WHEN I stepped into the back garden of a semi-detached house in Harrow, I saw the building – little bigger than a garage – complete with its own front door, and even a garden gnome on the doorstep.
This new structure – complete with self-contained kitchen, toilet and bathroom, suitcases dumped on the floor, was clearly home to someone willing to pay £850 for the privilege of living there. This was, we believe, pure profit to the landlord who had built this illegal structure. Not a penny was going to the local authority which provides services like rubbish collection and schools to those living there.
This is the reality of beds in sheds, which information and reports from residents suggests is becoming a creeping problem in Harrow.
The most recent example I saw followed a site investigation I went on last week involving Harrow Council officers, the police and the fire service. It’s important to stress our visit followed complaints from residents about the use of the property.
Our housing team already suspected the three-bedroom property, sat on a road five minutes from the town centre, was being run as an unlicensed house of multiple occupation (HMO). With that in mind, we obtained a court warrant to investigate and, at the same time, serve a planning enforcement notice.
The occupants, mostly east Europeans, clearly did not expect to start their day with up to a dozen men and women in high visibility uniforms milling in the stairwell but we made it clear our dispute was not with them – it was with their landlord.
Once inside it was relatively easy to establish this was also an unlicensed HMO. A few checks revealed that up to 12 people were potentially living inside the main house, the extension and the stand-alone garden annexe. Individual toilets, bathrooms and Yale locks abounded, pointing to the subdivision of the property.
If you do the maths based on typical room rental prices in Harrow, this unassuming semi is potentially generating £4,000 a month for the owner, who we will be interviewing.
So where’s the harm, cynics might ask? Landlords are business people after all. The real issue for us is that occupants of unlawful HMOs and ‘beds in sheds’ like this using council services – bin collection and schools most obviously (a mother of two was taking her children to school when we arrived) – but very often the council does not collect council tax from these tenants to help support them. And the drain on the public purse goes further when you consider the occupants of the standalone garden building were apparently also claiming Housing Benefit. The occupants of these buildings may be a hidden population, but their call on our services is very real.
The other issue with beds in sheds is safety. If an unscrupulous landlord decides to cram as many people as possible into an unlawful house of multiple occupation, where is the guarantee it is safe? If a hastily built and converted outbuilding burns down, will the fire brigade be able to save the occupants, if they don’t know who actually lives there?
In Harrow, we are investigating more than 100 suspected illegal houses of multiple occupation with a noticeable rise in complaints from the public. The concern must be that a kind of hidden residential market is sprouting up in the cracks and back gardens of our suburbs.
Over the coming weeks the council is going to be stepping up its action against the beds in sheds industry. We are working in an innovative new way with police, benefits, the fire service and other partners to build up an intelligence picture of where these houses are, and we will be acting on that. This isn’t about ‘picking on’ people who are desperate to live in the capital; it is about safeguarding them and ensuring Harrow residents who pay their fair way aren’t subsidising unscrupulous landlords who believe that regulations only apply to others. Anyone foolish enough to think that can expect a knock at the door.
It was my privilege to be among hundreds of mourners at the funeral of Donal Drohan last Friday. The tragic death of this hugely popular officer continues to overshadow life at the Civic Centre –especially the depot – and the huge turn-out, with not a spare seat to be had at St Joseph’s Church in Wealdstone, was testament to that fact. Donal’s friends and colleagues at the council will of course continue to support the family in the days ahead, and I know the outpouring of feeling for Donal has provided some comfort to them.
Donal’s wife Geraldine has asked me to pass on a message:
“Thank you for the support of all the family and friends who attended Donal’s funeral last Friday. Along with the many messages of comfort I have received, it will give me strength in the days ahead.
“Donal’s friends and colleagues at Harrow Council have done a sterling job and have done their utmost to make his last day special. Their attendance was heartfelt; they went the extra mile just as Donal would have done.”