LONDON LETTER:Coming home from holidays to find people have moved into your home without your knowledge is a reality for some in the UK
CONNAN GUPTA returned from holiday to his home in Camberwell in London recently to find it occupied by five squatting Italians who had changed the locks.
The squatters, students who said they could not afford London’s high housing costs, refused to leave, leaving Gupta locked out of his home for a fortnight.
In May, Abu-Taher Ahmed (68) and his wife and four children came back to their property in Tottenham – which they had left while some building work was going on – to find eight Romanians inside. He told a local newspaper later that they refused to let them in, while sipping champagne, sunbathing and throwing a party. For comfort, they had even installed their own satellite dish.
Ahmed climbed through an open window where he was then confronted by the aggressive squatters, who ordered him to leave. He barricaded himself, his wife Iffet (52) and their children into the master bedroom for a weekend after police told him it was a civil matter. The eight demanded £3,000 to leave, but finally quit the property when police threatened them with arrest for breach of the peace.
Helped by internet forums, squatters have become more organised, even down to holding information evenings in a cafe in Hackney and another near Elephant and Castle every month.
Squatting itself is not a criminal offence in England and is covered by civil law.
It is illegal to gain entry by breaking in or damaging windows and doors – something which, squatters admit, is impossible to avoid unless someone has left a door or window unlocked.
Using utilities, such as electricity and gas, is also illegal, unless the squatters directly contact the suppliers – but the same courtesy does not under law have to be granted to the property-owners.
“When you move in you should note the reading on the electricity and gas meters and contact the suppliers telling them you wish to start paying for the fuel. A copy of such a letter can help show the police you are trying to pay. Don’t tell them you are squatting, as then they do not have a duty to supply you,” says the Advisory Service for Squatters.
Homeowners can ask the police to remove squatters from their home immediately without having to obtain an eviction order from the courts, though since it is a civil law matter, local constabulary can often be reluctant to get involved. However, the landlord or homeowner is the one in danger of running foul of the law if they force their way back in when there is someone inside.
The situation for the police is complicated because they themselves are in danger of breaching Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act if they violently enter a premises against opposition. Squatters are being told by some squatters’ advisory groups to “make sure you know the legal situation better than they do (not usually very difficult)”.
The occupation of family homes, obviously, brings squatters to greater, unpopular prominence. Sometimes their actions meet with a grudging approval – as long as they behave themselves once in occupation – given the large number of often large properties left vacant for years by wealthy owners in central London.
The squatters law is different in Scotland. By the Trespass Act (Scotland) 1865, it is a criminal offence to “lodge in any premises or encamp on” private property without the consent of the owner. The maximum penalty is a fine and up to 21 days in jail.
The 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act was supposed to improve owners’ rights by giving the opportunity to apply for “interim possession orders” (IPOs), though, in practice, it has changed little.
“This can be nasty, but has turned out to be not nearly so bad as everyone thought when it was going through parliament. It cannot be used on the majority of squatters, and so far there have been very few IPOs. Most IPOs which squatters defended have flopped and the owners have been forced to use the old procedures instead,” says the Advisory Service for Squatters.
Council properties, however, rather than private buildings, are the best target, since a surprising number are vacant: “Often quite reasonable properties are left empty because of mismanagement, bureaucracy or low demand on hard-to-let estates (as people do not want to move to them). If there are a lot of squatters the council will take longer to evict people,” says one internet guide.
Some council staff can be “unofficially sympathetic” to squatters and leave eviction until the properties are required, particularly if the people living there would simply have to rehoused by the local authority anyway. However, the councils, squatters’ organisations complain, have recently increased the numbers of “illegal or heavy-handed evictions”.
Repossessed houses are a favourite target, since the banks have to take the squatters to court as long as the previous occupants have been formally evicted. Meanwhile, pubs – a growing number of which are lying idle in the UK, some for years – have moved up squatters’ preference lists.
So far, the Gupta and Ahmed cases involving private homes would seem to be the exception. “Best avoided,” says one squatters’ guide.
