> Noel Sharpe, chief executive of Bolton At Home, said in a statement: “Everyone at Bolton at Home has been deeply shocked by this and we realise it will concern and upset people to learn his body remained undiscovered for such a long time.
> “It’s completely unacceptable to us that something like this has happened, and we’ve taken action to reduce the risk of it happening again.
> “The reason we didn’t discover Robert’s death for so long is because our previous procedure, while meeting legal requirements, wasn’t strong enough to prevent something like this happening.”
Let me guess – “and as Robert’s rent continued to be paid via direct debit, there was no reason to investigate any further.”
He added: “I would like to offer our heartfelt condolences to Robert’s loved ones, friends and neighbours and apologise to them for the opportunities we missed in finding out why we couldn’t contact him.”
Where the fuck were they when he didn’t contact them for 6 years?
And they still kept collecting rent that whole time. If the deceased had any living relatives let them have the money.
>He said its procedures changed in July 2022 and it now immediately sought access to homes via a warrant when it could not contact tenants to arrange gas safety checks.
How long before there’s a story complaining about this being too intrusive and landlords shouldn’t have that power.
It’s a terrible story and 6 years is a very long time, but it really isn’t the housing associations’ responsibility. Was there literally no one else in this person’s life at all? No neighbours concerned about the lack of activity etc?
This isn’t a landlord problem (although they’re the cause of many, many other problems…) – it’s a symptom of a shift in age demographics that we have completely failed to prepare for.
So they didn’t bother the tenant after he never answered to agree on a gas check, they didn’t bother him to do bullshit landlord inspections, they haven’t raised the rent significantly in six years, and they never tried to evict him to get a new tenant who would pay much more
**Idk, to me they sound like perfect landlords**
Sad that so many people lead such isolated and lonely lives. Not sure that the HA are at fault here though.
I know people are saying “Sounds like a perfect Landlord” and “not their fault” and stuff.
Which, yeah, I agree with, it’s not like they should be getting too much shit for this, but…
Having rented in the past, your landlord being cool with no contact for SIX YEARS, no gas checks, no housing checks, no fire alarm replacements, no maintenance of any kind required… That seems… odd? No?
Considering that it took 6 years for someone to discover his body, he probably didn’t have any family or friends.
It is so sad that no one noticed he was missing, didn’t he get post delivered, surely someone would have smelled him after a while you would think.
This is one of my biggest fears. I’m not married, don’t have children, and have a relatively small social circle and family.
Its sad that some people just have no one to check in on them for so long that something like this could happen in the first place. I don’t think landlords should be required to perform welfare checks, however it seems odd that they never noticed anything odd about a tenant who had not been seen by anyone for so long, nor said anything to management in that time. The man effectively disappeared in plain sight and no one noticed, going no contact with your landlord like that should have raised some alarm bells after a certain period of time.
Man, I want to rent from these people if I can just not pay rent for six years and they don’t do anything.
13 comments
> Noel Sharpe, chief executive of Bolton At Home, said in a statement: “Everyone at Bolton at Home has been deeply shocked by this and we realise it will concern and upset people to learn his body remained undiscovered for such a long time.
> “It’s completely unacceptable to us that something like this has happened, and we’ve taken action to reduce the risk of it happening again.
> “The reason we didn’t discover Robert’s death for so long is because our previous procedure, while meeting legal requirements, wasn’t strong enough to prevent something like this happening.”
Let me guess – “and as Robert’s rent continued to be paid via direct debit, there was no reason to investigate any further.”
He added: “I would like to offer our heartfelt condolences to Robert’s loved ones, friends and neighbours and apologise to them for the opportunities we missed in finding out why we couldn’t contact him.”
Where the fuck were they when he didn’t contact them for 6 years?
And they still kept collecting rent that whole time. If the deceased had any living relatives let them have the money.
>He said its procedures changed in July 2022 and it now immediately sought access to homes via a warrant when it could not contact tenants to arrange gas safety checks.
How long before there’s a story complaining about this being too intrusive and landlords shouldn’t have that power.
It’s a terrible story and 6 years is a very long time, but it really isn’t the housing associations’ responsibility. Was there literally no one else in this person’s life at all? No neighbours concerned about the lack of activity etc?
I wouldn’t be surprised to see this [become more commonplace.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodokushi)
Economic troubles? Check. Increasing elderly population? Check.
This isn’t a landlord problem (although they’re the cause of many, many other problems…) – it’s a symptom of a shift in age demographics that we have completely failed to prepare for.
So they didn’t bother the tenant after he never answered to agree on a gas check, they didn’t bother him to do bullshit landlord inspections, they haven’t raised the rent significantly in six years, and they never tried to evict him to get a new tenant who would pay much more
**Idk, to me they sound like perfect landlords**
Sad that so many people lead such isolated and lonely lives. Not sure that the HA are at fault here though.
I know people are saying “Sounds like a perfect Landlord” and “not their fault” and stuff.
Which, yeah, I agree with, it’s not like they should be getting too much shit for this, but…
Having rented in the past, your landlord being cool with no contact for SIX YEARS, no gas checks, no housing checks, no fire alarm replacements, no maintenance of any kind required… That seems… odd? No?
Considering that it took 6 years for someone to discover his body, he probably didn’t have any family or friends.
It is so sad that no one noticed he was missing, didn’t he get post delivered, surely someone would have smelled him after a while you would think.
This is one of my biggest fears. I’m not married, don’t have children, and have a relatively small social circle and family.
Its sad that some people just have no one to check in on them for so long that something like this could happen in the first place. I don’t think landlords should be required to perform welfare checks, however it seems odd that they never noticed anything odd about a tenant who had not been seen by anyone for so long, nor said anything to management in that time. The man effectively disappeared in plain sight and no one noticed, going no contact with your landlord like that should have raised some alarm bells after a certain period of time.
Man, I want to rent from these people if I can just not pay rent for six years and they don’t do anything.