To the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary:
For Clarity - Attempt 573.
573) "Before the Deluge" - Jackson Browne.
Dear Mr Clark,
There has been a disastrous collective moral malfunction.
It is to be found in The Establishment's attitude towards property. Theirs is a policy and regulatory failure that is having a devastating impact upon the lives of many of those who've mis-sold the notion that if only they worked hard they could afford to own their own home.
It began with Mrs Thatcher's bargain basement sale of council housing stock at discounted prices.
The Guardian did publish one of our letters around the time of blog 50 but for reasons best known to them, omitted the sentence in which we suggested that it was somewhat hypocritical of the Prime Minister sell off the nation's public housing stock at knock-down prices but not her own home in Flood Street. We thought it showed a lack of intestinal fortitude and leadership.
We didn't once mention the word gerrymandering. Or Dame Shirley Porter and how she cleaned up in Westminster.
Margaret Thatcher, Dame Shirley Porte and now Theresa May.
In her forward to Sajid Javid's, "Fixing our broken property market" Theresa May states,
"The Government is determined to build a stronger, fairer Britain where people who work hard are able to get on in life."
But people already work hard and still don't get on in life.
And what about people with disabilities who find working hard even harder. Don't they deserve to get on in life too?
What about the people working hard in your department not to answer my questions - do they deserve to get on in life?
Jackson Browne's song invites us to,
"let the music keep our spirits high,
And let the buildings keep our children dry."
As a citizen of the world and thus in Theresa May's opinion, citizen of nowhere, and someone who has had 36 "homes" to date, the knowledge that many of our poorer children are building a similar property portfolio due to the tyranny of short term tenancy agreements, is a daily bleak reminder of the , "broken British property market."
Nowhere, has become home for more and more young citizens in our fake-news, post-truth and post-Brexit world. However, for Amber Rudd's false-news refugee children, thoughts of a six month tenancy agreement must sound like heaven on earth as they sleep in the open en route to a country that is willing to help them find a dry building to live in.
One wonders just how many of those children will find a welcoming home in Westminster.
Perhaps at this very moment the present Home Secretary is following in her leader's footsteps and re-commissioning the Go Home Lorries as part of Sajid Javid's strategy to fix the broken, some might say shattered, housing market.. This time the lorries could carry a warning to those who don't know what the property ladder looks like or who find the first rung to be always just out of reach.to, "Find A Home Outside Of Westminster," if this 2013 headline is anything to go by,
"London council accused of social cleansing over plans to deposit lowest paid tenants on edge of city." (www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/social-cleansing)
This would suggest that that the housing market isn't so much, "broken" - as if someone accidentally dropped it - as deliberately rigged. Rigged so that Westminster's lowest paid tenants are forced to the periphery.
Mr Clark, so far we've attempted to bring our concerns regarding the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and its appointed company, Ombudsman Services:Property's role in the broken market in surveying and broken market in alternative dispute redress, to three Business Secretaries; Jo Swinson, Sajid Javid and now yourself but it would seem that the Culture of Silence that pervades the NHS has spread throughout government reaching as far afield as Livewell Southwest Ltd, NEW Devon and Plymouth City Council.
You ask a public employee a straightforward question and you're automatically put on the long finger.
The RICS sits atop the British Housing Market and from its vantage point - 12 George Street, Parliament Square, Westminster has ready access to Ministers, civil servants and MPs - their office staff. They have a Parliamentary Affairs Manager. The Chair of Ombudsman Services, Professor Dame Janet Finch, who also oversees the RICS appointed Ombudsman Service:Property, has, "a close and continuing relationship" with your department.
RICS' ready access to government and their "political influencing" and "engagement work" much of it "behind the scenes" enabled them to have Vince Cable "fix" the lettings market.
Yet another, "broken" market.
Today, lettings disputes are handled by the maladministrators at the RICS' appointed company, Ombudsman Services:Property.
Whilst the RICS are building a monopoly in property dispute, "resolution" they reain unable to explain why it is they have developed practices that do not work in the customer's interests - practices which stem from their apparent inability to adequately regulate their Members and Regulated Firms.
This isn't a broken market it's a rigged market.
Cowboy surveyors hand their bewildered clients over to their ombudsman who dutifully hands them an illogical Final Decision. Job done. As Chris Hamer, the former Property Ombudsman observed, why don't regulators get it right in the first place?
A broken property market or a highly efficient rigged property market?
Joseph Stiglitz argues that,
"If markets are fundamentally efficient and fair, there is little even the best of governments could do to improve matters. But if markets are based on exploitation, the rationale laissez-faire disappears,. Instead, in that case, the battle against entrenched power is not only a battle for democracy it is also a battle for efficiency and shared prosperity."
(Joseph Stiglitz: Are Markets efficient or do they tend towards monopoly? The verdict is in)
Professor Dame Janet Finch, Chair of maladministration at Ombudsman Services has announced in one of the company's annual reports that would like to see a single ombudsman for dispute resolution in England based on the one in Scotland. In other words she wants to see a monopoly in so-called civil justice which is the exact opposite to what Joseph Stiglitz says is good for democracy and shared prosperity.
If Professor Dame Janet Finch gets her way, complainants will need to start singing to keep their spirits high.
Q. Mr Clark, when are you going to step up, challenge the entrenched power of the RICS and its appointed company, Ombudsman Services:Property and right the wrongs of its ombudsman's illogical final decisions and its executives' maladministration?
Yours sincerely,
Steve Gilbert.
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