Tuesday, September 30, 2003
MEETING WITH THE AMBASSADOR
As many of you already know there was a meeting in Benissa last Tuesday between a few home/land owners and the Ambassador Mr S Wright.
The following is a copy of the letter I sent to the Ambassador following that meeting. Jan.
-------------------------------------
Dear Mr Wright.
At the meeting yesterday it was heartening to learn that you are taking an interest in the plight of the Valencian homeowners. It was disappointing that there was insufficient time available to actually discuss the problems in further detail, hence this letter to you.
The home/land owners are desperate, some more than others dependent upon the level of their personal LRAU problems and the financial situation of the property owners.
You mentioned that more legal actions should be instigated. For many families their way of fighting the law can be to engage a solicitor and pick up the telephone regularly. For a vast majority of home owners they are financially unable to afford legal help. In most cases this legal assistance costs more than just paying the developers so it is purely a fight for justice which only the few can afford. In my case, apart from being unable to afford legal assistance, nothing is yet finalised. All I know is that my home is within a proposed development area, my property being within a dotted line on a Council map. I awake every morning wondering if this is the day that the letter will arrive with the final plans having been put in place, and when I receive the bill for infrastructure costs and advice of the amount of land I must hand over. It is a living nightmare and I am beginning to realise that the laws will not be changed in time to save my home. Many friends are advising I should sell my home now and think of ´No.1´ with no conscience about who purchases the property and inherits the problem. Although I am aware of the law which would still make me liable for the costs if presented within one year of my leaving so, despite having chosen this area as my heaven on earth, where I wish to remain and which is the inheritance for my children, I would have to be long gone and far away to avoid being found.
During your talk you mentioned Estate Agents and how the land problems are affecting them. One point is that many of the agents are actually selling the properties on the new urbanizations, they are therefore quite happy about the situation. On behalf of the AUN, I recently wrote to over 200 agencies asking their views on LRAU. Approximately 15 replied saying they thought the law should be amended, one answered that it is a good law. The remainder did not reply despite four letters being sent to them. There are also many unscrupulous agents still taking on the affected homes for resale and selling without warning the buyers of the problems, they get around this by offering their own legal services of solicitors in cahoots with them (as in the case of a family local to myself and they are taking further legal action against the agents). Another near neighbour asked an estate agent to call with a view to selling his property. The agent gave a low valuation to take into account the land problems. Then, when the owner´s son called at the agents posing as a buyer and asking to see properties in this area, he was told of his father´s property but given a price one-third higher and not told of the land problems – this would suggest that the agents are themselves buying the property at a low rate in order to sell at market value. It would therefore appear that the estate agencies are not yet suffering to a degree which would help our cause.
I appreciate your answer to my (fumbled) question regarding other Ambassadors and their views on the land problems. I fully realised that problem solving starts at the bottom and works upwards, however for the British our plight is known at ´the top´ , with many MEPs assisting, the Foreign Office aware of the problem, yourself and your office helping in the fight. With more time, I would have asked if it is possible for you to personally add the LRAU land law problems to an agenda for a forthcoming Ambassador meeting, which you informed me was monthly. Other Ambassadors have, I know, been sent communications from Valencian homeowners.
The problems I have encountered from letter writing, is that one letter sent which is received in a full mail bag is rarely seen by someone other than the secretary. It needs a bombardment of letters for notice to be taken, for the communications to be taken seriously and passed on for further consideration. I am sure if the problem was raised between the Ambassadors and if they returned to their offices and enquired of their staff, they would find out that many Valencian homeowners have in fact contacted them. There is also the fact that many people, normal everyday families, are not in the habit of writing, would not know how to formulate a letter and feel intimidated by communicating with a person in authority or from a higher social level.
A similar problem has occurred with media coverage. The British are extremely fortunate that various newspapers, magazines, television companies and radio programmes have and are continuing to cover the land grab story. The problem is only rarely mentioned in the Spanish press and the Spanish are not known for being great readers of newspapers. For other Europeans, many German and Dutch families I know (I do not know about other countries) have written to the media of their homelands – with no replies, no follow-up and no coverage. Having no coverage in other European countries is not for the want of trying. As you are fully aware the problems are so far ranging from street widening, land theft through to families losing all their property for a pittance under compulsory purchase. Although all come under the same heading of LRAU the range of problems makes it a difficult fight. The land problem is all so unbelievable that many recipients consider that the letters have been sent by a crank and communications are therefore discarded.
Apart from the developers and councils, the only people making any profit out of this horrendous problem are the lawyers and the pharmaceutical companies for the amount of anti-depressants being prescribed – my own doctor says she has numerous cases of patients with stress related problems due to the land grab, and how can the problem be solved?
How can the problem be solved, what can be done? That is a question you asked the people at the meeting. You asked those present, and those thirty people represented hundreds of thousands of people affected by the law, what can be done? You suggested more legal actions, I covered that at the beginning of this letter. You mentioned media coverage, also mentioned. We do not know of anything that is not already being done, yet still the law remains, it is still abused by the councils and developers, and each day more and more families are affected.
When we met, I did warn you that I am a ´pain´ , I was no doubt a nuisance to your predecessor and you have already heard from me several time since you took over the job as Ambassador. However, before signing off I would like to thank you for your time yesterday in meeting with us and your encouragement in our fight.
Yours sincerely
As many of you already know there was a meeting in Benissa last Tuesday between a few home/land owners and the Ambassador Mr S Wright.
The following is a copy of the letter I sent to the Ambassador following that meeting. Jan.
-------------------------------------
Dear Mr Wright.
At the meeting yesterday it was heartening to learn that you are taking an interest in the plight of the Valencian homeowners. It was disappointing that there was insufficient time available to actually discuss the problems in further detail, hence this letter to you.
The home/land owners are desperate, some more than others dependent upon the level of their personal LRAU problems and the financial situation of the property owners.
You mentioned that more legal actions should be instigated. For many families their way of fighting the law can be to engage a solicitor and pick up the telephone regularly. For a vast majority of home owners they are financially unable to afford legal help. In most cases this legal assistance costs more than just paying the developers so it is purely a fight for justice which only the few can afford. In my case, apart from being unable to afford legal assistance, nothing is yet finalised. All I know is that my home is within a proposed development area, my property being within a dotted line on a Council map. I awake every morning wondering if this is the day that the letter will arrive with the final plans having been put in place, and when I receive the bill for infrastructure costs and advice of the amount of land I must hand over. It is a living nightmare and I am beginning to realise that the laws will not be changed in time to save my home. Many friends are advising I should sell my home now and think of ´No.1´ with no conscience about who purchases the property and inherits the problem. Although I am aware of the law which would still make me liable for the costs if presented within one year of my leaving so, despite having chosen this area as my heaven on earth, where I wish to remain and which is the inheritance for my children, I would have to be long gone and far away to avoid being found.
During your talk you mentioned Estate Agents and how the land problems are affecting them. One point is that many of the agents are actually selling the properties on the new urbanizations, they are therefore quite happy about the situation. On behalf of the AUN, I recently wrote to over 200 agencies asking their views on LRAU. Approximately 15 replied saying they thought the law should be amended, one answered that it is a good law. The remainder did not reply despite four letters being sent to them. There are also many unscrupulous agents still taking on the affected homes for resale and selling without warning the buyers of the problems, they get around this by offering their own legal services of solicitors in cahoots with them (as in the case of a family local to myself and they are taking further legal action against the agents). Another near neighbour asked an estate agent to call with a view to selling his property. The agent gave a low valuation to take into account the land problems. Then, when the owner´s son called at the agents posing as a buyer and asking to see properties in this area, he was told of his father´s property but given a price one-third higher and not told of the land problems – this would suggest that the agents are themselves buying the property at a low rate in order to sell at market value. It would therefore appear that the estate agencies are not yet suffering to a degree which would help our cause.
I appreciate your answer to my (fumbled) question regarding other Ambassadors and their views on the land problems. I fully realised that problem solving starts at the bottom and works upwards, however for the British our plight is known at ´the top´ , with many MEPs assisting, the Foreign Office aware of the problem, yourself and your office helping in the fight. With more time, I would have asked if it is possible for you to personally add the LRAU land law problems to an agenda for a forthcoming Ambassador meeting, which you informed me was monthly. Other Ambassadors have, I know, been sent communications from Valencian homeowners.
The problems I have encountered from letter writing, is that one letter sent which is received in a full mail bag is rarely seen by someone other than the secretary. It needs a bombardment of letters for notice to be taken, for the communications to be taken seriously and passed on for further consideration. I am sure if the problem was raised between the Ambassadors and if they returned to their offices and enquired of their staff, they would find out that many Valencian homeowners have in fact contacted them. There is also the fact that many people, normal everyday families, are not in the habit of writing, would not know how to formulate a letter and feel intimidated by communicating with a person in authority or from a higher social level.
A similar problem has occurred with media coverage. The British are extremely fortunate that various newspapers, magazines, television companies and radio programmes have and are continuing to cover the land grab story. The problem is only rarely mentioned in the Spanish press and the Spanish are not known for being great readers of newspapers. For other Europeans, many German and Dutch families I know (I do not know about other countries) have written to the media of their homelands – with no replies, no follow-up and no coverage. Having no coverage in other European countries is not for the want of trying. As you are fully aware the problems are so far ranging from street widening, land theft through to families losing all their property for a pittance under compulsory purchase. Although all come under the same heading of LRAU the range of problems makes it a difficult fight. The land problem is all so unbelievable that many recipients consider that the letters have been sent by a crank and communications are therefore discarded.
Apart from the developers and councils, the only people making any profit out of this horrendous problem are the lawyers and the pharmaceutical companies for the amount of anti-depressants being prescribed – my own doctor says she has numerous cases of patients with stress related problems due to the land grab, and how can the problem be solved?
How can the problem be solved, what can be done? That is a question you asked the people at the meeting. You asked those present, and those thirty people represented hundreds of thousands of people affected by the law, what can be done? You suggested more legal actions, I covered that at the beginning of this letter. You mentioned media coverage, also mentioned. We do not know of anything that is not already being done, yet still the law remains, it is still abused by the councils and developers, and each day more and more families are affected.
When we met, I did warn you that I am a ´pain´ , I was no doubt a nuisance to your predecessor and you have already heard from me several time since you took over the job as Ambassador. However, before signing off I would like to thank you for your time yesterday in meeting with us and your encouragement in our fight.
Yours sincerely
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