to be the latest NCH tenancy agreement. In addition I'm looking at this basic advice page* from Shelter.

The first stop is that if you are an introductory tenant, which the vast majority of council tenants will be for the first 12 months of their tenancy, you have pretty much diddley squat in terms of rights because you can be evicted without NCH having to demonstrate any grounds to do so.

Once you are a full secure tenant then the landlord does have to show grounds, although in many cases eviction isn't a foregone conclusion, a judge has to decide whether it is reasonable to evict you.

A key and often wide ranging ground is a breach of any term of the tenancy agreement. With the antisocial behaviour political juggarnaut having been steaming along for over a decade, tenancy agreements tend to have lots of things in them that could be applied to alleged rioters and their families. Scroll to para 3.12 (page 10) of the tenancy agreement for a read.

Para 1 makes it clear that NCH holds you responsible for anyone living at your home, any friends, visitors etc. So if the gas meter guy pops up and starts screaming racial abuse at the neighbours then theoretically...

In all seriousness, para 2 gets to the nitty gritty and forbids the tenant, others at the property etc causing a nuisance (ok, we expect that) or annoyance (what?) to anyone in Nottingham (whaaat!!!???).

There is more but as you can see there is enough there to catch anybody who is proven to have had any part in the riots.

As I say, proving a ground does not automatically mean you are evicted, the judge has to agree that it is reasonable. The key thing here then is to get advice and assistance asap if you find yourself in the middle of this shitstorm.

My own opinion is that dealing with crimes should normally be left for the criminal justice system and people should only lose their homes if they receive a prison sentence long enough to mean that their tenancy is no longer sustainable. Unfortunately, politicians are always looking for ways to look tough and they have an opportunity on a plate here. I suspect however that too much tough action against otherwise innocent family members will lead to a backlash, especially in Nottingham where the fairness of council house allocations has little credibility anyway.

*Note, don't take this article as legal advice, I've glossed over details and allsorts, my point is to demonstrate how the legal framework is well and truly in place for evictions of rioters and their families, although it isn't inevitable. If this happens to you, just make sure you get advice as soon as you can. You might want to try Notts Housing Advice as a first port of call or you can search for a solicitor here.

How About Some Good Old Zero Tolerance?

I reckon this is one for Nottingham City Homes to have a look at, and maybe the police too.

There's a somewhat alarming report on Notts Indymedia by somebody who saw a couple of nazi flags being flown from the window of one of the Victoria Centre flats.

The photo in the report isn't as clear as it could be so there may be an element of taking the report author's word for it but presuming  the flags are as stated, i.e. a white power one and an AWB emblem then I suspect that somebody may well be in breach of their tenancy agreement at the least and is probably committing a public order offence.

Now this may be entirely unconnected but, as the comment below the article states, failed BNP Parliamentary candidate for Nottingham North just happens to live in the flats. I have no idea whether that's his flat the flags are flying from but presumably NCH does. And if it's not his I presume it shouldn't be too difficult for them to work out which flat it is and pop round for a visit.

It's funny because normally council officials are very quick to go and remove unauthorised banners in the name of combatting anti-social behaviour, as a little old lady in Clifton and the odd local campaign group would be able to testify. Maybe they haven't got a head for heights?

Executive Board Erases the Past

They were busy at the Executive Board the other day. Also on the agenda was the housing allocations disaster and specifically the Standards Committee's discussion of the Audit Commission's recommendations for 'moving forward'.

Now first of all class I'm going to set you some revision. Look back, not so much in anger but despair, at my previous musings on the Committee's consideration of this embarrassing episode. There may be a test later.

Finished? Right, lets get back to what the Executive Board said about it.

" RESOLVED that the content of the minute extract be noted.

Reasons for the above decisions:

To enable the Executive Board to be updated on the Standards Committee consideration of the Report of the District Auditor on aspects of the City Council’s allocation of housing properties between 2003 and 2005, to the Council’s acceptance of the District Auditors recommendations in their entirety and to actions for the Authority which were either in hand or already completed arising from the recommendations and to receive the Committee’s comments and observations on the matter."

Interesting because the Standards Committee's advice wasn't to accept the Audit Commission's recommendations in their entirety at all. In particular they rejected the recommendation to draw up a protocol requiring councillors to register potential conflicts of interest when advocating on behalf of constituents. However, prior to the this on 9 February the full Council did formally accept all the Audit Commission's recommendations on pages 5 and 6 of their report. Which said a protocol to -

"Ensure there are mechanisms in place that require councillors to register any potential conflicts of interest when seeking to advocate on behalf of local constituents."

Should be introduced.

I'm not sure where this leaves us. In theory the full Council decision holds sway but why then was the Standards Committee asked to look into it if it wasn't still up for grabs? My hunch is that it means that all the right noises on 'accepting recommendations' get into the papers while the awkward nuts and bolts of actually increasing councillors' accountability is kicked into the long grass.

Positive Action

If you go over and have a look at the Nottingham City Homes site and go to the section for the Homes4Us forum, for some reason the links to the last two meeting's minutes don't work, just giving a 404 'not available'.

By a stroke of luck they were up there before and I managed to download them onto my pda but for some reason I couldn't open them. I'm now in the internet cafe and have managed to have a look.

Those for 9 January seems pretty inconsequential so not sure why they've been taken down. However, the one for 23 February contains the following news -

"At the Emergency Meeting [18 February] it was agreed that the Vice Chair should resign or be excluded"

The Vice Chair was your and my favourite BNP activist and all round beardy chump Jason Cotterill-Attaway who we wrote about before.

I'm extremely pleased that NCH have taken this decisive action and I only hope that the reason for these minutes being taken off the site isn't any kind of legal shenanigins. BNP scum have no place on committees like this and in my view only join up to try and garner respectability and push their poisonous message where it has no place.

Thats good news. I said once before that wouldn't happen here often but I'll happily write up news like this til the cows come home.

Note; the minutes are now downloadable here.

Its hit the fan, JoCo eats dirt

This is the big one.

You may remember when Nottingham City Homes was formed from the old Housing department and an investigation found that it was run by a bunch of crooks? Well the District Auditor's report is due out later today and not even JoCo is trying to brazen it out, he's got his grovelling apology up on the NCC website already and the report isn't even formally published yet.

The Evening Post has gone to the extraordinary lengths of posting a story at midnight which I think demonstrates the gravity of the situation. And the 'predictable comments by the twats' (an occasional series I'll feature when linking to EP stories) are already out;

"How many immigrants and asylum seekers have been given council houses instead of the British public. What is the point in having a points based system to ensure the most needy cases take priority."

Hang on, that comment was by Andyman from, yes DERBYSHIRE. Go back to where you came from Derbyshire boy, don't you go sullying our pure bred Nottingham websites with your dry stone walled tosh! Thats NOTTINGHAM taxpayers' webspace that is, keep your hands off!!!

Ahem. Sorry. Where were we?

Ah yes, I also found a rather interesting article on Indymedia from a couple of years ago concerning the illegal and violent eviction of a squat. Its alleged that the property was an NCH one and it was being set up for a right to buy scam by an NCH staff member's relative. Its also alleged in the article that the evicters were off duty NCH staff...

Coun Brian Grocock is said to have lied when making representations on behalf of a couple. However he doesn't appear to have resigned yet. Still its early.

I reckon this one is about as bad as it can get, I'm sure fallout will continue. I'll endeavour to write about any future developments, a task which will give me no pleasure at all as I'm sure you'll realise.