Your report into Ealing's housing department last week doesn't go nearly far enough ( 'Official report slams housing office failures' Times, February 28).

As a victim of their care over the past few years, I know only too well the many, many things that they can get wrong.

To begin with, there is the old stand-by of losing the original forms, that enables the robot you have to speak to on the phone to come out with the old stand-by of saying 'we don't seem to have any record of you in our files'.

Of course, that is in the unlikely event that anyone picks up the phone in the first place.

Then, when you've re-submitted the forms, there is the entertaining song and dance of finding a few dozen supporting bits of paper.

Once that is done, there's the wait.

This entails many hours listening to a phone ringing followed by the sound of someone tapping details into a computer to be told 'yes, your application is being dealt with'.

I have some advice to anyone dealing with the housing department go private!

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