How much does rectifying dry rot cost? A few commenters have remarked that £22,000 seems a lot of money for dealing with dry rot in a relatively small house in Southampton. Anyone who has had to eradicate dry rot does not forget, it is the most damaging result of lack of maintenance for a building. But to have £22,000 of damage eradication and reinstatement of plaster and woodwork would imply a devastating infestation - widespread, and of long standing, and in a large house with high quality wood and plaster work.
What is this house in Southampton that we have paid so much to free of dry rot? A mansion? And for how long was the Member of Parliament who charged us this sum failing to maintain it properly so that we were exposed to the cost of such extensive damage?
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17 comments:
"But to have £22,000 of damage eradication and reinstatement of plaster and woodwork would imply a devastating infestation - widespread, and of long standing, and in a large house with high quality wood and plaster work."
Just not true I'm afraid you may have lost touch with British prices fro such work.
However, does make you wonder why there wasn't proper insurance in place and/or a proper survey before purchasing the property.
Unfortunately I haven't lost touch with the cost of renovation work in WC1, but perhaps Southampton is particularly high cost?
Hats, the trouble with dry rot is that if it's left to grow on its own, it can 'explode' and infest a huge area with spores, which can grow again. They look like a brown omelette for want of a better description, and are really nasty to look at.
It needs a building to have none or very little air flowing through it, and basicly left shut up for long periods of time, for the infestation to flourish.
Which begs the question, 'If the house was shut up for any length of time, why was it classed as a second home if he or she never used it'?
Scrobs, we have PAID for this dry rot removal. I don't really mind the moat, if you have a moat I wouldn't want you to fill it in, and unmaintained it could well cause dry rot - though the wetness level might be too high. But a terrace house in Southampton that she says herself is perfectly ordinary. Where she lives her 'right to a family life' (looking at her photos one shudders at what practices that euphemism might stand for that cannot be entertained in any of her other three houses; fat, smirking gargoyle of a woman living off MY taxes with HER sense of entitlement).
When I consider my lovely children, hardworking, establishing themselves in life, never taking a penny off others, foregoing all sorts of things they might have, but for the filth like this, who sponge like huge brown omelettes on their and our very being, I see scarlet rage.
I want to know PRECISELY how that £22,000 was estimated, compared with other quotes, and expended on dealing with dry rot and dry rot alone.
GRRRR
wot I want to know is, how does Lembik Opit justify buying a TV @ £2,500 - irrespective of who's to pick up the tab ???
don't LibDems have any green-ish principles ?
And presumably from John Lewis too, ND, so it was the range, not overcharging that made it cost so much. Wrap-round sound and giant flat screen causing the whole area's electricity supply to dip each time he turned it on. And one of the small HGs who is only in London some of the time doesn't have a tv because paying for the BBC makes it too expensive, while this Opit reptile takes tax off them to buy £2,500 worth. As for the BBC, at least they have priced themselves out of the market. Grubs.
Moran's whining was intolerable too, as well as her preposterous claim. Her boyfriend's company organised a "housing and regeneration conference" back in February where local businesses could pay for access to her and to listen to Andy Burnham and the Quangocrats. The conference was sponsored by eight companies so presumably Mr Moran's company troughed all proceeds. His company has the same address as her constituency one.
The real rot, moral and political, is in our institutions. Today it's Parliament in the spotlight, but much the same would probably be found in local government, the bureaucracy and quangos - anywhere infested by the Political Class.
A "housing and regeneration conference", she shrieked. £22,000 worth was it?
As it happens, L, we have just taken up all the floorboards, put in insulation from the floor below, relayed and repolished the boards, fitted new skirtings, repolished and rehung all the doors, taken out, repaired and resashed half a dozen windows (refitting afterwards the double glazing), rewired the kitchen, laid real lino (the stuff from Scotland that smells delicious), fitted a complete new sink, range, cupboards, extractor, lights etc ., complete paint through (broken white eggshell semi gloss, very restful), fitted bookshelves either side of the fireplace and upgraded to an eco-friendly boiler. The whole lot hasn't passed £18,000 for lots of square metres. And paid for from taxed income, with all the VATty stuff.
I want to see the job description, quotes and the receipts for £22,000 of work on dry rot in a Southampton terrace house.
Yes Raven, and lots of these 'expenses' seem very high for what (or is it why? sorry, red haze) they were ostensibly incurred. It's not just the dry rot. What's been sliding through whose books for redirection to other destinations?
The expenses are a minor part of their direct costs to us, and a very small part of the waste and extravagence of government. I suspect that some of these expenses are not even supported by valid invoices, or are backed by receipts or invoices bought in from someone else, since they saw it as part of salary and not reimbursement of expenses. None of these items are wholly, necessarily and exclusively costs of performing parliamentary duties.
Houses, dry rot, trouser presses, booze, biscuits - that's what their salaries should pay for. It's hard to think of genuine parliamentary costs. Perhaps if they were sent on a delegation, and the hosts didn't cover food and accommodation - unlikely. Perhaps books and research papers, but I think the Commons has a library. Basically, they're all thieves and should be jailed. Now we know why they've been so soft on criminals - it's fraternal feeling! If you take a job in London, it's your business where you live and how you get to work - no one else could claim for second homes. With email and phones they can remain in touch with their constituencies. If they need extra travel costs, let their parties provide them.
Yes, kickbacks to their parties are quite possible. I think some MEP's admit using their even more generous expense allowances for this purpose.
I think Labour is basically a criminal conspiracy, financing itself from the unions, and repaying them 'modernisation grants' from the taxpayer. Plus Lord Cashpoint and his ilk.
It could easily come to that sort of money even for a modest property.
The rot could well be in structural timber leading to all sorts of complicated work accessing, removing, replacing, and keeping the building standing meanwhile.
Then all the decorative stuff which might be very extensive and include a lot of remedial plasterwork, and so on.
If you use decent taxpaying tradesmen and cover all the regulatory overheads (architect, QS, Structural Engineer, building control, etc) then £22K will not go very far for this sort of thing.
Whether the taxpayer should be expected to carry the can for it is quite another argument, but the sum mentioned is not unreasonable imho.
I'm not talking out of the back of my neck abut dry rot. I wilfully bought a house - it was just so beautiful - with dry rot, and had it treated (at my expense). As Scrobs explains, it had suffered precisely from being largely closed up and with damaged air circulation systems.
If a house has £22,000 worth of dry rot (see Anon. 8.41 for problems) you won't get a mortgage and you won't get buildings insurance until certificates of rot freeness are produced from reputable and longstanding, properly certified treatment firms.
How could such a claim:
'Hi, I've just had my house treated for dry rot. That'll be £22,000 please.' have passed muster?
This claim stinks. Who is her mortgage with? Some Labour MPs, ministers even, have mortgage form. Witholding of required information, laxity in being held to mortgage awarding criteria. If the house was surveyed, as it should have been for a mortgage, how has it got £22,000 of damage so quickly? And why, if she has been so remarkably unfortunate, isn't her buildings insurance covering it? Or did she know she would be acting improperly if she even dared to try a claim, other than on us, poor, long suffering taxpayers.
Dale's Diary reports today that Ken Livingstone, back in the early '90's, was told by Labour whips that MP's should claim everything possible, and pay it over to the Party if they weren't actually going to use it themselves. This is completely corrupt. Brown fixed special tax rules for MP's and ministers in 2003 to enable this sort of tax free claim - but he did not force each MP to claim, and any that were honest, in any party, would have refrained from doing so, and even created a fuss. Nearly all of them should be proscribed and executed. The expenses thefts show they are corrupt and not fit for public office. Those in government have gravely damaged the country by their crazy policies, and they still expect to escape the consequences they inflict on everyone else.
Regarding the cost of the dry rot; she knew she could pass it on to the public so she had no motivation to seek the best value, and under the rules perhaps no obligation to do so. We cannot exclude the possibility of collusion in fraudulent invoicing, as so far as I know this has not been investigated.
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