Rent your home? Read on and WORRY!

[Azzami Bell]

PFI = PROFIT FOR INCOMPETENCE
Gordon Brown's Latest Blunder
(COMPANY OWNED BY HBOS BANK WRECKS HOUSING CAMPAIGNER'S HOME)

London, Islington 2008: Imagine you rent your home and your landlord writes to you for permission to allow a firm of PFI Builders (which are co-owned by United House Ltd and the Bank of Scotland) to do Decent Home Improvement Works under a scheme that receives multi-million pound subsidies under the Labour Government's Private Finance Initiative (PFI) funding scheme.

The Builders come and look, they do a fly-by survey and then start even though there is no schedule of works. Once in your home they endanger your family by hazardous working practices. You complain and suddenly they claim they need the home all to themselves demanding that you move out for a short while. Packing up takes weeks, lots of stress. After you moved the home is left empty, no works happen for months. You join street protests with other tenants and leaseholders who are also unhappy about Islington PFI builders.

When huge bills gas and electric bills arrive PFI mangers announce that you are not allowed to read your meters for "safety" reasons and that you're banned from entering your own home even though you pay rent. Months pass. Eventually the PFI Ltd write stating that "all works are done" but they still don't let you see the improved home. Eventually you see your home, and you are in a state of shock seeing the shocking conditions. Filth and damage is visible everywhere. You are not allowed to turn and test water tabs. After you ask to see the Building Control Completion and Gas Certificates they threaten that unless you move back immediately you will be taken to court and made homeless. You move back under protest and soon have accidents that require medical treatment.

In the 1960s, infamous landlord Rachman hired rogues to strip off the roofs of homes in order to force sitting tenants out of their homes and make more profit. In 2008 you look at your damaged home and wonder why Gordon Brown's Government would want to subsidise the PFI ISLINGTON CONSORTIUM to the tune of £156 million of tax payers' money when it is plain to see that the PFI builders have no skill, no regard to building laws or housing health & safety or vulnerable people. Take a look at the Conditions in one of the homes where the PFI Islington Ltd has "completed" the publicly funded DECENT HOME improvement works [link-click here].

Filth everywhere. Carpets stripped out and wooden flooring ruined. Shelving ransacked.and fixing holes crudely filled. Filth and dangerous nails everywhere, electric sockets vandalised where computer and IT had their home for for 12 years. Elsewhere your modern IT network cabling is cut. Children's bedroom carpet covered in builder's mess and vinyl flooring ripped out, dumped and replaced with some cheap board which has hundred of nails sticking out. Unskilled painters have defaced the kitchen walls with some sort of paint that washes away when attempts are made to clean away filth. All your fittings, dimmers, ceiling lights, fire alarms and even low energy light bulbs dumped in water filled box wrapped in bubble warp in the cellar. A continuously malfunctioning new fire alarm terrorises when making toast or cooking. WC leaks shit onto flooring. Toilet hand wash basin stripped out. Gas Boiler inspection finds that the central heating boiler no longer complies with current standards and in the shower the non-waterproof paint runs down your face.

And boiling hot water comes out of the the garden tap...the children's shelves have been ripped down. 20 per cent of the home's electric sockets have been removed as part of a modernisation scheme which claims to make homes fit for the first digital millennium. After these "IMPROVEMENTS" there now are hazardous extension cables to trip over in every room.. The living room ceiling has huge brown wet patch from moths of flooding by the dodgy plumbers. And the beautiful hand-made wooden kitchen has been ripped out. The "replacement" is cheap Melamine and the design requires you to a B+Q ladder to get cups from the wall cub boards. Kitchen storage space has been decimated by nearly 30 per cent and the work top space has been cut down by half. Rachman's heirs, the PFI CONSORTIUM, don't take off roofs when wanting to make more profit, instead they now chop away floor joists, covering their evil deeds with hardboard, in the knowledge that if you threaten their profits you can legally be put out of your home for safety reasons.

The home's bathroom no longer has shower curtain,.mirror, shower rail and you need a ladder to step into the bath. The shower leaks to ceiling below. The walls in the house have been defaced. There's graffiti. Elsewhere are nails sticking out. Accidents have required medical attention. Islington Council has been shown the defects but paid the PFI because there is a completion certificate by the firm of Farrel Faithorn and Timms who are paid by the PFI.

ISLINGTON PFI DECENT HOME IMPROVEMENT WORKS, run by PARTNERS FOR IMPROVEMENT IN ISLINGTON Ltd, is a firm that with just £1,000 of share capital managed three years ago to clinch a £ 300 Million plus contract from the LibDems Council to improve Islington's stock of street property Council owned homes. The Bank of Scotland gets 14.5% credit card interest payments for funding these "improvement works"

Public Health Consultants who inspected the HBOS improvements to our home have produced a 72 page report which concludes that works show no sign of building works" done by qualified, trained or registered" workmen. A 200 year old building of special architectural and historic interest has been are treated as if building and conservation laws do not apply to PFI Building works.

The PFI Head of Quality, Mr Butler, could not confirm that the PFI operate a damages policy.

Welcome to the world of privatised social Housing in the UK, where PFI housing schemes operate for the sole benefit of investment banks and shoddy builders rather than to meet needs of ordinary families. PFI stands for incompetence, hazardous health and safety, shoddy works, harassment, intimidation and disrespect. The Blair Government's DECENT HOME Standard is a vehicle for banks to make money because Government decreed that H&S will not be enforced in Council owned homes.

If you are a leaseholder or tenant you better BEWARE when dealing with Public Finance Initiatives since Government's civil servants say that they "do not monitor or police" how their £ multi-billion pound tax payer subsidies get spend on the ground.. Read more ...
http://www.pfi-islington.co.uk/index.html

An' if you think thats bad, PFI is the reason for the filth in hospitals causing C-diff & MRSA! -But 'they' do make big profits for the 'investors'!

[Jill]

As far as the housing stuff is concerned I read they only had one bidder allowed schemes for some of these contracts which have now been abandoned. I don't understand how they could get away with it as far as health and safety and building standards is concerned. I thought all building work had to be signed off by a buildings inspector before the builders can say they have finished the work. Seems like a lot of regulations are being broken to accomodate these dodgy builders and business men.

[Azzami Bell]

'Best Deal'

This is where the beadcounters have a field-day.
They contrive a set of weighted figures ostensibly showing the private sector to be more 'cost effective' than state investment.
Just as its the same useless firms, Jarvis etc continually given the building contracts, so the same bunch of beedcounters, EDS, PriceWaterhouseCooper (-No mistake, it really is their name. -Catchy ain't it!?!) do the sums.
Strangely, its only the same 'elite' bunch of 'investors' that catch government's eye.
(They said Branson couldn't bail NorthernRock out cos "...profits would go to private investors".
Yet barclays an' the rest are doing exactly that with hospitals and schools -where there is NO FEKKIN' PROFIT!)

[Azzami Bell]

PFI = Profit For Incompetence

The private finance initiative (PFI) provides a way of funding major capital investments, without immediate recourse to the public purse. -Kept off the books!

* It makes Gordon’s figures look good.*

Private consortia, usually involving large construction firms, banks, etc are contracted to design, build, and in some cases manage new projects. Contracts typically last for 30 years.

During this time the building, owned by the ‘investors’, is leased by a public authority.

'Consultants' are hired at exorbitant rates, to 'negociate' for 'best deal'* -which invariably includes themselves as 'investors'.

Ministers & other stooges accept the bum-deal.

We pay these thieves for 30 or more years.

In thirty years we will still need the facility, so...

Yet another 'buffet car' in the gravy-train of 'government'!

[Jill]

Yes I think this is a terrible scandal. In this day and age to have Rachman style business, paid for by the government, intimidating and deliberately driving people from their homes.
It is criminal.