AIBU in thinking if you have a Council house and the Council are modernising it you shouldn't really moan about it?!

[Mydietstartstomorrow]

So I'm in B&M in the queue listening to a customer moan on and on about how the Council have only given her 3 weeks notice that she is getting a new kitchen and bathroom fitted and this is totally unacceptable and how it's going to disrupt her life! Checkout lady then moans that she contacted her Housing Association to find out she's not entitled to a new bathroom for some time yet. AIBU to think some people feel so entitled? What about the people (me) who own their own home and cant currently ever imagine having the money to have a new kitchen and bathroom fitted?! Oh, and the loft was being insulated also!

You may not be able to afford a new kitchen today, boohoo, but then you will be able to sell your property in 10 or 15 years an see a nice return. we wont.

with that attitude, do you expect sympathy from others? Feel free to buy your own property, there's no law you can't. And then deal with all the actual maintenance cost for a change

It’s still her home. She’s allowed to feel inconvenienced

This.

And judging strangers on a snippet of a half-heard conversation is a rather foolish thing to do.

Of course they can moan about the inconvenience, it is a disruption to their day/week and having major work done is a ballache owned or rented.

However the kitchens are not always the cheapest of the cheap, that makes no sense, the trouble is some tenants don't really look after them and so they quickly get damaged.

The bathrooms were often chosen by the tenants at the time and the blue/peach / green are not always that old.

It is surprising how many are saying though that they can do no alterations at all, maybe too many people were knocking walls down.

When I had my bathroom done I had no hot water and no heating in December for a week.

I don't think it would have been any different if you had been a private tenant or a home owner.

I would happy with 1 week when I had bathrooms redone.

I have asked for sympathy from no one.
The boo hoos were for you.
You dont appear to have a grasp of how rental property works.
When calculating the rent to be charged landlords factor in the cost of refurbishments.
So we ARE paying for it

with that attitude, do you expect sympathy from others?

oh the irony

OP
Some people, especially those in shitty low paid jobs can’t take time off easily especially over the summer period.
A ‘new kitchen’ effectively means new cupboards with limited choice if any, possibly new vinyl flooring and the walls painted. Not new appliances or anything nice.

I live in a housing trust flat and our kitchen cupboards were replaced after more than 30 years and that was because of a government grant to improve sub standard accommodation.
Do you think I don’t deserve a kitchen at all?

DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult
the difference is that I don't expect any sympathy from anyone, I just expect rent paid by my tenants, that's good enough for me

@DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult

Quite

This woman never asked to op for sympathy either.

She was having a conversation with someone else.

The op listened in and took offence 🤷‍♀️

It's not exactly free though. I live in an HA house and after my kitchen was replaced my rent went up by £20 a month.

I'm surprised at those in council places having to pay for carpets and goods when the council has done it

When they did my kitchen and bathroom I didn't have to pay anything

YABU my Mum lives in a council property. She works full time and pays rent. The bungalow is in dire need of updating, the back boiler has been condemned and they have been promising to remove it for 5 years.

They replaced her kitchen and bathroom, expecting her to take two weeks off work at the drop off a hat. These 'workmen' fitted her kitchen cabinets too high off the floor so the worktop sits 5 inches above the level of the cooker. Her bath doesn't drain properly because of the way they fitted the pipes. She has huge holes leading outside from the backs of the cabinets where they couldn't be bothered to fill areas correctly and to top it off they put cabinets in front of the meters meaning they couldn't be read.

The councils response was pretty much as yours - she should be grateful. My Mum should not have to live in a sub standard property because it is council.

You are not being unreasonable but they were only talking to each other, they understood what each was on about. I doubt either would moan so heavily to you.

Having a new kitchen fitted is very stressful, I am a home owner and found the entire experience terrible a few years ago :-). Dread having anything done to the house at all since then. As for having to wait a long time to have essential work done, that too would be stressful. Life is like that unfortunately.

I think I'll go and have a lie down in the dark now and think of beautiful homes that never need replacements, repairs, and decoration. Oh and gardening. They need to be self cleaning too.

However I must do something about my washing machine. It started leaking copiously from under the door yesterday. My tall shoe rack collapsed too. It never rains but it pours. Nevertheless I am happy and consider myself fortunate to have my own house. I wouldn't want to be a tenant.

So from a snippet of a overheard conversation some posters have jumped to the conclusion the person in question are poor, ungrateful and wanting sympathy etc. This is where judging council tenants comes in to play.

This might be out there, but she could have just been having a conversation about getting work done and how she isn't looking forward to it.

@MindyStClair once, the toilet fell off the wall whilst my husband was having a shit, as the contractor used some sink fittings to fit it to the wall 😂

Apart from anything else, this was two people having a moan in a shop. You will struggle to find anybody, in any walk of life, who doesn't have a moan about their situation every now and again - a quick browse through AIBU will tell you that!

If you had a serious conversation with either of them, you could find that they are actually really grateful for their home and just needed to vent for a minute. Or you could find that they're having a genuinely tough time and you'd walk away feeling glad that you aren't in their place. A few overhead comments really isn't enough to label people who very clearly aren't living the life of Riley as 'entitled'.

but to be fair, no one should be paid for shoddy work - regardless of who the client is.

Just look at watchdog and see that horrendous contractors and workmen are not exclusively experienced by council tenants. Scam artists exist everywhere.

I don't know what the councils criteria have to be to give a contract to a certain company - or are fitters council workers that should be sacked? Genuinely no idea.

Our block has it's own tenancy office and we have a handyman who I trust so I was able to give him a key so he could come in and out whilst I was at work, only took 4 days to do the works and I asked them to leave space so I could put a washing machine in, didn't have 1 before and they did

@weleasewoderick22

“It's not exactly free though. I live in an HA house and after my kitchen was replaced my rent went up by £20 a month.”

That rental increase wasn’t connected to your new kitchen (that would be illegal for a HA) it’s such a large hike I wonder if it’s service charges rather than rent but if it is rent, it means your rent has been undervalued for sometime and that’s the catch up (one of the few instances social rent can be increased other than your government mandated yearly increase, which for the last few years has actually been a 1% decrease)

@Bishalisha that really made me laugh although it shouldn’t 🤣 there is a real issue with substandard repairs contractors. Because councils (and to a greater extent HAs) work with such large volumes basic repairs aren’t always quality checked as they should be. It’s unacceptable

@that25cUKHeatwaveof2019 contractors will usually be private companies who have bid for long term, volume based repairs contracts under U.K. or EU tendering laws (depending on size) however they often bid at loss making or very marginal profit, and this reflects in the service. It’s really a reflection of the industry, who aren’t always great at costing or quality control, and end up competing with each other in a race to the bottom.

I don't know what the councils criteria have to be to give a contract to a certain company - or are fitters council workers that should be sacked? Genuinely no idea.

In general Councils can only request quotes from a particular list of contractors set by procurement. Reputation and quality of work may form part of the decision matrix, but in my experience the weighting is heavily in favour of the cheapest price, because the view is that the press/public just don't want to hear about public funds being 'wasted'. Like too many things in the public sector it's a false economy, but it's what simplistic financial scrutiny leads to.

(For bigger scale examples of where this is an issue, see G4S, Capita etc)

when you pay for having a kitchen/bathroom/central heating installed you are told when they can do it & its not infrequent that you get delays &its round their convenience

You can also say “no that doesn’t suit” and wait until their next period, or go with a different fitter.

As opposed to social tenants who can get a week’s notice to have new heating fitted (so all furniture had to be moved in the middle of the floor and all flooring lifted) and even when someone in your home has just been diagnosed with terminal illness you are just told you’ll be fined if you don’t have the space cleared). It was made out like they were doing her a favour when she had to leave the workmen alone in her home to go and see her husband (they expected someone there all day every day for 5 days).

My favourite one my friend has had to deal with so far was the “free” wheelchair ramp to her house for her terminally ill husband. That took eight months and the finishing touches were done the week after his funeral.

Oh and the ‘free’ wetroom that was put in so shoddily she uses a rubber broom to push the water toward the plug as the floor runs in the wrong direction. She was left with no bathroom door for a bank holiday weekend and the man in charge sighed at her complaining despite the fact her front door (all glass) is directly opposite the bathroom.

And now if they choose she can be kicked out her home to another one because of the adaptions. But they were free, so lucky old her.

I don't know if all councils do the same but both (different) councils I've lived in I've had to pay for ALL flooring and ALL decorating and light fittings, curtain poles etc. All of these things would be provided in a private rental and my council house is no more mine than a private rental would be. Because of this, 2 years after moving in I have 2 rooms that still need decorating, the gardens are a terrible state with holes in, burnt patches and the fence is half fallen down.

I love having a secure tenancy with affordable rents but there are also downsides. Like a lack of choice. You have very little choice over where you live and once you're in a house it can be even harder to move. I would prefer to own a house but it's just not possible for a good few years yet.

Passthecherrycoke. You may be right. It just seemed like too much of a coincidence though.

I've posted about this before, but about 15 houses in a cul de sac of 32 houses have put in their own kitchens and bathrooms without asking permission and the HA do nothing about it. If the tenants can afford to do that, they can afford to buy imo. Next door has even got a conservatory!