• IN a time of turmoil for the social housing sector nationwide, I found myself, being a social housing tenant, on the receiving end again of the double standards of care meted by Westminster City Council to its poor, elderly, and disabled through social housing landlord CityWest Homes.

A sub-contractor for CWH inadvertently disconnected my flat from the communal digital TV aerial, and the advice I was given was to purchase a portable aerial. I live alone, have mobility difficulties, and my only contact with the world at large is through a TV set.

And I am poor!

CWH and all social landlords have a duty of care to their residents. They are, by definition, a taxpayers’ franchise in the public sector.

It is easy for the less well off to grab hold of the idea there are two democracies working side by side in this country.

Take the Grenfell Tower disaster. We can have no doubt at all that residents of the tower had an entitlement to a better delivery of refurbishment than what they got.

All of us count the cost of what is delivered in the public sector in terms of value for money and public safety. It’s time for us all to exhibit a sense of pride in the meaning of “democratic”.

Any person or company in this country who is contracted to work for a council or government department does so by virtue of being in the taxpayers’ economy. And all are subject to laws of corporate responsibility, including duty of care.

I will send CWH all invoices pertaining to purchases I end up making to ensure I regain access to the communal TV digital aerial, however long it takes.

They are acting deplorably, with no sense of duty of care, or responsibility, for their contractors’ mistake.

SANDRA HENDERSON, NW8