HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS
Not so great Dane
READERS have shared some startling horror stories of excessive and unexplained hikes in housing association service charges in response to the
Eye
’s recent investigation (
Eye
1657)
.
But the award for the most outrageous fee inflation goes to Plus Dane, which upped one bill by 1,840 percent over just three years.
Eileen Jones (not her real name, as she asked to be anonymous for fear of reprisals) owns her terraced ex-council house on Liverpool’s Gateacre estate and had obligingly paid a monthly £5.05 service fee for years despite not quite understanding what it was for. However, that fee trickled up for two years, then suddenly rocketed to £98 a month, even though she owns her own freehold. Being a law-abiding citizen, the supermarket worker paid that too, until cancer forced her to take time off.