Tenants of a 300 year old Bridport housing charity are worried about the future of their homes after their ‘landlord’ lost a civil court claim, costing nearly £40,000.
The housing charity, The Daniel Taylor Almshouse Trust (DTAT), was also criticised by Judge Lacey at Weymouth County Court because the Trust’s Chair, “conducted the litigation in an unreasonable manner.”
For the five tenants at South Street this is not news: six months earlier they sent a joint letter to the Charity Commission, Dorset Council and local media to register their concern at the management of their homes.
Breaches of data protection – including ignoring three separate directives from the Information Commissioners Office – as well as lockdown rent increases and frequent and random changes to the Trustees in charge of their homes, were included in the complaint.
The civil court action for ‘order of possession’ was brought by Dorset and South Wiltshire area Quaker Meeting, in September, to return part of a building that the court found ‘unlawfully taken’ from a local Quaker organisation, called the Dunster Trust.
As well as being ordered to pay court costs of £39,677 the charity’s (then) Chair, David Partridge, was told that he had “unreasonably refused to settle the claim” after not engaging with offers by the Quakers for a pre-court settlement.
It was also noted that the defendant had (been) “making mis-conceived applications to the court…increasing the work burden of the Claimant and Court”.
This mirrors his behaviour several months earlier when he launched a civil claim against a 73-year-old South Street tenant who incurred rent arrears during Covid lockdown: a payment offer by the tenant during a resolution hearing was turned down by the Chair.
Later, in court, the tenant was ordered to pay the exact amount – originally offered – and not the larger and unsupported figure that David Partridge was claiming the tenant owed. This caused several months of unnecessary worry and anxiety for the insulin-dependent man who had never previously faulted on his payments in 20 years.
Currently, tenants say the heating for all the flats has not worked for several months and that according to the Charity Commission the Trust made a surplus of around £9,000 which will not cover the court costs and therefore the repairs needed in their homes.
They also say they are ‘kept in the dark’ after the only two Trustees on the board with David Partridge, resigned within a couple weeks of each other – six months ago – and now the two ‘new’ appointees have also resigned with no official notice to the tenants as to who is making decisions regarding the running of their homes.
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