Councillor warns over accountancy Covid ‘fees’

ACCOUNTANTS have been accused of ‘shameless profiteering’ for charging small businesses up to £1,000 to fill in Covid-19 grant forms – which take an estimated five minutes to complete.

Cllr Majid Mahmood revealed he had been ‘inundated’ with complaints from people upset after paying ‘extortionate’ fees. He said he had been told about a minority of accountants ‘proactively approaching’ their existing clients asking them if they had ‘applied’ to Birmingham City Council for a small business grant – when really it is not an application and all people have to do is complete a form providing their most up-to-date company details.

The council’s Trading Standards described the allegations as concerning and vowed to investigate any unscrupulous professional services if they were provided with evidence.

Cllr Mahmood (Lab) said: “I have been inundated with calls from small businesses upset that a minority of accountants are charging between £250 and £1,000 to help them with their Covid-19 small business grants. This is shameless profiteering and needs to be called out.

“You do not need to complete an application for the Covid-19 small business grant, you simply need to log on to the council website and input your most up-to-date details including your bank details so that the city council can process the payment. The process has been simplified so that it should not take anyone more than five minutes to complete so nobody should be charging to help you input your details.”

More than £231 million worth of grants has been made available to Birmingham businesses as part of the Government’s Covid-19 support package.

HUGE bruises, scratches and even a stab wound... Gary Cunningham’s family witnessed the signs of domestic abuse by jealous girlfriend Olivia Labinjo-Halcrow – but ignored them because he was a man.

But less than a year into the relationship, the 29-year-old was dead – stabbed to death in a frenzied attack at Labinjo-Halcrow’s Harborne flat in Frensham Way, off Station Road. She knifed him 12 times and he was later found lifeless by a passing delivery driver.

His killer, 26, was found not guilty of murder but was instead handed an 18-year jail term for manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Mr Cunningham’s grieving sister now wants to highlight the harrowing ‘‘red flags’’ she and her family witnessed ahead of his death.

Katie Brown, from Northfield, said: “I want to highlight it does happen to men. I saw all the signs myself and I ignored them.

“I just want to raise awareness so that people act on what they see, instead of brushing it under the carpet like we did, because now we can’t bring him back.

“It could happen to somebody else and it will happen to somebody else.”

During a jury trial, the court heard text messages between Labinjo-Halcrow and Mr Cunningham suggested there had been a history of physical violence towards each other.

The couple had met on a drinkdrive awareness course and were “two of the wrong people together”, his 37-year-old sister said.

But recalling the wounds she had seen on her brother’s body, Ms Brown added: “It was said it was like tit for tat, but that’s because no one else saw it. But we saw it.

“Still now I can’t believe she killed him and there were so many times we could’ve intervened in it and we didn’t.

“All the signs were there, but because he was a man it was overlooked.”

The first warning was

that

of extreme jealousy. Mr Cunningham had borrowed his sister’s phone to call Labinjo-Halcrow. But she missed the call and rang back to hear a female voice. “She went mad at me, thinking I was another woman,” Ms Brown recalled. “From that I thought that’s not right, they haven’t known each other long.”

As the relationship, often fuelled by drink, continued, the once confident brother she had known soon disappeared.

“You could see she was dominant over him. His whole demeanour changed, he went quiet within himself. He was quite outgoing and funny before,” Ms Brown said.

“He didn’t have that cheeky chappy spark anymore; it was gone, he wasn’t the same brother.”

And even when his sister began seeing physical wounds, including bruises and a stab wound to his arm, she admits her immediate reaction was to quiz him over whether he was hitting her first.

“We used to see him with big, massive bruises on his legs and his face always scratched,” she said.

“I used to say to my brother, ‘You’d better not be hitting her’, because that’s what you automatically think, don’t you?

“He used to say, ‘No, I just defend myself, I have to push her off me.’” In court, it was heard Mr Cunningham had previously complained to his sister of being stabbed in the arm by Labinjo-Halcrow.

But she says her brother was reluctant to report the attacks to police.

“If it had been me coming home with stab wounds, I know the police would’ve been notified, something would have been done. I keep thinking, why didn’t I just log it?

“On another occasion my brother swore in front of my mum. She [Olivia] got a deodorant aerosol can and sprayed it in his face and told him not to speak to her like that.

“All the signs were there, but none of us acted on it.”

In November, the pair had a break from their relationship and Mr Cunningham was said to be happily coupled up with another partner. Ms Brown added: “He ended that and went back to Olivia. We still to this day don’t know why he went back. Within a week-and-a-half, she’d killed him.”

In the February after they got back together, Mr Cunningham was said to be suicidal, but no one took it seriously, she said. “He wasn’t in a good emotional place, he was saying ‘I’ve had enough, Kat, I don’t want to live anymore’. He was suicidal,” recalled Ms Brown.

On February 23, Mr Cunningham’s body was found propped up against a fire exit door outside Labinjo-Halcrow’s flat. He had been stabbed multiple times in a frenzied attack and died from a stab wound to his left leg, into his calf, just below the knee. A delivery driver found him lying motionless surrounded by “a lot of blood”.

A pink-handled knife was found in the kitchen sink with blood on the tip matching the profile of the victim when officers arrived to arrest Labinjo-Halcrow.

The mother was jailed for 18 years for the killing in September last year.

Ms Brown added: “We as a family lost our brother and we saw all the signs and we overlooked it, we didn’t think it was a big deal. It is a problem, it’s real.

“If I could go back, I would go ahead and report what I knew. I wouldn’t have even let him go back there. I would say get away, it’s not OK to be hit by a woman. It’s not acceptable.”