Four and a half years ago I received a letter from Cornwall Council stating my home had been identified as an HMO (House in Multiple Occupation). To be classed as an HMO, there would have to be 4 or more unrelated people sharing the same facilities, but what would not be included was separate units, each having their own kitchen, bathroom, and entrance. My property, a 4-bedroom bungalow, was designed to have 3 separate units and only had 1 section with its own kitchen and bathroom but was sharing the same entrance as myself. This was then not an HMO, and Cornwall Council, as usual, had got it wrong. This was just one of many mistakes made by Cornwall Council. I am 81 years old and blind. Due to having spent many years outside the UK, I was not entitled to a pension. I therefore took in lodgers as my only source of income. They signed a government-drafted lodgers agreement with me. Nevertheless, the officer dealing with this case informed me that a lodgers agreement is the same as a tenancy agreement. Her own common sense should have told her that by the different names it would indicate they were not the same. To prove this, I sent her a copy of a lodgers agreement to prove she was wrong and asked her to answer many questions I had relating to renting out parts of my home. To this day, five years later, they still have not been answered, regardless that I requested this information on numerous occasions.

Three and a half years were to pass (why if Cornwall Council had reason to believe i was operating an unlicensed HMO?) before I received another letter threatening me of her intentions to enter my home using statutory powers (without the use of a warrant), obviously implying if necessary it could be forcibly done. Is this England? Where an Englishman's home is his castle or Russia? Shortly after receiving this letter, she arrives at my home uninvited and without any pre-warning. The very first thing she informs me is that due to the chronic shortage of homes in Cornwall, the last thing she wants to do is make more people homeless, yet that is exactly what she did, claiming my home was an HMO. Yet in frequent correspondence I received from Cornwall Council, it quite clearly states not consisting of a self-contained flat or flats, which my property consisted of. She was employed in a position of which she was totally ignorant of the correct rules and regulations, as she emphasised herself by stating in correspondence to me, "Your property is complicated." How much confidence did that give me that she had the power to fine me and tell me what to do in my own home yet openly admits she is unsure by my property being complicated? She then demands a list a mile long of what certificates and what she wants to be done, yet when the gas and electric certificates were sent to her, she then lied denying ever having received them. When proof was provided of them being sent, she states, "I made a mistake," which was to be one of many. She informed me my open-plan stairway, which had been the same for around 40 years, was not to her liking and demanded I pay a fine of £174 for informing me of this. Regardless that previously an officer from building control had used the same stairs to view my loft conversion but never criticised the stairs in any way. On another visit to me, she was escorted by a fire safety expert. She claims that the small fridge which I had standing in a recess in my hall was a criminal offence and a fire risk, yet when the fire expert asked me if it was switched on and I replied no, he immediately contradicted her by saying, "Then it is not a fire risk."