Ben Reeve Lewis Friday Newsround #174

[Ben Reeve Lewis has been doing some training ..]

I just got back from the Society of Authors in Chelsea, training a bunch of landlords and letting agents on how to survive council nonsense and spotting signs that your property is being used for growing cannabis and meter tampering.

An unusual course that I’ve not done before.

I was concerned that it might be a bit of a pick and mix affair, given the unconnected threads involved in the sylabus but in the delivery it was clear that it did sort of coalesce into something that made sense, so I think we’ll run it again.

Hats off to the delegates who made it a fun and lively day of discussion and anecdote sharing and Steve? I have your answer to your double housing benefit payment conundrum….I think. Check your daughter’s emails you luddite!

Pathetic Judges

Not for the first time I’m absolutely flabbergasted by the pathetic reaction of criminal court judges to housing fraud.

I wrote a while back about con woman housing officer Chinyere Anokuru, creating fake applicant details for her family to gain council housing that they would end up purchasing under the right to buy.

But I read today that all the judge did was award an 18 month jail sentence suspended for 6 months.

Her sister got 150 hours community service for her part in the scam.

Even more astonishing was the comment from Southwark’s elected cabinet member Fiona Colley upon hearing the news, who said:

“Chinyere has learnt the hard way that deception of any kind comes at a high cost. This should also serve as a stark warning to others that we’re committed to bringing fraudsters to justice.”

How on earth does a suspended sentence and 150 community service serve as a “Stark warning” to anyone apart from, perhaps a member of the Amish?

You got a pathetic result love. Don’t try to dress it up as a victory. The criminal court shat on Southwark council and every council tax payer in that borough…..and I am one of them.

Can you really see the next generation of would be fraudsters quaking in their boots and having second thoughts about using their position as council officers to advance their plans?

Wake up!!!!!!! That result was an insult to every decent person who plays by the rules. The trial judge should be shot, or at least made to spend a weekend in a cottage with the very soon to be unemployed Jeremy Clarkson.

Small properties with big prices

I liked this article on 24 Dash about Shelter’s unusually loight hearted review of some of the most ridiculously over-hyped properties in the market in the UK.

• A £737 a month studio flatin Islington, so small that the wardrobe, front door and kitchen worktop were all within arm’s reach of the bed.
• An £800 a month hovel that required the tenant to climb on the fridge and scurry up a ladder to get into bed.
• A Brixton garage advertised as a one-bed flat for £125,000.
• A small garden shed in Devon for £40,000 advertised as a semi-detached house.
• A cupboard space with about two feet of headroom for £40 a month.

Such is the ludicrous nature of the overheated housing market in 2014.

Misdesription in Blackheath

I remember back in the days onf the old Property Misdescriptions Act, several loacal estate agents sailing dangerously close to the mark with their sales blurb for properties on Blackheath Hill, leading from moneyed up Blackheath Village to distinctly un-moneyed up Deptford by advertising them as being situated in “Lower Blackheath”.

A place that doesn’t actually exist and to any local residents is an entirely bizarre concept.

You can stagger out of a Blackheath pub, having become intoxicated on a bottle of Remy, lose your footing on Blackheath Hill, slide down into Deptford and get mugged for your mobile phone…..even a bounce friendly Nokia 5210.

They aren’t fussy…..its a point of principle.

The slightly humorous tone of Shelter’s findings hides a serious point:

“Shelter has drawn up the list to draw attention to what it believes is a decades-long failure by politicians to build enough homes.”

I thought I was amused too soon. Shelter going light hearted? It’s a bit like those articles on local BBC news where a vicar is trying to drum up parishioners by turning his sermons into stand-up comedy acts.

Leave it people and stick to campaigning please.

Here today …

I was tickled by Steve Hilditch’s description of current housing minister Brandon Lewis as:

“This year’s soon-to-be-forgotten Housing Minister”

Haha, just about sums it up. The lack of commitment government has to solving the housing crisis. I’m not sure I agreed with the rest of his article on ‘Red Brick’, basically because it’s 10pm and I’m too knackered to read it having given my all in the training arena today.

A new ASB Act

Private landlords might not be much interested but on the 20th Oct the new Anti-Social Behaviour Crime and Policing Act 2014 (Dontcha just love a snappy title?) comes into force.

Painsmith Blog provides a potted version of the new powers, which includes creating new grounds for eviction for social tenants participating in riots, as if far more are being predicted after the ones a couple of years back and the public gets more agitated by cuts and belt tightening.

Seasoned housing watchers with a penchant for housing law will see the potential for a whole raft of challenges and case law in the offing before the whole thing becomes usable.

Given the record of this government for fag packet laws I predict it will be as safe and bullet proof a deposit protection laws have proved to be, in short, no more sea-worthy than a Serpentine rowing boat navigating the Bay of Biscay in November.

The nice bit at the end

But before my anger grows and keeps me awake, in keeping with my promise to ditch ‘And finally’ and share a beautiful moment with my readers each week at the end of depressing reports of housing news try this – Raul Midon on David Letterman, unique guitar playing and a voice like Stevie Wonder