Purplebricks says its head of lettings has left after just eight months - and just days after a crisis involving tenant deposits.
A Purplebricks statement says: “Helen Ogden, head of lettings, has decided to move on from Purplebricks. We will be announcing a new head of our lettings business in due course.”
Last week it was admitted by Purplebricks that an unknown number of deposits taken from tenants by the agency were not registered with any one of the three government-backed schemes - they’re operated by MyDeposits, Deposit Protection Service and the Tenancy Deposit Scheme.
At that time Purplebricks refused to say how many deposits were affected nor how long the law was breached by the deposits not being lodged in a scheme.
This gave rise to speculation that landlords may have found themselves open to the risk of prosecution.
A statement from the agency at the time said: “Due to the introduction of a new lettings IT system, a small number of tenant deposits were not paid into an authorised deposit scheme. As soon as we identified this issue, we took action and have now registered these deposits. We are currently communicating to the affected landlords and tenants.”
A spokeswoman added: “We won’t be answering any other questions.”
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How unusual these days. The buck stopped with her.
Another day, another Purple Bricks story.
Even more commisery!
Refreshing to see. I wonder whether their new head of lettings will have any lettings experience at all let alone the 20+ years a job like this requires if they want to improve their lettings business.
Total mess of a company - seems to be one disaster after another lately, with this arguably the biggest of the lot.
It is probably right that she has fallen on her sword, as is the dignified thing to do in this situation, but I doubt it was her alone who was responsible for this and smacks of a much deeper malaise. PB, having been out of the limelight a bit for a while, came back with a bang earlier this year with a flurry of PR-friendly stuff, but it's all gone wrong pretty quickly.
It wouldn't be surprising if it went the way of Emoov, Hatched and others.
I’m sure it goes deeper than IT and Given Helen has only been in post for 8 months and the size of the task she has hardly had time to find the system floors never mind resolving them. So as they say. “ Did she jump, or was she pushed”!!
Ps I’m available
Helen is far too qualified for the likes of Purplebricks and she's done the right thing by going. There's only so much polishing you can do to a trrd.
There is a systematic lack of management from Operations Management and below. A large portion of property managers are completely unsuitable and incompetent. As a result there is a culture of distrust where only certain people can register deposits. This will not change unless management does something drastic (I do not hold my breath). They're in a cycle of a chronic lack of staffing because of resignations every week (me being one of them) owing to unmanageable portfolio sizes. It's no surprise Purplebricks finds themselves in this mess. The whole of lettings needs a top down reorganisation, from Head Of Lettings to Property Managers. The current setup is a disgrace and they will only continue to tank under the current management.
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