21/11/2011 Inside Out South East

Is it possible to avoid paying care home fees? I work for the top

barristers in the country. We do seminars like this for solicitors.

Why is it that you are selling a product called hope to avoid care

fees, when, by marketing it as that, you are in fact, possibly rendering

it useless? Why is the South East shaped, well, like the South East?

And so, you have the geology of south-east England revealed in a

piece of cake. Delicious. Almondy. My whole life's been ruined. That

is what has happened. And the Sussex pensioner who lost her home

thanks to some very poor legal advice. Hello, Mr Townsend. It is

John Cuthill from BBC inside out. I'm Natalie Graham with the untold

stories, closer to home. From all round Kent and Sussex, this is

Hello, tonight I'm in the Sussex seaside town of Seaford. First up,

Jon Cuthill, with a cautionary tale for anyone who owns their own home.

Do you think the donkeys will miss this place, then? Yes, they have

got a nice little house, here. into their own home after a

mortgage company evicted her. Rosalie had lived at her family

bailiffs came up to take possession where ever you are, the bailiffs

are here. Everybody must leave the property. We have a court order.

were filming but the bailiffs ordered us off the premises. I am

not moving from this house. After through and the eviction was called

off. I need to inform you the eviction is withdrawn. They have

withdrawn it! Come and have some champagne. Come on in. They are

Two years on, eviction looms once more. This time, Rosalie has no

company trying to repossess medal Hill said Rosalie had been properly

could not be accused of any reckless lending, they said.

Tonight, we investigate that solicitor and ask: did he fail in

his duty to protect? Moving out day is fast approaching. At 74, Rosalie

has got to pack generations of and prepare for the journey to a

new home. My whole life has been ruined. That is what has happened.

Local solicitor and a London bank told Rosalie not to get involved

persevered and found a loan broker in a very remote part of the UK.

The River Usk. Some of the best Sheila who lived in Surrey travel

all the way to Wales? Usk was home Corporation it will arrange a loan

for. It came with a solicitor. spent 20 minutes with Mr Townsend.

home, did he give you advise? I home, did he give you advise? I

mortgage was man called Geoffrey. We are not saying he has done

common. They were business partners. companies, where these two men were

How solicitors act is regulated. relationship with the broker affect

the advice he gave Rosalie and put him in breach of the code of

conduct? You must not use your Either for your own benefit or for

from Sussex to the west of the independent advice. You begin to

fined �3,000 by the regulator before he even met Rosalie. Perhaps

is that a Geoffrey Townsend represented both Rosalie and Sheila.

unlike married couples, both parties need separate solicitors.

The code is quite clear. You must interest and if you owe separate

was called in, that only one party would have assets to me that

I think it is very foolhardy for somebody to accept instructions

would have been evident to we solicitor who had just qualified. -

should have been lights flashing eviction, Rosalie has found a buyer

more than �200,000. Did you ever think this day would come? Well, I

have seen so far, I think Mr Townsend have a lot to answer for.

reported to the regulator. It has upshot's News Of The World -

paperwork and cannot help. We have tried hard to get some answers. It

is time for one more go. Hello. We are from BBC Inside Out. Can I just

ask about Rosalie Reeves-Fisher? Why did you give her advice and

Surely that was a breach of parties, Sheila Mason and Rosalie

Reeves-Fisher? I think she deserves some answers because she has lost

Meadowhills has finally come to an end. It is time to say goodbye to

her family home. They have broken might as well just go to sleep. It

has all ended. All down to something I never really understood.

Coming up, the man who says he is better than a solicitor. Hi, I am

Steve Long, co-founder of the show you how you can avoid care

fees. Now, time for a film, 130 million years in the making. Most

the south east for granted. The hills, the valleys, the cliffs. As

far we're concerned, they've always been here. So we don't normally

give our landscape a second thought. place, and how incredibly long it

takes to travel across. But when you do think about it, the

landscape we have today, in our influenced by the stuff beneath our

feet. It's all down to the rocks. So I'm going on what you might call

a rock tour of Kent and Sussex to see how our geology has shaped our

looks most of the time, how it changes so quickly from place to

place, and how incredibly long it takes to travel across. My guide is

geologist Dr Ed Jarzembowski. He's a massive rock fans and he's going

few minutes. Starting with some of Wells. These talks are 130 million

This sandstone stands at of the landscape and produces the high

the animal that once carried it. The famous big one a don. --

iguanadon. When iguanadons, south east they stomped over muddy

south from London to the coast, that gives places like Hastings

Each time you go up, you're going going away from the Channel on to

the flood plain. But what about the more gentle and curvaceous slopes

and the west, with brown river sand in the middle? Well all of that can

be explained using marzipan. Here, I am depositing the First Leisure,

the Hastings Beds. Then, as hills to the north wore down, the rivers

mud which became Weald Clay. Then a layer of greensand. As the sea got

deeper we got a layer of marine mud we had clear deep blue tropical sea.

the bottom, with skeletons of millions and millions of organisms.

can tuck in, Italy has to move north into Europe, causing the

whole of southern England to buckle upwards. Pushing up the South of

ages later, the top of the dome is gone. And towards the end of the

last Ice Age, the glaciers melted, sea levels rose over the top of the

south coast of England, so that what you have got is the chalk

cliffs at Dover and Eastbourne, and all the other coloured layers in

between, and so you have this eulogy of south-east England

revealed in a piece of cake. It is in a ridge, right across to France.

calcareous Folkestone rock fan Andrew Richardson explains.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the mainland, so you would have won

Chalk ridge. In warmer periods between ice ages, Howards of

animals would have found it the easiest way to move along the base

of the rage, creating migration routes Inland, into what is now the

British Isles, and early Schumann's, hunter-gatherers, would have

followed them on those migration routes. When the chalk ridge

collapsed, it gave us the famous white cliffs we have today. But our

mix of hard and soft rocks didn't just shape our landscape and our

coastline. It gave us a unique combination of really useful

materials. Archaeologist Lesley Hardy has been uncovering Roman

artefacts here in Folkestone where the soft chalk meets the hard local

greensand. And there's plenty of evidence that the Romans and our

much earlier ancestors made good use of that particular stone.

Turning it into a rock 'n roll grinding tool called a quern.

pour the grain into the top, then you use this handle - it is quite a

heavy beast, to turn it like that, and flower comes out from the side

and is collected and swept up. Querns were made here in vast

numbers from the greensand in the cliffs below. Then they were traded

for things like oil, wine and amber. So you could say that Folkestone's

geology meant that it was always destined to be in the import-export

business. Just as Tunbridge Wells was always destined to be a well-

to-do town thanks to the iron in its water, from the rocks below.

And it is fair to say that the high sandstone ridges of the region were

always destined to become towns, or villages, like Goudhurst. Where I

caught up with building archaeologist Anthony Quiney. He's

another big fan of south east rock, because it's given our buildings

such an attractive and distinctive look. We have all the evidence

before us, and this charge, wonderful gold stone, some of it

quite blackened, because there is a man and there. It is the finest

building stone in Kent. On top, we have a layer of clay, that produces

another building material, bricks which you can break, and the other,

it is marvellous for growing old trees. Even our classic hanging-

tile look is linked to the oak. When brick became fashionable you

didn't rebuild whole timber houses, you just hung tiles on the outside

to look like brick. And if you couldn't afford tiles, you stuck

with the timber. And on the chalky downland there was always the flint.

So our rocks produced land that made our buildings look the way

they do. But it also produced land that had another unexpected benefit.

It was not wonderful for architecture, but it produced class,

which meant pasture, which meant cattle. And you could engage in

weaving, and weaving make you very, very rich, certainly in the 14th

century. And that would have meant more buildings. Yes, and it is one

of the richest characters, certainly in the Middle Ages.

those rocks beneath our feet have been pretty good for us humans in

the south east. From the present day, going all the way back to the

hairiest and earliest cavemen. Which brings me neatly back to Dr

Ed, this time in Seaford, where there's evidence that the earliest

humans settled here for the rocks. There were people making flint axes

like this half-a-million years ago in the South East. That is an awful

long time ago. And they were making tools from fluent as recently as

4,000 years ago. You have flanked in perfect supply in the cliffs.

You do not even have to dig for it. And there are very few places in

the world where you have that situation. And this was the chalk

pathway over the Channel for the hunter-gatherers, so they got their

flint from here and started hunting and gathering. They would have

picked it up as they arrived on the beach with their passports! This

ancient flint axe head is still sharp, prove that our ancestors

knew that -- what they were doing when they settled here, and made

the most of the landscape of the Saudis. Now, if you are one of

thousands of people who end up needing care in your later years -

it could cost you around �50,000 a year. So, when someone tells you he

has a way of getting someone else to foot the bill, that's a tempting

offer. And that's exactly what a company holding seminars all round

the country, including Kent and the South East, have been promising.

David Whiteley has been finding out long-term care, and if you have

more than �23,000 in savings and rather keep their assets in the

founder of the Universal Group, and solicitor. The local solicitor will

not be able to do this. Solicitors come to us, to do this. Five years

ago, Bernard and Christine Dylan wanted new wills. They went to

Steve Long. His business had a new product - to avoid care fees.

came and said that you could get out copying care home fees by

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 197 seconds

We have spoken to the park to claims. But he does sound like he

is well qualified. The local authority will look at the reasons

that the trust was created, and, if they feel that it was done for the

purpose of that in the asset beyond assessment and treat persons as if

irony is that if the intention is precisely the opposite. And that is

And we were told that if you put your assets into a trust that is

deliberately to a void paying care fees, local authority can pay you -

- treat you as if you were doing it to avoid paying. Mr Long said that

he could not speak to us because he was out of the country. Then his

office told us he could not speak to us because of any infection. He

is giving a seminar at this hotel and I hope is heeding is better

because I have a few questions for him. His office said that universal

asset protection is totally committed to its excellent customer

care. He also said that their fees are not excessive. But Mr Long has

not given specific answers to most of our questions. I have to ask

your question, Mr Long. How is it that you are selling a product

saying How To avoid care fees when, marketing up -- by marketing has

that, you are negating the effectiveness of it. It is nice of

you to come here and ask questions. We have questions for you. By

advertising yourself as how to avoid care fees, you are kind of

shooting yourself in the foot, aren't you? It is not the advice we

have received. Who have you received advice from? This is from

the government. Who is wrong - you or the government? You have put me

on the spot here. We have because we try to get in touch with you and

your office told us you are out of the country and that is not the

case. I am not prepared to discuss on television the intellectual

property that we have. All I can say is that the trust that we use

as a 100% record. We have documentary evidence of local

authorities accepting the trust. You market yourself as one of only

five companies that is able to do this and who specialises in this

kind of elderly care trust. It is not true, is it? I said we are one

of five specialist providers that we know to provide this to other

people. Any firm of solicitors who knows and understand the rules

would be able to do this. Strange - he said the opposite when he did

not know he was being recorded. Ordinary solicitors would not be

able to do this. It is a specialist niche. There are only five of us in

the country that deal with it. So what can we learn from this? If

you are thinking of putting your property into a trust to avoid care

fees, remember that they are not suitable for everyone and they may

not work. My first reaction was to say no. But he continued and he

eventually wore us down. If you have met in you will know that he

is a very pleasant man and obviously a very good salesman.

You can get more information about tonight's show by going to hour

Kent or Sussex website. You can also watch the whole show again on

the iPlayer. Next week: What is it like for the people living rough

over the Channel, desperate to get into Britain? We are homeless. We

have nothing. We go under cover. am quite excited going in. Danger

is not something I am feeling at the moment. And did Shakespeare

have anything to do with a murdering five Russian? He ran up

to Ardon, through a towel round his throat to strangle him, pulled into