My 90 year old mother has just been diagnosed with severe Dementia, due to this; she has had to move into a residential care home. After settling my mother into her new home we set about emptying her council/housing association house of all furniture, and then tried to hand back the keys. We had to meet someone from the landlord who was going to check the house was ok.  We had travelled a few 450 mile return journeys from our house to my mother’s house to recycle her old furniture.  A few runs to the tip and giving the furniture away locally the house was finally empty, or so we thought. The chap that came to check over the house said you will have to remove all the fitted carpets throughout the house. It is policy to let the property to the next tenant with no floor covering. He said if we did not remove the carpets the landlords would bill us £200 plus the cost of hiring a skip for taking away the carpets. I was astonished that in this time of austerity that these serviceable carpets had to be binned. Why is it not policy to offer the carpets free of charge to the next tenant, who would otherwise have to fork out hundreds of pounds for fitted carpets to cover the bare floors of their new home? What a criminal waste of resources. I am sure the new tenants would be glad of floor covering until they were in a financial position to choose their own. I am so annoyed by this wasteful policy; I have sent the following letter to the housing association.

 

 

Re handing back property 18 *********Close ****************.


Dear Sirs
My brother has just informed me that he recently had a meeting with one of your employees to hand back my mother’s house. He was informed that all the fitted carpets had to be removed by him; otherwise we would be given a bill of £200 for the removal and extra costs of hiring a skip to take them away.  Surely any costs should be requested from my mother Mrs **** *********  who is suffering from severe Dementia and due to this, is now residing in a care home, she has no savings and has an Income of £23 a week, which is the amount left from her pension when she pays her part of the care home weekly costs
I live in South Wales, my wife and I travelled up and had all the old furniture recycled, thinking we were leaving the house in an empty condition, we were unaware that floor coverings had to be removed, or that there were a few small items left in the garden shed.
I would like to point out in these times of austerity that your policy of ripping out serviceable floor coverings is extremely wasteful when the next tenant would probably be glad that they did not have to initially pay for new carpets. The new tenant should be given the chance to turn them down. Most people living in social housing are struggling financially without the costs of supplying floor coverings etc. I would like Eastlands to arrange the removal of the carpets and the few small items from the garden shed. We would like to offer on behalf of my mother, a payment for this service of £1 a week, to be collected weekly from her £23 a week income.

I will be sending a copy of this e/mail and covering e/mail to my mother’s local Councillor cllr.a.kamal@manchester.gov.uk and ask her to intervene on your wasteful policy of stripping out perfectly good fixtures and fittings in these hard fiscal times. In fact I should also put it to a Government Minister and the national media.