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Controls needed in house clearances
• COUNCILLORS Martin Davies and Chris Naylor provide no meaningful answer to the fears arising from uncontrolled house clearances (Strict guidelines on housing clearances, February 1).
They write that “there are clear and strict guidelines on how and when we step in to look after vulnerable or deceased people’s property”, yet admit that no inventory of goods or money is taken when properties are cleared. The guidelines may be “clear and strict” but without inventories they are an open invitation to fraud. The fact that no record of money found in properties is taken says it all.
The councillors claim that: “It does appear Mrs Robinson’s care workers took great trouble to ensure that anything of value was identified and removed and the possessions she wanted taken to her new home...” The “it does appear” is scarcely a statement of certainty; rather it is the kind of claim that politicians like to make when they wish to gloss over a difficulty, not exactly an untruth but far from the full truth.
They go on to claim that possessions left behind are “almost without exception..things like unwanted furniture, worn carpets and even old clothing that are of no salvageable value”. Clearly that was not the case with Mrs Robinson, whose neighbours testified to the fact that she had valuable furniture. Nor can it be true of many others, especially those who die suddenly and have no identifiable relatives.
As for the councillors’ claim that “to go through items individually would make this process prohibitively expensive”, this does not stand up to scrutiny because the number of properties vacated each year is not vast and an inventory could easily be made by one of the large number of housing managers Camden employ, for example, the Patch Managers – even with 1,200 vacancies a year each manager would not have that many to do. Moreover, if little is left beyond carpets, old clothing etc, as the councillors claim, there will be little to list.
Finally, their statement that “we rely on whoever is responsible for the property to have removed anything of value” is clearly absurd where someone without known relatives has died or is incapacitated to the point of being unable to attend to their own affairs. At the least, an inventory, should be made compulsory for those who vacate a tenancy by death or mental incapacity.
One wonders how much effort is actually made to contact relatives or other nominated people. Camden do not ask tenants to give a next of kin or other nominated person to contact in the case of their death or disability, so their chances of finding out about such a person after death on committal to a hospital or care home are limited if the dead person has been living alone or, in the case of someone still living, they are unable to tell anyone about their relatives because of mental or physical incapacity.
If the council cannot provide a reasonable explanation of where property and money has gone in the past and what controls they are putting in to stop possible abuse in the future, I think there is a good case for calling in the police to investigate possible fraud, a fraud which could be considerable.
If only £100 was made from each of the 1,200 cleared properties each year, that amounts to £120,000.
ROBERT HENDERSON
Chalton Street, NW1
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