By Ella Austen
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that arrogance and idiocy frequently travel together. “Empty vessels make the most noise” says Shakespeare in Henry V. And while Plus Dane Housing, a housing association primarily operating in the North West, may not share the Bard’s grandeur, it certainly compensates in how flagrantly they display this principle.
In the grand gallery of the over-confident and under-competent, Plus Dane deserves some sort of trophy — or perhaps a brand — for its mix of outrageous cheek and phenomenal stupidity.
For those not in the know, Plus Dane have become infamous within our Merseyside community and beyond for eye-watering service charge hikes to freeholders and leaseholders. They were caught red-handed charging for services that are not, and indeed cannot be, physically completed on our estate.
Apparently unashamed of operating such a brazen racket, the housing association decided to set up what it called a ‘Community Activity Day’ in one of the shared spaces, where Plus Dane representatives would be on hand to answer questions, with some fun games and activities to boot.
Price-gouging? What price-gouging?
Alas for Plus Dane, residents of our community were not seduced by the tombola. Instead, they asked awkward questions such as: “Why has my service charge increased 100%, 200%, even 1,000% for no services?”. This is no exaggeration—some people here have been paying £98 a month, under threat of a County Court Judgement, for nothing. One crying Plus Dane tenant pleaded, “Please do something about fleas in my flat — they’re biting my newborn baby.” Also not an exaggeration.
A Poor Response
The complete unwillingness of the Plus Dane representatives to engage didn’t go down well. Before long, arguments broke out between residents and staff. But unlike baristas, call-centre workers, or anyone else who must deal with vicarious responsibility for a wider organisation, Plus Dane’s recruits did not even attempt to maintain basic professionalism or composure.
Instead, their representatives met the complaints in the same way as you might imagine a particularly recalcitrant teenager would: through blank-eyed, slack-jawed disinterest, thinly veiled irritation, and disproportionate stroppiness.
Even senior staff failed to behave in anything approaching a responsible or professional manner. One individual became so discomposed that she placed her hand in a resident’s face while the resident was talking.
Unsurprisingly, these exemplars of customer care didn’t stay for the whole advertised time. They packed up and left in a sulk after one too many people foolishly mistook the event’s advertised offer of “support with housing issues” to mean they could actually get support for their housing issues.
For this unforgivable faux pas, a few days later residents awoke to find hand-delivered letters from a senior Plus Dane manager. Gobsmackingly, the letter accused residents of being “abusive, aggressive and threatening.” This slanderous characterisation was followed by Plus Dane’s own threat to “take appropriate action against those involved”. For the record, the police were present throughout the event as part of their own neighbourhood-safety outreach and saw no reason to intervene at any point.
Darkening Our Doorsteps
The poor judgements somehow got worse from there. Shortly afterwards, the organisation’s Community Safety Manager issued notices to residents stating she would be carrying out unsolicited home visits to those allegedly “involved in altercations”. No consent, no consultation, and barely any notice were given before these shady figures darkened our doorsteps.
One resident welcomed the Plus Dane representatives into her home, believing they genuinely wanted to collect feedback. What followed was, to quote her directly, “an ambush in my living room”.
Instead of listening, the staff launched into a confrontation about an argument she’d had with one of their own representatives on the day, accusing her of abusive behaviour—a decision that would have been inappropriate anywhere, let alone in someone’s home.
It’s a strategy that flies in the face of every principle of safeguarding, personal safety, or even basic common sense. Plus Dane’s representatives appear to seek a showdown with people whose only offence was to ask awkward questions about persistent mismanagement in our community.
Intimidation Tactics
These visits are part mafia-intimidation tactic, part Spanish Inquisition overreach, part Thick of It meltdown. Bureaucrats mistaking bullying for authority and managing to humiliate only themselves in the process.
It’s difficult to fathom the sequence of shockingly poor decisions from multiple individuals within Plus Dane, culminating in attempts at extra-judicial interrogations. Not one person involved seems to have asked themselves how it might this look or feel.
It’s a telling thought. The the sheer lack of insight, reflection, and respect must be soaked into the organisation’s everyday culture for a decision such as this to make its way out the door and into operation.
Apparently, Plus Dane does not see itself as a manager of communities, responsible for maintaining communal areas and liaising with tenants, but as a particularly bullish and controlling prison warden, demanding respect with the rattle of a baton on bars.
Rather than do the hard and humbling work of correcting their poor performance, they’ve instead taken the exacerbatory tactic of spinning narratives. They have painted residents as villains for daring to point out their mismanagement, and they have cast themselves as Witchfinder General.
In Plus Dane’s rush to protect their image, they’ve forgotten reality: that they are not, despite their fantasies, an alpha-like presence in front of whom we must watch how we speak. People’s homes are not Plus Dane’s to stomp into when they fancy. Residents are private individuals with every right to point out wrongdoing.
So beware the brainless Inquisition. Not because it’s clever, but because it is so catastrophically stupid that it has displaced every other tactic with intimidation and bluster. The more they tighten their grip, the more they reveal themselves for what they are: a failing organisation whose incompetence becomes more visible with every flailing attempt to silence those who call it out.
Names have been changed for fear of landlord reprisals.
21 December 2025
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