Property Firm Silences Residents

Property company Equity Asset Management, together with affiliate companies Mount Street Holdings, Regis Direct and CPM, are responsible for the management of around 100,000 residential units in the UK.

Many residents of properties managed by these companies are not happy with the way that their affairs have been managed. In 2003, the BBC's consumer show Watchdog (http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog/reports/home14.shtml) highlighted examples of poor property maintenance and customer services problems experienced by residents.

Back in 1999, a web page was created to highlight the practises of these companies and over the years this page has grown into an online community of residents keen to help each other, discuss their problems, and in some cases, take ownership of their properties away from Equity. This moderated forum (www.consumerdeals.co.uk/equity) was visited by Equity's customers and staff, and was used by their management to respond to the concerns of their customers.

In July 2004, parent company Mount Street Holdings plc took action to have the forum shut down, and the forum was forced to close on the 16th of July. It is understood that, through a solicitor, they cited 16 instances of 'defamatory' comments in the forum over the last year. The examples given included: a reference to Pier Management's failure to disclose their postal address as "suspicious", mention of the fact that the Chief Executive is "rather hard to contact", and phrases such as "We have experienced nothing but problems, lies, poor paperwork and bills with no explanation" and "Got something to hide, Equity?".

While we acknowledge that many of the remarks made in the forum may be embarrassing to the companies and theirs management, we feel that the complete closure of the forum is unfair and unjust. The forum owners have demonstrated that they will act quickly to remove any genuinely defamatory material in the past, so are puzzled as to why the company now wishes all trace of all 820 messages (including 65 written by their own staff) to be totally removed from the Internet.

Many of the forum contributors have expressed concern that their innocent remarks are viewed by Equity's parent company as 'defamatory', and that the company has chosen to censor their opinions. They no longer have a voice to make their views heard, or to ask for the help and advice of others.

We feel that customers of MSH, Equity, Regis and Pier Management properties have a right to voice their opinions in public, and wish to protest at the action taken by Mount Street Holdings and Equity.