Letter from Thurrock Council regarding the ‘service charge’ loophole rent increase

I received an e-mail from Thurrock Council in response to my e-mail/article I sent regarding the ‘service charges’ being levied on council residents in lieu of an overt council rent increase in flagrant disregard of their own Westminster brethren’s pledge to reduce council rents by 1%.  Below is the full text of that e-mail:

Dear Mr Cook,

Thank you for your recent enquiry about the grounds maintenance service charge.

As you may be aware this charge has been temporarily suspended pending a further review so will not take effect on October 2nd. At the end of the review the Council will decide whether to apply the charge and if so how much it will be and who will be liable.

All tenants are being written to individually with this information.  

Please contact me if you require any more information at this stage

Kind regards,

Michael Everest l Complaints and Information Governance Assistant I HR, OD & Transformation

And here’s the full text of my reply:

Dear Mr Everest,

Actually I think you’ll find that my covered all the ‘service charges’ the council wishes to increase the rent by so you’re factually inaccurate in your e-mail in the very first line.

Regarding the rest of your missive – the ‘Grass Tax’ may be suspended for a while but does that include all of the charges or not?  The whole debate around the ‘service charges’ seems to be dominated by the ‘Grounds Maintenance Charge’ (AKA ‘Grass Tax’) but seems to conveniently ignore the rest of the charges that are being levied on certain council residents.  Are they going to be suspended or not?

Also, my original e-mail asked for a response from Mr Gledhill to the article that I had attached to that e-mail.  I have received no such response.  As the suspension of the ‘Grass Tax’ does not, it seems, cover the other ‘service charges’ – the ‘Access Tax’ (AKA ‘Lift Maintenance Charge’), the ‘Safety Tax’ (AKA ‘Communal Lighting Charge’) and the ‘Security Tax’ (AKA Secure Door Entry Charge’) – Mr Gledhill still has to make a public announcement regarding these ‘service charges’ and still owes me a personal response to my original e-mail.

I expect his response very soon.

Regards,

Myles Cook

I shall, as always, post any replies I get.