Dear Ria

Sorry that you didn’t enjoy your stay at Hockley.

When you called about the homeless person, we advised you that we don’t have the authority to move homeless people on. This is why we asked you to call the police. In these situations, the police are the best recourse, not because Purple Frog couldn’t be bothered to deal with the situation, but because police advise residents to call them, using the 101 number. The police are trained professionals who are used to dealing with these situations. This is especially important if you felt threatened by the homeless person.

The reason that the machines broke down is that residents weren’t clearing the lint traps. This is also the cause of the fire. Because we felt that relying on residents to take responsibility for the laundry was not viable, we needed to move to services machines. This means that we need to employ contractors to come to the property and do things like empty the flint traps. This is an additional cost, which is why we needed to move to paid machines. The free option was no longer safe or economically viable. We wrote to all of the tenants to explain why we had taken this decision.

In terms of the fire, it was quickly extinguished and following a through fire inspection the building was rated as safe and correctly managed. In fact, the fire safety audit had recommended moving to serviced machines.

You were correct to take photos following your move-out. We recommend that all tenants take time-stamped photos of the property when they move in and out. This information is incredibly useful if you need to dispute. I understand that one of our members of staff had accidentally disposed of the evidence that we had collected for the dispute, so your dispute was successful.

I am sorry that the dispute took longer than necessary to complete. Looking at the records, this is our fault. I am sorry for the inconvenience we caused you.

I hope this response goes some way to answering your concerns. Once again, sorry that you didn’t enjoy your stay at Hockley Point. I do feel that some of the incidences you have used to show we mismanaged the property are for things out of our control, but as we are the managing agent I understand why you would feel we had ultimate responsibility.

I can’t see any examples of contractors or agents entering your property without giving 24 hours’ warning. If you have some situations in mind, please let me know. My email address is [email protected].

Kind regards

James Mason