Yesterday: now you see them …

… today: now you don’t

AgeUK today removed its logos from the Peverel Retirement website, after their presence was drawn to its attention by Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation.

No explanation has been given why the logos – for AgeUK, Age Cymru and Age Scotland – were placed on the Peverel Retirement website.

The AgeUK logos sat on a page titled “Affiliates and Accreditations” beside the logos for the Association of Retirement Housing Managers, the Elderly Accommodation Counsel, the retirement developer Pegasus and the Scotland Property Managers’ Association.

Yesterday Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation wrote to AgeUK CEO Tom Wright pointing out the presence of the logos.

Michael Epstein, a regular comment-poster on Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation, had earlier asked about Peverel’s use of the logos on the AgeUK Facebook page.

This afternoon Wright wrote to Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation chairman Sebastian O’Kelly saying that the logos had been removed, and that he thanked Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation for “pointing this issue out to us”.

The connection between the two organisations, both in the past and present, was not raised in the correspondence.

Before the former retirement housing advisor Mark Spall left AgeUK’s employment in July, he informed Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation that his work had received funding from Peverel in the past.

In October 2010 AgeUK published a six-paragraph correction to its report  ‘Putting Retirement Housing in Order’ addressing Peverel, Fairhold and the Consensus Business group, which were then all part of the Tchenguiz Family Trust.

The AgeUK correction included: “The report could also have been taken to mean that Peverel does not operate a competitive tendering process …”

As the Office of Fair Trading investigation into the Peverel / Cirrus price-fixing scandal makes clear, Peverel had admitted bogus tendering processes ten months before in December 2009.

It is because of this admission, and subsequent co-operation with the OFT, that Peverel qualifies for “leniency” from court action.

The OFT’s investigation, which concerns bogus tendering between 2005 to 2009, was only made public in July this year.

But in the light of Peverel’s admission that its group was, in fact, engaged in price-fixing, there is little reason for AgeUK to continue to publish a “correction” saying it wasn’t.

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