An automated email has suggested that the estate agency regulator may have a heavy workload that is beyond its resouces.
The automated response was sent to an agent seeking to lodge a complaint with the National Trading Standards Estate Agency Team, operated by Powys County Council.
The agent received back the following standard reply: “Please note – whilst we welcome and use all the information supplied to us about trading practices in the estate agency industry, we do not have the resources to deal with individual complaints or business advice.
“You may therefore not receive a further response to your email.”
The automated response then goes on to suggest consumers seek advice from Citizens Advice or contact their local Trading Standards service.
However, the NTSEAT website says it will help enquirers and give advice.
It is not the first time there has been a question mark over Powys’s resources.
Powys, together with Anglesey Council, took over the regulatory role from the Office of Fair Trading two years ago, after tendering for the work.
In a case heard last July – involving an appeal by two agents against being banned from the industry – High Court judge Mr Justice Holman said that a tender document indicated that whoever took over the regulatory function in April 2014 would get £178,000 annual funding, “but that the functions did not appear very burdensome”.
The judge went on to say: “During the course of the hearing the mask did perhaps slip a little and it became apparent that Powys has resource concerns as well.
“They tendered on the basis of about 10 cases ‘taken’ annually. But I have been told that since April 2014 they have already completed about 11 cases in which prohibition or other orders have been made, and they currently have no less than 41 investigations under way.”
But the judge said that any “resource implications” were irrelevant to the intention of Parliament when it introduced regulation of estate agents in 1979.
So far this year, one agent has been either banned or warned according to the public register operated by Powys. It does not make clear which.
The case of the agent, Paul Stephen Onslow, is described as “pending appeal”.
EYE has asked Powys to comment on the workload and resources for the National Trading Standards Estate Agents Team, and will report this as soon as we get it.
Estate agency and the property market is rapidly descending into a wild west anarchy. Rightmove and Zoopla seem unwilling or incapable of ensuring agents are not posting illegal and misleading property adverts and Trading Standards have become an industry joke.
The business of policing portal juggling, misleading advertising, consumer protection and even what appears to be fraud on an industrial scale by one PLC now seems to be left individuals. Meanwhile, the NAEA, ARLA and RICS silence on these basic issues of consumer and agent concern is deafening.
The question is do you, the reader, care enough to actually do something about this?
Are you a hand-wringer who wants the situation to change but says it never will, so why bother?
Are you a ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ agent who will see a few minor successes but then be either caught as a petty criminal and disgraced or, equally as likely, knocked out of business by crooks far more skillful and better resourced at the game than you?
Perhaps you are going to meekly and anonymously post your outrage on here and hope that will be enough?
Or, perhaps, you have the integrity and strength of character to publicly and proudly voice your concern to the portals and to the various industry bodies and demand action from them. If you are, good on you. You are not alone.
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Does this come under the heading
“Not fit for purpose”
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I can think of someone who probably takes up quite a lot of their time.
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Can I suggest they work 12 hour a day and open Saturday and Sunday
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