Middle England and the Law against Squatting

There are a few phrases in the language of middle England, the mere mention of which causes the red mist to fall. European integration is one such phrase, benefit claimant another, softly softly policing yet another but if you want one to really annoy people the word “squatter” really sends middle England completely potty. It implies everything it stands against: something for nothing, scroungers jumping the queue getting things for free that they haven’t worked for. So just imagine if all of these phrases can be thrown together into one story. It happened today in the Daily Telegraph . A Latvian travels 1,500 miles to squat in a mansion in London because he’s heard how soft this country is on squatters. He did himself no favours by saying, “I’m going to stay round here. It’s great, it’s free and I don’t have to pay rent like a normal person.”
Saying "I knew before I came that people live in squats and have legal protection. It’s easy here.” wasn’t great, or particualrly accurate, either.

The BBC are onto the story now and I’ve just been interviewd for the evening news. The question that this has raised for them is, should squatting be banned?  Reading the Telegraph you might quite reasonably answer yes. But look at it another way. The law already provides a very simple easy way for property owners to remove squatters. All you have to do, as the owner, is go to court, as the owner has done in this case, and you are virtually guarrenteed to get an order that tells the squatters to go. You can choose to give them a month or 24 hours notice. After that, if the squatters stay they are breaking the law. So what needs changing? should the state really take away the responsibility from the property owner and ask the police to deal with it instead? If you think that a property owner should take responsibility for securing their own empty property and be responsible for managing it, the law should stay exactly as it is.

As for that word, middle England may be interested to know the word squatter has the same origin as a word they will be much more comfortable with: cottage. Both derive from Cotter, an ancient word meaning a subsistence farmer.

Squatting - you may be surpised what you think

The Netherlands used to look a picture of harmony and tolerance but its liberal outlook is wearing a bit thin. The new coalition government is banning the Burqa, one of it’s party leaders is in court for promoting religious hatred. Even the tree in Amsterdam that sheltered Anne Frank has gone rotten and fallen over.  But perhaps most significantly of all the government has outlawed squatting.

Nothing wrong with that you might think. Surely it should be illegal to squat other people’s houses anyway.  Well perhaps, but it is legal in England and Wales and Dutch tolerance of squatting has actually been a very successful policy. The Netherlands has Europe’s lowest level of vacancy (0.3% compared to 3.5% in UK).

The simple idea in the Netherlands was that if an owner left a building empty for more than a year he lost the right to evict squatters. If the owner was intending to redevelop a building, demolish it, or sell it the last thing he needed was to have it full of squatters who had rights to stay. The effect was of course property owners did whatever they could to stop their property becoming empty, and if that failed, they did whatever they could to get their property back into use within a year.

A whole industry grew up to help. It provided a “guardian” service finding people who would live in empty properties to prevent them becoming squatted. Not only did the law minimise the number of empty properties, a by-product was to create a new sector of housing that was cheap and accessible. Figures suggest that nearly 1% of the Dutch population are now property guardians. The industry has spread beyond the Dutch borders and property guardian companies like Camelot and Ad-Hoc successfully operate in Belgium, Germany, France and the UK.

It is a truth that few dare speak here. But the risk of an empty property being squatted is a powerful motivator for the owner to get it into use. Whether you like the idea of squatting or not, it is probably true that it stops a lot of buildings being left empty. A system like the Dutch are now getting rid of, without doubt, creates an even stronger incentive still.  There are mutterings on the backbenches of Westminster here that squatting should be banned across the UK too. Plenty of people will tell you about the harm squatting causes, much of which will be true. But before you agree to enthusiastically, ask the other question too. What good does it do? You may be surprised what you conclude.

Old Empty Home Falling Down - Let's Do Nothing

Heston in West London is not an area known for its heritage. It was the birthplace of Jimmy Page, but he’s still alive. Most people just know it as a service station on the M4. So when local Hestonians found out that they had a 600-year-old house in their town it is not surprising that they wanted it looked after. Sadly that’s exactly the opposite to what has happened. The Hermitage is in a pitiful state. No roof and experts reckon the walls will fall down if remedial work doesn’t start in the next 18 months.

The Hermitage is, to put it mildly, in the latter stages of decline following years of neglect. In cases like this it’s easy to say something should have been done years ago. It’s also easy to say that the council should sort it all out. The truth is when properties get into this state there are usually very few options left, and most of the options are in the hands of the owner. The cost of renovation will be enormous, the management of restoration will be a nightmare, and the potential for a public pillorying if it all goes wrong - huge. The clock is ticking, and if the only option on the table is imperfect it’s probably still better than doing nothing. Which is why it’s a bit odd that when the owner of the Hermitage proposed to renovate and turn it into a care home, local MP Alan Keen said “We certainly don’t want the council to give planning permission to anyone else to do anything nasty to it. I would like to see it kept and that’s what the residents want, and it’s my duty to support them.” Of course Alan Keen has a bit of history on this subject. His own house in Hounslow is apparently still empty following a debacle with Squatters, Comedian Mark Thomas, and the MP's expenses scandal. It's easy to say what shouldn't happen but in the absence of a better idea that's little better to a death sentence to a house with little time left.

Help Yourself to Free Empty Property?

Every week or so we get a call from somebody who has spotted an empty property and wants to know how they can claim it for themselves. The BBC TV series “Britain’s Empty Homes” that started this week has prompted viewers to ask us this question on an almost daily basis. The people who ask believe that because a property is unused, it is freely available to anybody who wants it. All you have to do, they think, is get there first, lay claim and hey presto it belongs to you. These callers area usually disappointed when we explain that it doesn’t quite work like that. What everybody else may be surprised to hear is it’s not entirely untrue either.

The legal concept here is a bit of common law called Adverse Possession. It goes back to the days of Henry V111. In essence it says that if somebody squats a property or piece of land for 12 years without being challenged they can apply to become the registered owner. If the original owner can’t disprove the claim they loose title.

In practice it only works like this for property or land that is not registered with Land Registry. The Land Registration Act of 2002 introduced new rules for registered land that better protects the rights of the owner. The squatter can apply to become the registered owner after they have occupied the property for 10 years. Land Registry then contacts the land owner gives them notice of what as happened. They have 65 business days to object. If they don’t the squatter becomes the registered owner, If they do the application fails and the owner is free to evict the squatter. However if after another two years the squatter is still there, they can apply again and they’ll almost certainly successfully become the new registered owner, even if the original owner objects.
More details from the Land Registry here

Tackle This Decadence Head-on

Decadence is an unpleasant charge to throw, but I can think of no better word to describe the 21 empty mansions in Mayfair highlighted in Saturday’s Guardian.

Mayfair and its environs have always been a unique property market. It’s location in the heart of London, quality of property, and prestigious neighbours have made it the UK’s premier piece of real estate for years. Its value transcends the normal workings of the property market. Anybody who needs a mortgage can’t afford it anyway. So in troubled times property investors head to Mayfair in much the way commodity investors divert their wealth into gold.

All financial safe havens attract a minority of unsavoury characters, and so it is here. Attracted by the weak pound, money is pouring in from tax havens around the world to buy up property in London’s crock of gold property district. Nothing wrong with that you might say. But the problem is remote absentee owners have little interest in running or managing their property investments as going concerns, they only care about the capital value. Ultimately their self interest begins to degrade the quality of the area. Decline through greed. Decadence if ever I saw it.
And so it is that 21 of London’s most valuable homes have been abandoned and are falling into rack and ruin. Mayfair is not unique, as I reported here recently; parts of Hampstead are suffering a similar fate. It is for exactly these sort of cases that council’s powers to intervene are so needed. Houses in the UK, however posh the address, are for people to live in, not for decadent speculation and abandonment. So power to Paul Palmer and his council colleagues to tackle this head on.

It's not squatting, it's much more interesting

I was chairing the CIEH’s excellent empty homes conference yesterday, when at lunchtime I turned on my mobile to be confronted with “you have 16 new messages” all of them it turned out from journalists. ITV had tracked me down and were waiting outside. What on earth had provoked this?

The answer it turns out is this. Squatters in Bishops Avenue.
For those of you not obsessed with the self-absorbed world of London real estate, Bishops Avenue in Hampstead is said to be Britain’s most exclusive address. Houses have changed hands here for £80million. So news that squatters were here got the property correspondent’s pulses racing.

The story it turns out is much more interesting than that. Calim Ciufudean and his colleagues are not squatters at all. They are licensees or as he puts it caretakers. The crucial difference is they are here with the owner’s consent. Their company Prep ltd offers to look after properties that have been abandoned. The concept proved a bit difficult for some newspapers to understand but the Sun got it, so did London Tonight on ITV. Although some of their viewers came out with the old lines “why don’t they get a job and rent” Apart from the fact that Calim and his colleagues do have jobs, the prejudices just don’t work here. Calim is a resourceful man who is sorting out his own housing and preventing a property falling into wrack and ruin.

There really is something new here. As the local estate agent in Hampstead said: "There's squatting on Bishops Avenue in every recession but it's becoming more organised and gentlemanly. It was more anarchic in the 70s when squatters used to take possession. It's now more organised than squatting, it's more like house sitting”

Neighbours Welcome Squatters

Quote from readers comments in today’s Evening Standard “Well done the squatters for taking advantage of this obvious opportunity to show the gulf between the have and have-nots, for eloquently highlighting the plight of the homeless and the scandal of empty, useable homes. I truly hope this brings about legislation that allows councils to use empty houses, wherever they are, whatever they are worth, for the greater good.”

Squatters in the MP's house

The news just gets worse for MP couple the Keens. Their empty home has at least been reoccupied but not, I suspect, in the manner they would have wished. A group of squatters has taken residence and they don’t appear to feel restrained about telling the world.

This now leaves the Keens with a dilemma. Do they evict them as they can quite easily by getting a court order, or leave them be, and try and reach an accommodation with them?

Eviction is fairly easy to do. They just need to get an order from the court and if the squatters don’t leave they are committing an offence and can be forcibly removed. In most cases this works and the squatters leave quietly. Given that most squatters are looking for somewhere to live it is unlikely they will return. It would probably be a good idea to beef up the security and if the property is going to lie empty for any length of time this could be expensive.

Reaching accommodation with squatters is a pretty pragmatic choice for property owners too. Licences can be drawn up easily which gives both the squatters (now licences) limited right of occupation and gives the owner control of the property. If the property would otherwise stay empty for any length of time this can be quite sensible. With more to loose, most licensees treat the property well and generally the property is less problematic for the owner than if it were empty.

So in most cases my advice would be. If you need the property back soon evict the squatters, but if you don’t, consider reaching agreement with them.
But then this isn’t a normal case. The squatters have a point to make, and what’s more plenty of people will sympathise with it, even if they don’t approve of the method. Evict them and the Keens’ will provide a great media spectacle as squatters are dragged screaming from the house and then have to board the place up like a military installation to prevent more squatters getting in again.
Reaching agreement with them might be counterintuitive, but it would hardly get the Daily Mail off their backs. Hmmm.. such are the dilemmas for those who leave their properties empty.

Something is very wrong

I apologise, the quality of these photographs is awful, but then so is the subject matter. This is the Ocean Estate in Stepney East London. In 2001 Tony Blair visited here to launch a £56million regeneration scheme that promised to transform one of Britain’s worst estates. Built between 1949 and 1975 it is made up of about 40 blocks and some 1700 flats all of which were due to come down to be replaced by a bright new mixed tenure community. But it wasn’t long before things started go wrong. By 2004 costs had spiralled, and several of the organisations involved were facing accusations of fraud.

Eight years on, what has happened? I visited recently. What I saw shocked me. No bright new community, no new buildings, and no demolition. Eight blocks, emptied out at the beginning of the decade remain empty. Amongst them were a handful of squatters and a few forgotten leaseholders who had the terrible misfortune to buy their flats before Tower Hamlets announced the regeneration plans. A vanload of heavies with pit bulls in the car park turned out to be council contractors securing (unsuccessfully it turns out) the estate against squatting.

I was invited in to see the work of some other council contractors. A newly vacated flat had just had the anti-squatting treatment. This it turns out involves taking a sledgehammer to all the windows and doors, smashing all light and electric sockets, pouring concrete down the toilet, then smashing that and the basin too. Finally the walls are sprayed with non drying paint. It doesn’t work, squatters have time and ingenuity on their hands and they move in anyway and repair the damage. Allegedly sometimes assisted by council contractors who have lost faith in the futility of their task.

If this were an isolated example it would be bad enough, but this is what I am seeing across the country. The Ferrier Estate in Greenwich, Woodberry down in Hackney, Wood End in Coventry to say nothing of the many stalled regeneration plans involving privately owned homes in the nine pathfinder regions in the north of England. Houses being smashed up to prevent them being used whilst waiting for regeneration schemes that are looking increasingly unlikely to come off. Something is very wrong. These grainy images were all my cameraphone could pick up, but they do perhaps pick up the darkness of what is going on here.

Wisdom in the Sun

You can’t always say this about a story, but the most enlightened comments on this can be found in the readers letters pages of the Sun. The story is this one, published in virtually every paper this morning. A squatter requested a list of empty homes from Lambeth Council. The council correctly decided that it was obliged to comply with the request and duly (but reluctantly) responded with a list of 800 empty homes in its borough. The council itself, it appears, own most of the properties on the list. The press has been quick to condemn the council for releasing the information, but no one apart from the Sun’s readers have mentioned the real problem. Why on earth have Lambeth got 800 empty homes? When you hear, as I have, that some of them have been empty since the 1970s, and when you know, as I do, that Lambeth kicked out lots of short-life tenants last year because it wanted vacant possession of its properties, it’s hard to disagree with what these Sun readers say:

“Why have they got empty homes when people are homeless,?”
“Haha good teach the council a lesson”
“They should be fixed up and have tenants move in”“How many families are homeless who can’t have one?”

Empty MOD Homes - Still a Scandal

In the early 1990s empty homes owned by the military became a national scandal. Thousands of homes for service people were left empty causing public outrage at a time of record homelessness. To be fair to the military changing defence needs caused by the end of the cold war had caused many properties to become surplus. But the MOD proved ineffective in dealing with them. In one of the Empty Homes Agency’s first campaigns we said that surplus military homes should be used to house those in housing need. The government responded, and in 1996 they took a dramatic step that was supposed to end the problem once for all. They sold nearly 60,000 homes (the majority of the military’s housing stock) to a private company Annington Homes. In one fell swoop Annington homes became, and remains today the largest private landowner in the country. The government’s idea was that Annington would manage refurbish and gradually dispose of the homes onto the private market. With market forces introduced into the stock of housing, the thinking was vacancy rates would drop and the military’s housing stock would better match their housing needs.

Unfortunately the story did not end there. Figures uncovered by the Liberal Democrats today reveal that the military’s housing vacancy rate is as bad as ever. With an estimated 9000 empty homes the military’s vacancy rate is approximately 20%. Seven times the national average and around ten times the rate of an average housing association. The customary response from the MOD to accusations of high vacancy levels is that they are a special case. And indeed they are. The military needs a flexible housing stock to accommodate changing operational needs. Most people would agree that service people returning from a tour of duty abroad need a decent home to return to, and that means keeping a greater vacancy rate than other housing providers.

But what is so significant about these figures is that they don't reppresent pristine properties waiting to welcome new residents. A BBC’s investigation for the Today programme last year knocked the MOD’s argument right off its pedestal. Visiting a selection of empty military homes the BBC discovered that most were in no fit state to house anybody. Left totally unmanaged and, amazingly – unsecured, the homes fell into semi-dereliction. The Military's argument that they are mothballed awaiting a returning battalion from Iraq is rendered absurd and faintly insulting to service men and women. The one empty MOD property I saw last year that was in good condition (with windows open and heating on- presumably to stop condensation rather than heat the atmosphere and attract intruders) ended up a squat .

So what went wrong, and how come the Military still own so much residential property? It turns out that many of these homes are the very same ones that were sold to Annington homes in 1996. Discovering later that they didn’t have enough housing, the MOD leased back many of the homes it sold. Now, saddled with high rents and dilapidation clauses, leaving them empty now is even more wasteful to the MOD than it was in the early 1990s. Can anything be done? I think it can. There are housing providers that are perfectly suited to these circumstances. Shortlife housing providers are very good at making use of the most unpromising buildings. They can help with repairs and renovation and provide what these homes need most – occupants. If military needs change and the MOD need them back, shortlife housing agreements allow for them to be rapidly returned to the owner. The MOD gets residents and a management service to stop the properties from deteriorating, Neighbours loose an eyesore and source of anti social behaviour. Lots of people get homes to live in. We put this to Defence Estates last year and on the Today programme last February and they said that they would do it. So what’s happened in the last year? Nothing. They haven’t put any properties out to shortlife and their vacancy rate has gone up. Shame on them.

Posh Squats

I have been resisting the temptation to post anything about so-called posh squats up until now. They appear to be getting plenty of publicity without my help. Today, however, I have spoken to six journalists about them, including, if she will forgive me for bracketing her in such company, Vanessa Feltz. There is no doubt that this has become a big story.

It started in Brighton, then Upper Grovesnor Street, then Green Park and now Park Lane. Some of the poshest addresses in the UK have become squatted by what appears to be a new breed of lifestyle squatters. In total their number is tiny but the fact that they have infiltrated such prestigious neighbourhoods gives them access to the media in a quite phenomenal way. What amazes me is the uncritical way they have been reported. Both the Telegraph and the Mail managed to print articles on squatting without uttering the words scrounger, freeloader or sponger - unthinkable just a few weeks ago. The recession moves in mysterious ways!