{"id":5025,"date":"2015-07-30T15:24:15","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T14:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=5025"},"modified":"2015-07-31T15:01:24","modified_gmt":"2015-07-31T14:01:24","slug":"a-kafkaesque-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=5025","title":{"rendered":"A Kafkaesque nightmare"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Unite community member Paul Rooney, a former social care worker who gave up his job to care for his severely disabled teenaged daughter, looked through his post one day to find a council tax bill for \u00c2\u01412,000, backdated from more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n

 
\nIt was an obvious mistake, Rooney thought to himself \u00e2\u20ac\u201c at the time, he had just quit his job to care for his daughter Roisin full-time, and Liberata, the private company which handles council tax collection for Bromley council, must have misplaced his council tax benefit.<\/p>\n

 
\nBut what started as an accounting error has now turned into a Kafkaesque nightmare for Rooney, who is also an insulin-dependent diabetic \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Liberata has tacked on \u00c2\u014149,000 in solicitors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 fees to his original bill, which has forced him into bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

 
\nHe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now on the brink of eviction.<\/p>\n

 
\nJust as daughter Roisin, who has a brain tumour, cannot talk and often uses a wheelchair, was set to celebrate her 15th birthday, bailiffs descended on Rooney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s home in Bromley on July 13.<\/p>\n

 
\nBut they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d soon find themselves shown the door, as dozens of Unite community members and other local residents turned up to take a stand for a man whose only crime was being at the receiving end of an outsourcing giant\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s outrageous blunder.<\/p>\n

 
\nAfter community action helped push back the bailiffs, Rooney applied for a stay of eviction. He and his daughter are not out of the woods yet, however \u00e2\u20ac\u201c after a series of court hearings which favoured the council and the company, Rooney awaits yet another court hearing on August 7.<\/p>\n

 
\nRooney said in a recent interview<\/a> that the council\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s relentless pursuit of \u00c2\u01412,000 will, in the end, cost the taxpayer more.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe council did say that they had a responsibility towards me as a vulnerable adult with health concerns and [if I am evicted] they will rehouse me and my daughter. That will probably cost them tens of thousands of pounds more in order to recoup their original \u00c2\u01412,000, which will cost the Bromley taxpayer more. It makes absolutely no sense.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nLong history of failure<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 
\nAlthough Bromley council and private firm Liberata deny Rooney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s claim that the bill was made in error, the outsourcing of public services has a long history of failure.<\/p>\n

 
\nLiberata alone has had many of its contracts unceremoniously terminated after persistently poor performance.<\/p>\n

 
\nIn 2008, Sheffield council chose not to renew its contract<\/a> with the firm for council tax collection and housing benefits processing services, after various debacles including 4,000 people erroneously being sent letters demanding they pay amounts as little as six pence or face further action.<\/p>\n

 
\nIt was also alleged that the firm sent 10,000 empty envelopes which were supposed to have contained council tax bills.<\/p>\n

 
\nIn the same year Liberata lost a contract <\/a>to process Educational Maintenance Grants, after it notoriously botched students\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 payments, leaving thousands of low-income students without their grants two months into term, which forced many to quit their courses altogether.<\/p>\n

 
\nBoth contracts went to another outsourcing giant, Capita, which followed in the footsteps of its predecessor firm Liberata in Sheffield, erroneously sending 5,000 letters accusing residents of not paying their council tax in 2013. <\/a><\/p>\n

 
\nCapita also botched council tax collection services for Birmingham City council last year, after it overcharged residents by a total of more than \u00c2\u0141500,000.<\/a><\/p>\n

 
\nDespite this track record of failure which has, as in the case of Paul Rooney, upended lives, the Tory-led Bromley council has relentlessly outsourced council services, most recently handing over adult disability care services to private firm Certitude this month.<\/p>\n

 
\nUnite regional officer Onay Kasab, who has overseen a wave of strikes of local authority workers fighting Bromley council\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mass privatisation programme, hailed the level of community support shown in each dispute.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWhat has been inspiring about the Bromley strike to protect services from privatisation has been the support from the public, from service users and Unite community members,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe have always been clear that this is not just about protecting jobs, pay and conditions.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe have correctly emphasised the impact on the community when services are privatised \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we have pointed to examples in the NHS as well as local government,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Kasab added.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe impact on Paul Rooney gives us a real, living, breathing example, cutting across the rhetoric of local authorities who claim that privatisation is about \u00e2\u20ac\u0098efficiencies\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t measure efficiency by how much money you save \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we measure it by the impact it has on real people.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unite Community co-ordinator Pilgrim Tucker hailed the community support shown for Rooney and his daughter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Sometimes it’s easy to feel demoralised by the onslaught of privatisation — up against private, vested interests, we sometimes feel as though there’s nothing we can do about it. But through community solidarity, we’ve seen that we can effectively fight back, if we are all in it together.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“We saw this in Paul’s case — if it weren’t for community and trade union mobilisation, he and his daughter could easily have been evicted the other morning. Now, there’s hope.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Stay tuned on UNITElive for the latest on Paul Rooney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s court hearing next week.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

People can donate to Paul’s legal fund by contacting Alan Shaw at bromleytradescouncil@gmail.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unite community member Paul Rooney, a former social care worker who gave up his job to care for his severely disabled teenaged daughter, looked through his post one day to find a council tax bill for \u00c2\u01412,000, backdated from more than a decade ago.   It was an obvious mistake, Rooney thought to himself \u00e2\u20ac\u201c […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5026,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[277,252],"wps_subtitle":"Admin error brings Paul Rooney to bankruptcy and brink of eviction ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5025"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5025"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5037,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5025\/revisions\/5037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}