Landlords Union Slams BBC Panorama Report

I have exactly the same response from the BBC and am composing my follow-up complaint.

They say the program was tenant-focussed because there are more of them - I will point out that for every dispute there is the same number of tenants as LLs.

The BBC ".. felt it was important to include landlords’ views and explain that most British landlords only let out one or two properties.."

They only included one LL, and what has portfolio size got to do with it?

I could go on.......

Reply to the comment left by Gunga Din at 01/03/2018 - 11:40Good points, Gunga. Please do go on, as it will help us in our responses.

A lot of the arguments we hear 'against' landlords are very illogical and irrational and I believe the more we can use reasoned argument against nonsensical argument, the more we will show the latter up for what it is - and possibly shame people into not continuing to repeat it.

Interesting that the BBC: "..spoke to the landlords / letting agents of tenants featured in the programme, as well as neighbours, and looked at documentary evidence in order to establish the background to the cases we included. Where landlords told us the reason they were evicting their tenants, this was included in the programme."
I wonder what they said and why the particular landlords did not wish to comment. They may have feared bad publicity.

I suspect that the BBC did not try too hard to get the LL's views and did not interrogate the tenants about the real reasons for their eviction, especially the woman who had been offered a new tenancy at a higher rent but did not take it.

Reply to the comment left by Chris Daniel at 01/03/2018 - 10:03
I've tried them all to recoup my escalating GBP16 000.00 losses and the response is the same. Unless there are actual assets to attach with a Writ of Control the process is futile. I have uploaded this bad tenant onto the Landlord Referencing site and will also lodge a claim on Money Claims Online once I have finalised the full quantum of costs. These steps are in addition to the 6 year CCJ I already have against her.
However, if a tenant is aware that Council is obliged to house her after her evictions/s, notwithstanding, her accumulated litany of judgements and evictions, why should she care? And therein lies the nub of the problem. Professional tenants behave as they do because they can.
It should be mandatory that, if a Council advises a tenant to remain in situ without paying rent until Bailiffs arrive to force an eviction, they be held equally accountable as a co-defendant to settle the arrears. That regulation would be a simple solution to the unethical and highly injurious conditions landlords presently operate under.

"Good points, Gunga. Please do go on, as it will help us in our responses."
Delighted! Here's complaint no. 2 to the BBC.
Thank You for your form reply to my earlier complaint, which I feel has not "got through."
So the focus was on tenants because there are more of them. How is the relative populations of LLs vs tenants relevant? If BBC did a documentary about speeding tickets would they focus on drivers because they outnumber traffic police? For every dispute there is generally one LL vs. one tenant. In each of the 4 disputes only one side was shown.
If BBC felt it was important to include LL's views why did the report select three tenant's whose LLs' accounts and a LL whose tenant's version of events were mysteriously not shown? Surely cases could have been found where both parties could have appeared.
It would have been far more convincing had the program shown, or even referred to, the documentary evidence, accounts of LLs and neighbours you claim were sought.
I have read the account of the LL of the evicted beautician. If he was prepared to put his views in the public domain on http://www.property118.com then I am sure he would have done so on screen. It is surprising the LL tolerated her behaviour for so long.
Likewise I have read more explanation (on the same forum) from Ava the fosterer. This raises more questions than it answers and shows the situation to be far more complicated than the program inferred.
Neither back-story would have supported the apparent pro-tenant agenda. How could this program “..help our audiences to make up their own minds..” with one sided arguments? Without LL's input in the three tenants' cases, how can you claim a “..range of views..”? Please cite one example where the program met its “.. aim to question them appropriately..” as opposed to just taking the tenants' stories at face value.
I suggest a follow-up program showing three LLs with eviction dramas, with the difference that the affected tenants are allowed to speak. Hopefully no more sensationalist lay-public fodder, perpetuating the image with which the media has seen fit to tarnish LLs.

Reply to the comment left by Gunga Din at 01/03/2018 - 15:30
Brilliant response 🙂

Reply to the comment left by Gunga Din at 01/03/2018 - 15:30
Brilliant response. Others who have also received the same reply from the BBC can pick up on a few of your points as well as adding any other ones. We should all reply pointing out how their response is unsatisfactory.

Reply to the comment left by Gunga Din at 01/03/2018 - 15:30In other news today the UK appears to be heading for a rental crisis as BTL investing decreases and Social Housing demands increase at an alarming rate. 2 million homes to rent will be required in the next decade just based on the current trajectory of growth. But BTL landlords are in retreat after new taxes and a slew of legislation makes BTL less attractive. The UK is looking at a possible critical rental shortage. Instead of alienating us why does the UK government not shift their priorities into allowing the rental sector to thrive. By encouraging a "buy-in" relationship between government and private landlords housing stock would increase and rentals would stabilise.
Councils should also take heed. Advising bad tenants to stop paying rental and await a Bailiff eviction is going to result in escalated social housing demands as landlords continue baulking at housing benefits recipients.
The collective antagonising attitude towards BTL investors requires immediate attention. And the BBC programme presently under discussion is merely a symptom of that distasteful attitude.
Landlords are the solution. Not the problem.

I have my reply ready and will post it here for info. Nicked some of Ginga's ideas. I did just try and reply directly to the email but it bounced back. I think we have to go back onto the complaints page and do it from there:

Dear Complaints Team
Thank you for getting back to me, however I find your response to my complaint unsatisfactory. How can you defend disproportionately focusing on the tenants' versions of events because there are more tenants than landlords? If you did a documentary about a grooming gang of 20 criminals and found they had abused 8 children in total, would you focus only on the criminals because there were more of them? Nonsense. In fact, I was really surprised that such a defence could be dreamt up which was numerically-based. Indeed, for each 'complaint' by the tenants profiled there was one landlord. It would only be an unbiased programme if the accounts of each were presented and both were given equal credence.

As I published my complaint about the programme online, the landlord of the beautician, Julie, was able to put his side of the story. You will agree that this really should have been sought and covered as a counter-balance to the misleading version by Julie. It is here:

'I am the landlord in the "Beautician" Julie case. She always paid her rent, but bombarded us with a string of trivial complaints which usually meant she had a tradesman there every month. I took the opinion that new cookers, laminate flooring, and showers were improvements that were tax deductible, so I authorised the agents to do all the work. The string of complaints became more and more trivial, on one occasion she claimed to have been broken into and wanted a new front door lock - I personally went to look at the damage, she was out, but there had been no break in at all and no damage to any external door. The agent told me she had also complained about a neighbour exposing himself to her!

Her latest string of complaints were a cracked paving slab, the door bell stopped working (battery!), and "the tiles in the kitchen don't match"!!!

This was the last straw for me, and I asked the agent what we could do to get rid of her, I was told that despite a string of reminders, she had failed to sign a new 6 month tenancy agreement, so I took this opportunity to get the house back and sell it.

When she got the letter, we believe she deliberately flooded the bathroom until water came through the kitchen ceiling, she called the local Council and claimed this had been going on for 3 months, something she had never mentioned to us, BUT some 6 weeks previously we had installed a complete new shower cubicle even though there was no evidence of a leak at that time.

We didn't evict her, we didn't make her homeless, she refused to sign a new agreement. There was no story but she played a good "victim" on the film, but the facts were ignored by the BBC.
The outcome is that I am now selling my 2 houses and leaving the domestic property market altogether.'

Instead of the programme alluding to this there was a simple statement along the lines that the landlord evicted because he was sick of her trivial complaints. That made the landlord seem trivial himself, which according to his version, he certainly wasn't. A proper investigation would have thrown up this information. Instead, there is a cultural assumption promulgated by the media that tenants are always victims and landlords are perpetrators. This led to a massively disproportionate amount of time being spent on the tenants, despite what you say in your email about talking to landlords (a colleague quantified this and said it was 6 minutes on landlords/Landlord Action and the rest on tenants). How can you talk about impartiality in light of this clear evidence to the contrary?

The publication of my complaint also led to 'Ava' the 'foster carer' describing more of her version of events. As I said to her:

'Thank you Ava, for explaining more about what happened, from your viewpoint. Unfortunately, this only increases the extent to which we have your perspective on this, with the landlords' versions of events and perspectives completely missing. I have had many rogue tenants for example, who left owing me thousands of pounds and having left the houses a state, but if you asked them what had happened, they would make up something about me being terrible and say they 'always paid their rent on time.'

This is the key problem with the programme. We received no corroboration from the journalist, who should have examined tenancy agreements and bank statements to prove all rent had always been paid on time and that there were no arrears at the end. They should also have only profiled people where both parties were willing to give their versions. We heard nothing about what efforts were made to get the landlords' accounts.

Are you saying that when you remained at the property against your last landlord's wishes and against the s21 they issued, and waited to be physically evicted that you continued to pay all the rent on time? Did you also reimburse the landlord for the considerable court costs (and terrible stress) they faced because you wanted to be officially classified as homeless?

This is all about you, sorry - as it was about the way you wanted to use the house for your specific needs as a foster carer and expected the landlord to pay for some of the preconditions for this. You should have been upfront with the landlord at the beginning and explained you would be regularly accommodating persons unknown at their property and would also need an electrical certificate. You would also have needed to indemnify them so that if anything went wrong and for example damage was caused to their property that you would be willing and able to cover the costs. The landlord may also have had to check with their insurance that their house was covered for this eventuality. We need the landlords' versions as the whole thing is skewed.

In this case, Panorama presents only the tenants' viewpoints, believes everything they say, doesn't ask the important questions and for the evidence needed to back up their informants' accounts and then acts as judge and jury and condemns the landlords, unheard.'

Other landlords have made further important points and so I have put the link at the bottom of this email. I would like you to pass this to Richard Bilton and ask him to read it and get back to me. It really is not acceptable that taxpayers' money be used on what is effectively the promotion of an anti-landlord agenda by Shelter and Generation Rent, whose latest hobby horse is to try and make it impossible for landlords to get their properties back by pushing the ludicrous argument that landlords evict for no reason. The BBC was just their mouthpiece and this is not on.

Yours sinerely
Dr Rosalind Beck

Landlords Union Slams BBC Panorama Report - Property118

Landlords Union Slams BBC Panorama Report - Property118
This week landlords watched with trepidation as the BBC presented a so-called Panorama investigation into the us...

Do something . Lobby your MP or we , landlords will not be landlords. Shame on BBC for such a poor coverage.