A meeting was held in London on Wednesday with lawyers to discuss how the Campaign against Residential Leasehold Exploitation should proceed with the Peverel / Cirrus price-fixing scandal.
Also, the Office of Fair Trading is under scrutiny at the highest level for cutting a leniency deal with Peverel, ostensibly because Peverel turned itself in in December 2009 by admitting the false tendering process that won Cirrus thousands of pounds of contracts for electronic door-entry and warden-call services.
Campaign against Residential Leasehold Exploitation can demonstrate that it had been in contact with the OFT, the Serious Fraud Office and Trading Standards months before December 2009 over a number of abuses.
Energy Secretary Ed Davey states that he raised issues with the OFT before December 2009 and the Times newspaper reported in detail the Cirrus tendering scams on December 4 2009.
At some point between December 4 and December 22, Peverel admitted the price-fixing involving Cirrus. The full Campaign against Residential Leasehold Exploitation dossier on the practice was sent to the OFT in January 2010.
A month before turning itself in, the then Peverel chief executive Nigel Bannister was quoted in the Times:
“People are reading a conspiracy into a problem that isn’t there. We use Cirrus because it is an excellent service.”
Campaign against Residential Leasehold Exploitation has requested that the prime minister call a meeting between the Department of Communities and Local Government and the Ministry of Justice for the OFT to explain itself.
The move is backed by Sir Peter Bottomley.
A meeting with Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation, Sir Peter, Ed Davey and other politicians is set for Tuesday next week.
From the OFT’s point of view, it is far more tidy and less labour intensive to go along with the fiction that Peverel admitted the price-fixing scandal and investigate on that basis.
The Campaign against Residential Leasehold Exploitation whistleblowers, who for three years have kept the investigation confidential, feel utterly betrayed by the OFT’s accommodation with Peverel, and the leniency deal.
As with exit fees, which it regards as an unfair contract term, the OFT has shown itself to be feeble and dilatory in handling scandals in the retirement leasehold sector.
Politicians want an explanation why the investigation has taken so long given that Peverel was co-operating with inquiries.
The key question at Campaign against Residential Leasehold Exploitation’s meeting with lawyers – at which two of the three original Campaign against Residential Leasehold Exploitation whistle-blowers were present – is: how to get Peverel / Cirrus to pay back the money it wrongfully took from pensioners.
Peverel / Cirrus ran the bogus tendering process – where stooge companies put in higher tenders than Cirrus, making its proposal the most attractive on price – at sites where the contingency funds were sufficiently large to pay for the work.
The Campaign against Residential Leasehold Exploitation will therefore have to litigate to get the money paid back.
To do so it is vitally important that residents at sites where Cirrus carried out these works between 2005-2009 make themselves known.
The case can then be taken to the Competition Appeal Tribunal for a ruling.
Campaign against Residential Leasehold Exploitation has secured the pro bono backing of a major firm of London solicitors, and is confident that in this case it will have no difficulty securing the services of barristers as well.
The full OFT report is expected in September / October.
Related posts:
Private Eye reports Peverel price-fixing scandal
Ripped-off pensioners, betrayed Campaign against Residential Leasehold Exploitation whistleblowers, four-year tokenistic OFT inquiry, cost: £500,000, craven trade bodies, Cirrus unpunished, stooges go into ‘liquidation’ … one minnow fined £1,777
The Oldie reports Peverel / Cirrus price-fixing scandal
Fury as OFT may give Peverel immunity over Cirrus price-fixing scandal
OFT will report on the Peverel / Cirrus price-fixing scandal on Friday
After furore at Mere Court another retirement leasehold site rebels in Knutsford
I still think that they are better to organise several countrywide Tribunal claims under S19 and or s20 and having them consolidated.
Do you want to elaborate on this?
What I had in mind, on the back of an envelope, is that the procurement procedure was I suspect a standard national one ( E & W) and unlikely to have varied block to block or region to region. Given the history of the acquisition of the assets, the leases are going to very similar and in many cases identical.
If there is a case to show that the procurement and cost could be challenged that would make it simpler to provide mutual support and a common approach to various blocks to make applications, or to coordinate simultaneous action, even in lay terms a “class action” .where applications are made to the various tribunals at the same time, likely leading to them being heard together. I’d have to check the regs( along with a lot of other things) to see if that could be done nationally.
Where legal costs can be recovered, subject to S20C, those costs might then therefore be lower and shared between the claimants. Using Daejan their own costs might also be included in the settlement.
I am sceptical of the amount of any refund from the present approach being anywhere near the actual “loss”, some may think theft, suffered by leaseholders. The threat of a coordinated action might indeed lead to an offer being made in the same way as insurance commissions were refunded.
Just a thought 🙂