Forum Topic

Hounslow on the box

Channel 4 'How to get a council house' "following the work of council housing officers in LBH". Tuesday 10 May.

Vanessa Smith ● 3378d39 Comments

Marina I thought housing woman looked pretty chuffed with herself and thought she did quite well. This speaks volumes of the culture if the department.Got it in one Marina

Bernard Allen ● 3366d

The property they are in is in Slough. It is a temp accommodation.

Simon Anderson ● 3366d

"Disregarding that young couples story for the moment, It shows this programme is staged managed by the way the young man spoke though out the interview, he raised his voice, he told the interviewer what he thought of the council, and he also swore at one point."If the program was stage managed, this is even more disturbing. How dare they offer to send a young vulnerable single mum to a place hundred miles away (she's never been to), wasn't allowed to view the flat, and was given a few minutes to make a decision, whilst being threatened to be thrown off housing list of she refuses. This is plain bullying.I thought housing woman looked pretty chuffed with herself and thought she did quite well. This speaks volumes of the culture if the department.

Marina Thomas ● 3366d

Hi Bernard..Not sure i will try and find out.

Simon Anderson ● 3366d

I can't understand why when the family have been sent to Slough neither Slough nor Hounslow housing are dealing with the problem.

Philippa Bond ● 3366d

Thirty+ years ago a group of friends and I (which included some social workers) formed a group to try and do something about the way in which children became homeless or were thrown out of care however you want to phrase it when they reached a certain age. They did not have the experience to care for themselves.  This included teenagers who had gained a place at university (there were grants in those days) but would have nowhere to go in the holidays.These teenagers made mistakes with food management which they probably wouldn't have done had they had the experience of living in a smaller "family". Eventually some flats with support were set up.  I remember painting one before my life changed and I moved on.  We were horrified to find out recently that so much time has gone past and there still does not appear to be support at this crucial time.Isn't there a new Bill proposed to help here? 

Philippa Bond ● 3366d

Hello SimonI don't quite understand where the damp problem is after your reply.Was the damp problem shown in the programme in a Hounslow property? As the family has been moved to Slough is the  young mum still trying to get the property they were move from back to a habitual condition for them to move back in.Or is there another problem in the slough temporary property?

Bernard Allen ● 3366d

I spoke to the young mum, she said since the show her son has been in and out of hospital with breathing issues. The council has put them in Temporary accommodation in Slough. When she went to Slough council about these issues, they said they could not help her as it was done threw Hounslow. When she has contacted Hounslow they said its to far for someone to come to visit the flat. She has had no luck with the MP or Councillors either. She says she has shown them hospital and doctor letters and they wont help.

Simon Anderson ● 3366d

Disregarding that young couples story for the moment, It shows this programme is staged managed by the way the young man spoke though out the interview, he raised his voice, he told the interviewer what he thought of the council, and he also swore at one point.Any of one of these incidents, let alone all three was enough to terminate the interview and be escorted from the civic centre by the security personnel.The fact that the young man was allowed to continue shows that for the programme he was allowed to continue to either make himself look even more stupid and sway the general public on the side of the council employee.Going back to the damp problem, the two inspectors from the council were far from helpful in explaining the reason behind the dampness in the property. Considering the child's medical condition, they have in the past installed a mobile dehumidifier to try to dry the property out, while educating the tenant in how to keep the place free from mould. I can under stand the way they are thinking, because of their child's medical condition they probably think its best to keep the windows shut all the time and turn the heat up, but by opening the windows and turning the heat down a bit would probably ease the child's breathing.In my own opinion, when the young lad described the way he was brought up, he hasn't been prepared  for the  pitfalls of living on his own.Its about education and communication, if someone had taken the time to explain why his property had got as bad as it did, explained what he had to do to clean it up give him a kick start by installing a temporary dehumidifier, hopefully his property will be habitable again.But isn't another agency failing in their duty of care of their child?

Bernard Allen ● 3366d

There is an article  the front page now about Hounslow consulting on the allocation of Housing.

Philippa Bond ● 3367d

Well we all know about our breath condensing on a window but I'd expect that you and I got used to rushing to light a gas fire and then either get back into bed or standing in front of it until the room had warmed up. I've seen people who couldn't afford to run their heating high enough or for long enough and finding it difficult to manage the moisture to avoid a lot of condensation. Trickle vents now make it easier. There are few launderettes around nowadays.If it wasn't a problem surely there wouldn't be so many damp consultants.

Philippa Bond ● 3369d

You can make excuses for stupidity as much as you like. If they don't know what causes condensation then they can have a google of it.

Keith Iddon ● 3369d

I think that a lot of these people could do with advocates to go with them.  If there was more of a community in some places - eg a Residents Association then they would be more able to deal with any problems that occur with their housing.I don't think that many teenagers would know about the cause of condensation and the problems caused in buildings by it or would be able to cope with a not very helpful and supportive interviewer when under the stress of looking after a sick baby.  There are fewer places to go to to ask for help and support from now.  Age and experience take time to achieve!

Philippa Bond ● 3369d

I agree that the woman who delivered the news that the property on offer was in Birmingham displayed little empathy and could have announced the offer better, by mentioning at the very start that the property on offer was in Birmingham rather than mentioning it last.At the same time one imagines that all prospective candidates are given some kind of pack at the beginning of the process which explains to them the process, including the potential of being offered housing outside of the borough.  And cold as it may appear, presumably as with most Council services these days there's a limited window for a meeting and an associated decision, with someone else in the queue for the property if she turned it down.On balance though I think the employee could have dealt with it better, particularly as speaking outside of the meeting she clearly did have empathy.As Vanessa says communication is key, as I'd often say to colleagues it's no good wandering into a scrapyard and acting like Mr. Bureaucrat quoting regulation no. 55/034,  and equally you don't knock on the door of a country mansion and say "alright mate".

Adam Beamish ● 3369d

Agree entirely about the communication skills - I had someone round from Hounslow Highways last week, and apart from my difficulty understanding him - he wasn't very precise - banging on about 'it's the council's policy'. It does annoy me, because so much depends on good, understandable communication, all he managed to do was make me think - we'll see mate!

Vanessa Smith ● 3369d

Yes indeed Adam. I have a degree of sympathy for people in their situation but what I do not have is a bottomless pit of it. Help people by all means but insist that there comes a time when they have to help themselves. The old saying 'When you are standing  in a hole you should stop digging' quite often comes to mind with people who present as dependent and can't see how feckless (for want of a better word) they appear  to people who get out of bed every morning and earn a living.

Keith Iddon ● 3369d

Cripes! I find myself agreeing with Adam almost entirely.Reading the Missive in the Chiswick Herald, no doubt scrawled in Crayon by the Leader and obviously rewritten by LBH Press/Censorship office, praising the staff. I can almost agree with him. These people have an impossible job dealing with in all to many cases, impossible people.A very hard job in difficult situations. And in the main, the staff are shown in a good light.But.What could be seen in the camera shots were 'overseers', probably managers, council lawyers or Press officers monitoring and no doubt controlling what the filmmakers were trying to do.  It has not really worked because several of the staff clearly have limited communications skills themselves and not a very good manner in dealing with difficult people in a cauldron of situations.Clear and satisfactory explanations were absent ( from the film) and clearly some people were regarded as not worth an explanation.  Sending someone born and bred in Hounslow to Birmingham was handled very badly.But above all it shows how our education system and social system is still failing.Morality, self esteem and a whole load of things that should be learned from a young age seem to be completely missing from so many, who end up in a right mess as such a young age from their own actions.Why is this still happening?  We have a state education system, social services, volunteer groups, churches,  but we keep getting this band of people who fall through the net.The display of poor basic communications skills was only a little better from those with a job, to those with dire abilities, no doubt eroded further  by stress and the limited ability to comprehend and rationalise. But the director of the Dept said it all. Dimishing stock and no new affordable or social housing.So many of these people are the result of inadequate, poorly designed and overcrowded housing. Crammed in to areas with poor facilities.Exactly what we are building modern versions of now. Just dressed up more.Maybe he ought to have a chat with Brendan Walsh and the Council Leader on why they are still hawking the Borough to property developers for far from affordable homes with no strings.It's little wonder Brentford is now famous for the parody of stereotypes in the Mockumentary People doing Nothing.Everyone deserves a chance, it's the ones who abuse and fiddle who need to be really tackled.

Raymond Havelock ● 3369d

Probably better if we stopped watching these programmes, my 'soft' missus always tries to make excuses for the individuals whereas I, whilst criticising the failings of the system, feel that many individuals brings things upon themselves due to a lack of responsibility, like the teenage family who featured last night."We're both 19, unemployed and entirely reliant on the state, let's have a baby and then sit on our backsides as the accommodation we're in becomes over-run with mould because we never open the windows or bother to clean the place.  And then we'll go down the Council and tell them how ill our baby is and how it's the Council's fault if he dies."Yes the guy had clearly been through an awful childhood of care etc., but seemed to have no ambition/drive/personal responsibility to improve the situation for him and his family other than demanding the Council get them a different place to live.

Adam Beamish ● 3369d

Last night Channel 4 How to Get a Council House Series 4 Episode 2  Hounslow and temporary accommodation

Philippa Bond ● 3369d

Yes Anne I find it incredibly hard, I want to scream at them get your a**e out to work, having a child doesn't mean your entitled to sit on your backside and do nothing and just sponge. And before anyone says I am tarring people with the same brush, I am not, I am tarring those who have never worked a day in their life and still believe they are entitled to benefits!! I claimed benefits for 3 months when I lost my job and it was the worst 3 months of my life, having to degrade myself and go to the job centre and be interrogated by people who think they are better than me! My friend is in a 4 bed house with two children being paid for by my hard earned taxes! Yes I'm bloody angry!

Kathy Riley ● 3375d

Despite the repeated and, it seems, co-ordinated efforts of various Tory councillors on these forums to deflect the blame from Curran onto other Cabinet members, it is the Council Leader who is ultimately responsible for the image and the conduct of the organisation he leads.  Can anybody seriously imagine Hounslow under any previous leader having the arrogance to raise two fingers to the Appeals Service in this way, after having been adjudged to have been in the wrong?  I would not have used the language employed by the poster to whom Adam refers. However we need to bear in mind that we are dealing today with a uniquely unpleasant administration led, it would appear, by a uniquely unpleasant man.  The time for the conventions of etiquette ended with the disgraceful abuse of power which resulted in the arrest of a decent and harmless man in his mid-sixties for daring to raise his voice in protest.  When I think of this I find it difficult to defend Curran whatever is thrown at him.

Phil Andrews ● 3376d

"Take yesterday's CW4 thread as a perfect example, Joe Public makes an unfortunate mistake which means he gets a parking ticket.  Annoying and frustrating but one of these things which we've all done.  But no, seemingly sufficient justification to call both the Council and an individual who has nothing directly to do with the matter "scum" and a "cretin"."Granted that post was a bit O.T.T. but it has to be said Adam, the council were incredibly intractable and that matter could and quite likely, should, have been sorted out with some common sense. The man did not set out to defraud - he made a mistake - don't we all at times? So the council took a very harsh view, and this is only made worse by the fact that outsourced services are un-contactable which just winds people up even more. Add to that the poor man who also fell foul of parking by putting in the wrong reg.no., he appealed and won, but still Hounslow acted like some playground bully and refused to back off. Unfortunately after faffing around with some of these 'services' for sometime you do start to lose the plot a bit, sometimes being able to actually talk to a human being helps, something denied to most of us now. That's not an excuse for anyone doing their nut, but the council a lot of the time, simply do not help themselves.

Vanessa Smith ● 3376d

Adam, I have never resorted to a personal level regarding a poster on this board. I was around when Neighborhood Net Chiswick w4 started in 2000, and I have noticed the older I get I find the bigger the  divide there is in the generations that post on hear.Back to the program, I would love to deal with those council officers who appeared in the program, they were listening to what the people in front of them were saying, spelt out in a reasonable way what they had to do to help themselves and also went the extra mile to keep someone in there property.But You do not get to see those officers who are at the top of the tree so to speak. In the time I have been to the Civic Centre to help someone out, you can no longer get away with foul language, or threaten the staff, while I was there, a Lady further along from me wasn't rude wasn't swearing or being racists, all she did was raise her voice so she could be heard above everyone else, the next thing, she was being escorted from the building by a security guard .Not That I would, But it's very hard to abuse the front-line staff  who you normally see

Bernard Allen ● 3376d

That may well be true but it doesn't take away from what I am saying. The two cases I have given remain comfortably in place and I'm sure that the arrangement suits a good many private landlords.I agree we need more Council housing built and never did agree with the sale of Council houses and certainly don't think this should be extended to Housing Association property.

Anne England ● 3376d

Ann, More and More private landlords are not renting to people on Benefits. The changes in the way that benefits are paid, means that the tenant gets all their benefit paid into there bank instead of the rent being paid directly to the landlord. Not all but as in life its a few who spoil it for the many are not paying there rent to the landlord so they are being turfed out into the street for the council to pick the problem up. Now you have a shortage of private rented property

Bernard Allen ● 3376d

Whilst I may be 'on the other side' I still deal with Council staff on a daily basis so I remain very close to the front line.  And whilst my experience is a mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly, I have great sympathy for many front line Council workers who face a public which are frequently abusive, over-demanding and rude.In the same way that I don't disagree that the programme might be have somewhat stage-managed in terms of the front-line staff who were filmed, equally based on my own experience I felt the members of the public the programme focused on were by far the nicer/more reasonable element of Joe Public than the rude/abusive element (which isn't as much of a minority as one might expect).Take yesterday's CW4 thread as a perfect example, Joe Public makes an unfortunate mistake which means he gets a parking ticket.  Annoying and frustrating but one of these things which we've all done.  But no, seemingly sufficient justification to call both the Council and an individual who has nothing directly to do with the matter "scum" and a "cretin".

Adam Beamish ● 3376d

Do you find it difficult to be 'friends' with these people? I find it very difficult - while of course at the same time recognising that there are those in dire circumstances. I find it more than annoying (for example) that an ex-colleague's daughter has had her near £1000.00 rent per month (two bedroom, ground floor with garden, privately rented) paid along with Council Tax and living expenses for nine years now - why? - because she chose to have two children by different fathers and five years apart no doubt so that any thought of going into training/working was put on hold yet again. Her contribution to the pot before this had been three months working as a part-time shop assistant. I also have a friend who rents out a number of properties and one property has been rented for years to a person who similarly gets everything paid (not Hounslow in this case). This surely can't be what the benefits system was intended for. At the same time I have a student who has three children but who works and lives in a one bedroom Council property in Hounslow who is looking to be moved to a bigger property.

Anne England ● 3376d

Sadly its how they've been raised, I have friends that have not worked a day in their lives, just reproduced children like they're going out of fashion, and then stay on benefits claiming that they cant work because they MUST look after their children!! I went back to work when each of my children were 6 weeks old as we needed my income! It disgusts me that people think this is an acceptable means of living... Oh and don't start me on the 'I don't get paid til next Tuesday' Erm its not pay, its benefits you haven't earned it ggrrrrr

Kathy Riley ● 3376d

Haven't yet watched this - as recorded it to watch instead of Eurovision! However, what we need is a national public house building programme and also for councils to be able to requisition empty properties, of which there are quite a few in Hounslow, without it costing them money they don't have. The new London Mayor could do worse than co-opt Bob (Lord) Kerslake as his housing supremo, he has been incredibly active in the Lords over the government's housing Bill and has spoken out many times about the need for public housing. I would think working in council housing is very dispiriting these days when so many people are in desperate circumstances.

Vanessa Smith ● 3376d

Adam I would love to tell you more but I cannot.Lets say you have been away from the front line to long, As far as I was concerned the program was stage managed with the top brass dealing with cases that the normal front line staff deal with, normally the staff shown in the documentary are consulted by the front line staff if they cannot get rid of the person who has come in off the street.Being homeless is a terrible experience, and it can happen to anyone at any time, you try all types of Charities and organisations  who point you to the local council, but when you get there you find the Civic centre the most un-hospitable  place you can walk into.

Bernard Allen ● 3376d

Works both ways - the employees deal with an awful lot of difficult/rude customers.  Been there, seen it, taken the abuse, been beaten up, got the t-shirt...Indeed I thought the programme was not remotely sensationalist, nothing like Jeremy Kyle (not that I've ever watched an entire episode, snippets are more then enough) because even Jack the Lad wasn't rude or offensive, didn't go into a tirade about "foreigners coming over here and taking our jobs, homes and women" (as people often do).The only thing that left a sense of incompleteness was the uncertainty as to the claimed circumstances of the the lady with the daughter whose husband had supposedly walked out, given notice on the property etc.,  It was indirectly implied that the story may have been a fabrication.  Very odd that the landlord was happy to imply so on camera but wasn't willing to speak to the Council.  Although given my background I wondered about the planning circumstances of the outbuilding the lady was living in, so I wouldn't exactly place much faith in anything the landlord said either.

Adam Beamish ● 3376d

I cannot say to much because of the Hounslow spy on this board.This program was not representative of a visit to the civic centre and the average  homeless person does not get to see the employees shown in the documentary. There are other front line staff who deal with you who are not as pleasant as the employees featured 

Bernard Allen ● 3376d

Phil, unfortunately there are too many examples of this. And they somewhat undermine the current concept of benefits.

Alex Shpinkov ● 3376d

The problem is Adam that for every example like this that the media likes to hold up as being typical, there are a number of decent families in genuine need. But as long as we allow ourselves to be persuaded that people seeking social housing are all feckless parasites governments of either persuasion are able to side-step their responsibilities without too much fear of a backlash. I didn't see this programme personally but it sounds like something akin to Jeremy Kyle?

Phil Andrews ● 3376d

The 'problem', as he saw it, was that he wanted a nice 3 bed place for him and his offspring, seemed to want to do nowt else apart from look after his kids (and probably create some more, after all, the kids he had already entitled him to something like £275 a week housing benefit) and the Council wouldn't give him a place, which he felt he was entitled to.The problem as I saw it was a worthless jack the lad layabout who thought the state should give him and his kids everything.  As always the poor kids end up as the real victims of his irresponsible attitude/behaviour, although it's about time the state stopped encouraging it through child benefit etc.

Adam Beamish ● 3377d

Yes, I can't see the problem, he has somewhere to live and that's it.What is the problem?

William Prentice ● 3377d

Cheered at the end when the 21 year old bloke who couldn't stop reproducing was still living at his Mum's and was getting nowhere with LBH.I'll never understand it, why people have this mentality that they can breed to their heart's content and expect the state to pay for everything.

Adam Beamish ● 3377d

Haha.Watching it now. Intrigued by the epilepsy.......

William Prentice ● 3377d

Wonder if they'll be interviewing Isleworth's UKIP candidate?

Phil Andrews ● 3378d