We have waited TWO YEARS for Barking council to return a property we rented to them

Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday’s ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below. 

P.H. writes: I saw your article about Havering Council and the difficulties a reader had in getting back a property that was rented to the council. 

Barking and Dagenham Council are even worse. We are still waiting after two years to recover a property from them. 

The matter has now gone on for so long that we have had to pay for the agents Wentworth Housing Ltd to go to court for a possession order.

Tony Hetherington replies: Your partner signed an agreement in 2018 with Wentworth Properties in Ilford, allowing the agents to rent out her property in Basildon, Essex. 

The agreement allowed Wentworth to let the property to Barking and Dagenham Council for use as temporary housing. But when you contacted me, the same person had been living in the property for about five years.

At the end of 2021, your partner gave the required notice, saying she would like her house back. However, Wentworth reported the tenant was in arrears with rent to the council, and as a result the council was refusing to rehouse her. 

And when the council did eventually offer to rehouse the tenant, she rejected the new property, saying it was unsuitable.

The result was that your partner did not get her house back. Instead, she continued to receive rent of £950 a month, the figure negotiated in 2018. And the occupier stayed put. The council did offer to negotiate a new rent at current rates, if she would sign a fresh three-year contract.

Wentworth told me that although its agreement was that the house could only be regarded as temporary accommodation, this description is almost meaningless as no time frame was specified. 

The agents had passed on the request for the return of the house, but the council had replied this could only be done once it had found suitable new housing for the occupier.

By July this year, you and your partner had lost patience. Along with Wentworth, you won a court order for the return of the house. But when I questioned the council and the agents, it turned out this was a hollow victory. 

The tenant who had been installed by the council moved out – but she left behind her ex-partner and her own teenage son, and they were still living in the property.

Barking and Dagenham Council shrugged off some of my questions, refusing to comment on what it saw as an agreement between your partner and Wentworth. It did accept it had been asked to return the house in 2021, and it told me ‘steps were made to work with all relevant parties to offer up vacant possession’.

As for the rent, a council official agreed it was below market rates, but added that an incentive for property owners is that the council guarantees payment, whereas a private tenant might default. 

You first contacted me in August, but today I can finally report that you and your partner have regained the property. It is still not a happy situation though. The house is damaged. The council has agreed to pay for the repairs, on top of £3,000 they already forked out for repairs last March. They have said they will even pay rent while the repairs are carried out.

And there may be more problems. You have found debts have been run up by the occupants, and there are signs the address has been used to register cars and vans. This may mean you will be plagued by parking penalties and bills for driving in London.

Like my report in July about Havering Council in Essex and its failure to return a rented property, your experience illustrates that renting to a local authority may not be as safe as it seems. Being paid a lower than normal rent is bad enough, but having to take legal action to recover your own property makes the whole idea unacceptably risky.

Help! My £20,500 Isa has vanished

Mrs K.H. writes: Can you help me find out what has happened to my £20,483 which was in a National Savings & Investments (NS&I) Direct Isa?

I asked for this to be transferred to a Lloyds Bank one-year fixed rate Isa. NS&I say it transferred the money, but Lloyds staff say they have not received it. 

Both parties blame the other, and I have hit a brick wall. I am elderly and at my wits’ end.

Tony Hetherington replies: I am not surprised you are worried about the disappearance of such a large slice of your savings. 

You sent me a copy of NS&I’s closing statement, confirming your Isa cash had been transferred to Lloyds Bank, so I asked both of them to find out exactly where your money had ended up in the banking system. 

Lloyds immediately accepted that it had taken an unacceptably long time to track down your funds, and the bank rang you to apologise for this.

NS&I was hard on the bank’s heels, telling me just a day later that it had found your £20,483. It was still with NS&I. Officials told me they had sent the payment to Lloyds at the address shown on the bank’s transfer request, but it had been returned. NS&I tried again, using a different address for the bank, but with the same result – the money bounced back. 

Staff at Lloyds have told me that they have double-checked the addresses and cannot find any problem, but after I contacted them they asked NS&I to try again and this time it worked. 

The bank said: ‘We are extremely sorry that Mrs H’s Isa transfer took longer than it should have, and we have been working hard to put that right.’ 

Your new Isa is now open, with interest backdated to ensure you have lost nothing, and Lloyds has also sent you £150 to make up for the worry you experienced.

If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY or email [email protected]. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.