In this weeks blog, our early retirement plans gather momentum, with our house purchase moving along nicely and we host a lovely BBQ weekend with our work friends in the first (of many) celebrations for our impending life changes. In sharp contrast, we take a look at some unbelievable frustrations that we have experienced- making little progress with the probate service over the past 12 weeks. A perfect example of a week of both order and chaos. Life just keeps on coming.
House progress.
Things are ticking along quite nicely with our sale. Our buyers have had their finance approved and we are moving along as planned. We have organised a survey for our house purchase. This is something that the mortgage company normally sort out as part of the financing process, but as we will be mortgage free and cash buyers(!!!) we have to sort that out ourselves. The survey is booked for 10 days time, so fingers crosses that it doesn’t come back with any red flags.
Work Family BBQ.
As our working careers come to an end, inevitably there are a few things that we need to do to get our nearest and dearest work friends together. This weekend we hosted the SLT team for a proper traditional BBQ at home. A BBQ in our house has never been a burnt sausage and frozen burger affair, mainly down to Jackie’s South African background. We have always enjoyed big family Braii’s as we come into summer, so what better way to celebrate our early retirement and Ofsted survival than by cooking up some huge slabs of meat, and serve them with copious amounts of comfort carbs?
Jackie came up trumps at the local abattoir, getting hold of a full brisket and a shoulder of lamb. That should comfortably cover most eventualities, so with a 0630 start on Saturday morning, the ritual of the slow cooked BBQ started. I love these rituals and the slow process of a BBQ cook off, there is something quite calming and simple about looking after the fire and having to be patient and attentive over 8+ hours of cooking. It sounds sad, but this remains one of my greatest pleasures.
Anyway, I am sat here on a sunny Sunday morning in a quiet house- the morning after after the night before. We had such a blast with our work friends- it is so nice to spend time with good people. There wasn’t much talk of work, but lots of humorous banter between people who have worked so hard together for so many years. It is memories like this that we will miss in early retirement, but we have vowed to make sure that we find ways to keep in regular contact with these people that mean so much to us.
Probate fiasco.
The challenge of dealing with my brothers estate goes on, as we get further disillusioned with the public sector services. As we had not heard anything from the probate service about our application and it was coming up to the 12 week window that they proport to keep to, Jackie gave them a call earlier this week.
What an absolute shambles! After a 60 minute wait on hold, she finally got to speak to someone. They confirmed that our application had gone over the time frame and they would elevate the application and someone would email us back. A few days later, and no email, I decided to try my luck in finding out what was going on. After a 70 minute wait, I finally got through to the most helpful Kieron. He confirmed that the application had been elevated a few days earlier, but that elevated cases were also running at least 2 weeks behind schedule.
When I requested more details, it transpires that there is no automatic elevation of applications that are beyond the 12 week window. If we had not called, our application would still be just sat there…seemingly forever, or at least until the eternal backlog was cleared. Kieron advised us to keep an eye on our emails for the next few weeks for an update... helpful advice. When I asked about their complaints policy and procedure, Kieron was a bit vague, suggesting that there may be something on the government website about that sort of thing!!!
So here we are, 12 weeks on, having paid nearly £300 for the privilege, sometime in the next 2 weeks someone may actually look at our application. This is an absolute national disgrace- a service that is dealing with people who are grieving and facing some of the most challenging times in their lives is letting us down so badly. Customer service is at an all time low, communication is non-existent, the process is broken and unfit for purpose and we have no recourse for complaints against a service that is generating millions of pounds for the country each year. 12 weeks on from starting this sorry tale and we still cannot open a bank account to prepare for dealing with the estate.
So there you have it, another week closer to our early retirement D day- just over 3 weeks of work remaining. Next week I start with my intention of clearing my office of 13+ years of stuff- not something that I am particularly looking forward to, but something that I can chip away at when I have spare moments.
The sun is shining, it looks like summer has arrived. Have a fantastic week,
Richard & Jackie
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