Councils for you!

Aldaniti

At the Start
Joined
Dec 21, 2005
Messages
2,360
Location
Wickford
A local council in the Midlands has asked tenants to give prior notice of their death if they want to avoid being charged rent after they pass away.
Charnwood Borough Council in Loughborough has said that family members will have to pay out the notice period unless the council is informed that the tenant will pass away at least four weeks in advance, the Sunday Mercury reports.
Jim Seaton, of Ibstock, Leicestershire said: "My stepfather passed away on March 1 of cancer. He was a good and honest man.
"But it was a shock when, after struggling with our grief, we then had to cope with being told he had to give one month's notice on his council property.
"I asked the council: 'How does a dead man give one month's notice?' But they told me: 'Sorry, rules are rules.'"
A council spokesman said: "When a council tenant passes away, we aim to deal with each case sympathetically and on an individual basis."
 
I moved house about a month ago. The only reason that I don't have my deposit back on my last apartment is because my landlord is waiting for evidence that I have paid all my bills (which is fair enough - I'd do the same).

The problem is that I'm waiting for a final council tax bill to prove I'm up-to-date. But apparently these oxygen-thieves "don't do address changes in May, because they are busy". F me, get a real job.
 
As the NH season round here has ended, not many of you will have seen the approach from town to the Racecourse roundabout yet. Next time you visit, brace yourselves!
 
An in law's brother died a couple of years ago. When she called the housing association to let them know and tell them that she would be going to his flat to clear it on the following Friday, they told her that he had to give a month's notice. She explained that this was a bit difficult as he was already dead, but the voice on the end of the phone was very insistent. She was very upset when she was telling me this, but I pointed out that as he was living in a flat owned/run by a Housing Association and was registered disabled because of his alcoholism, the rent was actually paid by the DSS, so I suggested she told the insistent voice on the end of the phone to contact them directly and ask for the 'unpaid' rent.
 
When my mum died in January (a sunday) my sister rung the council to inform them on the monday morning, as she was on some kind of housing benefit due to her disabilities etc, a letter arrived on the thursday of the same week telling my dad now that he is single he should consider moving into a smaller property & enclosed a load of one bedroom flats!

Also because he never went in to officially inform them within a week even though sister rung them so they had it on their records, he received a letter the following monday stating that they could evict him for failing to notify them!

It didn't matter to them that he had just lost his wife of 42yrs & had nursed her through 5yrs of cancer treatment :(

Since then they have continuly badgered him not just about the house (its only a two bedroom) but about rent & council tax, they tell him one thing, then they send him a fourteen page letter telling him something else :mad:
 
Councils are a waste of space full of utter cretins and I swear they hand pick the most moronic and brain dead people to employ.
 
I am in full and frank agreement. There does seem to be some trip-switch when death is mentioned that garbles the brains of anyone on the other end of a phone.

My friend lost her partner of 22 years very suddenly and when someone from a finance company rang a couple of days later she just about held it together to tell the woman he was dead. The woman then asked her - TWICE- when would be the best time to contact him... My friend told her to put the phone down, leave her desk and return to it when she had a brain as she clearly was operating without one.
 
And there was me thinking there was a slight possibility your post wouldn't be another snidey one directed at me.
 
We had a young famliy near us the mum died and dad lived there with his 2 dauters but within a year he died as well'I that was not tragic then came the eviction notices there dad had also worked for the counsil as a manul worker all his life, But rules are rules and you can only make 1 change to the tennency so both girls were give flats a 2 bed and a 3 bed, there life long home was given to imergants. What is the sence in that and everyone round here was very upset by the whole thing. So be warned.
 
If I might digress and piggyback this fine topic for a moment... late last year, the right-on Brighton Council decided, given it's forever urging its residents to get on their bikes, it ought to add bike racks to its excellent record of adding cycle lanes to its roads (with such hysterically funny inefficiency, there's a website devoted to showing some of its best bloopers, including one near me, which runs for about four feet). So, pretty much directly across the road from me, two workers set to angle-grinding and battering a strip of the road into shape for nine racks, which can accommodate up to 18 bikes. They adorned its ends with attractive raised cobbles and P signs and the racks proved an instant hit with cyclists who hitherto had leashed their transport to lamp-posts and railings.

Screeeeech! Bash-bash-bash! Three days ago, an almighty noise started up, and five of the racks were angle-grinded (ground?) out, and their post-holes filled and tarred over. Why? Why, because the Council's tearing up all the Victorian drains throughout the city and the work at the end of the road means a narrowing of its exit into a much-used one. That would mean that larger vehicles wouldn't be able to squeeze their way between the racks and the works. So - away go the racks, presumably to be reinstated later, once the drainage works have been done. It beggars belief that the Department for Cycle Racks didn't liaise a little earlier with the Department for Replacing Drains, thus avoiding unncessary expenditure, doesn't it?

Oh, no, it doesn't!
 
Back
Top