An estate agent expelled from the RICS for his part in the Burnham-on-Sea cartel has said his ‘burden of guilt’ is heavy to bear.
It also emerged that he has been made personally liable by his firm to pay the whole of the £170,549 fine levied on it by the Competition and Markets Authority, and that Propertymark NAEA fined him £1,000.
Jeremy Bell, a partner at Greenslade Taylor Hunt, was formally charged at an RICS disciplinary hearing with being a party to fix minimum fees, dishonesty, and a lack of integrity.
Greenslade Taylor Hunt was itself also formally charged at the same hearing with failing to have adequate controls, training and monitoring procedures in place to prevent staff entering into anti-competitive agreements.
The RICS hearing followed its own investigation, which in turn followed that by the Competition and Markets Authority into the cartel and its participants – Greenslade Taylor Hunt, Gary Berryman Estate Agents, Abbot and Frost Estate Agents, Annagram Estates, Saxons PS and West Coast Property Services.
Bell co-operated fully with the RICS during its investigation, voluntarily sharing the outcome of action by two other bodies – the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers, which suspended him for a year, and Propertymark which levied the £1,000 fine but did not expel him.
He also confirmed to the RICS that he had never discussed the price-fixing with his other partners. The first they knew of it was when the Burnham-on-Sea office was raided.
Bell was put on enforced leave of absence from Greenslade Taylor Hunt, relieved of his managerial responsibilities, and made responsible for paying the fine the CMA had levied on the firm.
Bell, said to have had an unblemished 30-year track record in the industry and to be held in high regard by both colleagues and clients, told the RICS that “the burden of guilt towards my fellow partners and staff for the embarrassment and stress caused by this matter is heavy to bear . . . How on earth I could not have seen the light and drilled down to discover these talks were in breach of the Competition Act dumbfounds me to this day”.
Like Bell, Greenlade Taylor Hunt also co-operated fully with the RICS investigation.
It said that the cartel had been an isolated incident, concerning one individual in one office. It was determined to learn from the matter and had put a number of procedures in place.
It had invited Bell, formerly responsible for residential sales, back to work after an absence of six weeks, and had limited his role to livestock auctioneering, agricultural agency and work that did not require RICS accreditation.
It told the RICS “Jeremy is devastated by what has happened”, describing him as a popular colleague.
The RICS disciplinary panel found Bell had taken part in the cartel, and had been dishonest.
It did not uphold the alternative charge, of lack of integrity.
The panel found the charge against Greenslade Taylor Hunt unproven.
It ordered the firm to pay the RICS’s investigation costs of £937.50, and other costs to do with the hearing, totalling £4,261.50.
It also ordered Bell to pay costs of £9,411.
Comments (10)
I feel genuinely very sorry for Jeremy Bell. He deserved sanction but this is out of all proportion.
I feel sorry for all the poor customers of these agents in Burnham on Sea, not the ringleader, but hey we all have different priorities.
We certainly do dompritch134; we most certainly do.
“I feel sorry for all the poor customers of these agents in Burnham on Sea”
No you don’t, dom-boy.
I think we all know that’s a given – so why pretend?
Incredible that a story as damning as this receives no response.
The hypocrisy on this site is beyond belief.
I’m pretty sure when the case was first reported there were a number of comments/responses. This story is just advising the outcome so not a lot else to be said.
Seeing as you always seem to be complaining about the hypocrisy etc on this site, why do you keep coming on here?
He’s got time to do it in between applying coats of value magnolia emulsion in his latest doer-upper and building the audience of his youtube channel.
Propertykevin actually you will find that there was not, the same day the majority of comments were anger at hybrid agents, quelle suprise.
In that case I stand corrected
dompritch
This was wrong but not £170,000 worth of wrong.
Remember, this agent was fined for fixing a fee at 1.5% and has also been barred from his professional association.
Is this fee, the same fee, that PB openly advertises as an ‘average’ fee on their website and TV marketing?
If the CMA found these agents guilty of fixing a fee that concurs with PB’s ‘average’ quoted fee, they must, conversely, heavily fine PB for misleading marketing as these agents either overcharged their customers ON COMPLETION ONLY or they didn’t?
Hypocrisy is having so many ASA rulings against you for misleading customers, presumably for financial gain, without any fine or professional consequence?
In my opinion, charging 10,000s of users £1000 plus on ‘average’ for not completing on a ‘selling’ contract is far worse?
PB has only recently removed instruct us to ‘sell’ at £849 on their website.