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Mrs Robinson celebrating her 91st birthday in 2005
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Scandal of heirlooms dumped in the rubbish
We reveal how Town Hall broke its own rules in clearing flats
THE clearance of a dying pensioner’s possessions into a skip broke council rules, a Town Hall spokesman admitted last night (Wednesday).
The New Journal revealed last week how council workers had emptied the Gospel Oak flat of Dorothy Robinson, 92, earlier this month while she was in a nursing home.
She died shortly afterwards. Because her illness made her incapable of making decisions, the council had gained powers to act on her behalf.
Acting within the law, they surrendered her tenancy on her behalf.
But this meant that the flat in Parliament Hill Mansions, Lissenden Gardens was ‘void’ and a team from Housing Management could clear it.
A council press official said: “We have no means of disposing of the goods commercially. We therefore cannot recover any money for them, thus the goods have no value.”
Council procedures, however, state that a “protection of property officer would take an inventory of all the contents, backing this up with photographs”, and that valuable items should be identified and separated for sale.
After the New Journal asked to see a copy of the inventory made in Mrs Robinson’s case a spokesman admitted one had not had been made.
Nor could a council official say whether such an identification of valuables took place in this case, or the 1,200 occasions when the ‘void team’ cleared homes last year.
Neighbours of Mrs Robinson have stressed that while she was alive she received excellent care from both social services and Camden Primary Care Trust.
The disposal of her belongings, however, has outraged them.
Ian Marshall-Smith, who has known Mrs Robinson for 50 years, said: “Dorothy had a three-bed flat, full of wonderful furniture. She had furniture from Heal’s from the 1940s, and she had furniture of her mother’s dating back to the 19th-century. The reality is her house was looted.
“The whole thing is frightening. You can take over a person’s life, and you can take over all their possessions, and without any form of responsibility, do what they want with their belongings.
“They don’t even feel that they have to justify themselves. How many times has this happened before? The whole thing makes you shudder.”
A Town Hall press official added that although no inventory of the goods dumped in the skip was taken, some valuable items had previously been identified and taken to the nursing home where Mrs Robinson was saying.
He said: “The care of vulnerable people is at the heart of what we do and we will do all we can to protect the financial interests and property of people in our care.”
Camden says it did make an exhaustive search for relatives, but failed to find any.
However, Mrs Robinson did have a grandson who she had not seen since 1973, when he was seven years old.
The grandson, Jonathan Pendrill, was tracked down by her neighbour, Mavis Haut, before Christmas by adverts placed in newspapers in Ipswich.
Mr Pendrill was reunited with his grandmother during Christmas week at the care home in Cricklewood, where she spent her last months.
Mr Pendrill, who lives in Essex, was to see his grandmother only once.
The disposal of Mrs Robinson’s possessions on January 4 has left him wondering how much of his family’s history has been destroyed.
“The main thing is that I was able to see her,” he said yesterday. “I was planning another visit for the weekend but she died before I could see her again.
“I was able to get a few photographs from neighbours. But it would have been nice to know what else was there.”
Mrs Robinson’s funeral is being held at Golders Green Crematorium on Wednesday at 12 noon.
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