The Observer: "Mother searches for answers a year after her daughter set herself alight in council housing office"

I flag this up now with thanks to Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty, as urgent after having missed it yesterday while I was offline.

The Observer

Public sector cuts

Emma Graham-Harrison and Maeve Shearlaw

Sun 8 Sep 2019 09.00 BST Last modified on Mon 9 Sep 2019 15.13 BST

Mother searches for answers a year after her daughter set herself alight in council housing office

"This didn't need to happen — that's the thing that hurts," said Melanie's mother.
Photo: Karen Robinson/The Observer

Grieving mother still has questions over daughter's death which followed months of anxiety over eviction threat

It is a year since Melanie Smith* walked into the housing offices of Barnet council and set herself on fire.
Yet her mother, Marie Bennett,** fears vital lessons that could protect others have not been learned. “This didn’t need to happen – that’s the thing that hurts,” Bennett said. “I don’t think anyone has taken on board that they could maybe prevent other deaths.”
Bennett is also still waiting for answers to her questions, including about Smith’s final conversation with council housing officers, after having experienced months of anxiety about being evicted from her home of two decades. “No one has told me who spoke to her that day, or what was said,” she explained....
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/08/unlearned-lessons-death-of-woman-housing-mental-health-crisis

Whoever Melanie Smith spoke to in the housing office of London Borough of Barnet Council in September 2018, it would not have been "Conservative members of the House of Commons from whom the Whip has been withdrawn and Amber Rudd." Those Members of Parliament "all voted for the cruel pressures she and millions of other tenants are now suffering," argues [retired] Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty.

"Council officials administer laws that render low income tenants powerless," observes Paul Nicolson. 

"Government policies have stripped the housing market of truly affordable housing. Housing and other benefits have been shredded. Rent arrears are inevitable and landlords merciless. 83,700 evicted families, many of them unemployed, with 124,000 children are now in temporary accommodation in England, up 74% since 2010. They are made one offer of a permanent home which they are compelled to accept, sometimes miles from their long term home.

"Some are forced into the private sector with unaffordable rents, others into property not fit for habitation.

"If they refuse that one and only offer, they are deemed intentionally homeless and the council withdraws from its duty to house them."

Regarding Paul's comment that landlords are merciless, I note that a Direct Line Landlords Insurance advert fuels landlords' loss of mercy. Targeted at landlords whose tenants' rent arrears lead to lost sleep for the landlord, the advert says, "We will pay all the unpaid rent until the tenants are out." How does that relate to Advertising Standards? What does such advertising do to tv viewers' moral norms?

I would add though, that Barnet Tory Council has been especially keen to support Barratt Homes at the expense of LB Barnet's council housing stock.

In my own 2005/06 past as a domiciliary care worker, after I struggled for over a year attempting to support vulnerable adults while

• council cuts had rendered in-service training virtually non-existent and 
• Jobcentre 'administrative errors' left me without Jobseekers Allowance top-up to declared part time earnings for months, rendering me in danger of rent arrears-related eviction

I observed that care workers were likely to be punished for their in-work negligence while 'key decision-makers' never were, and so I resigned from that work with greater determination to campaign for justice for those affected by cuts that were occurring even before 2010.

NB:
* and **: Names changed to protect family privacy