Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Landlord set to lose rents from illegal conversions
Rogue landlords continue to blight the Harringay Ladder - Haringey Council have managed to bring one to book.
A rogue landlord faces fines and having his rents confiscated after losing his appeal against conviction for two illegal house conversions.
Cllr Nilgun Canver, Cabinet Member for the Environment, said:
"Hopefully we will now see justice done. The extra rent accrued while people were living in illegally converted flats may now be confiscated. I hope this is a lesson to all landlords who try to take shortcuts or hope to dodge planning laws."
[name removed] of Southgate converted properties on Hewitt Road and Burgoyne Road N4, to four and five self-contained flats. He had no planning permission for the conversions. Consequently council planning enforcement officers issued enforcement notices requiring him to return the properties to single dwellings.
He was first prosecuted and convicted in 2010 when he failed to comply with the enforcement notice. A further prosecution in 2011 resulted in a second conviction.
Subsequent planning inspection visits found no changes to the properties and he was prosecuted and convicted for a third time in January this year. He unsuccessfully appealed the conviction at Wood Green Crown Court on March 11, arguing he had done all he could to comply with the enforcement notices. The judge dismissed this as 'far too little too late'.
Haringey Council requested that the matter be referred for confiscation proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act as so much time had lapsed since the enforcement notices were first in breach. He stands to potentially lose all of the calculated benefits from renting these properties as flats in breach of the enforcement notice and may be fined and asked to pay costs incurred by the council.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Right. Landlords have no responsibility whatever for how they manage the buildings they own. The only people to blame for this rubbish left on the street are the politicians.
Click for original by Liz Ixer on Flickr
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Or Joylon, Doris or Tobias could click through to Liz's photo and her explanation.
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Permalink Reply by markb on
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(ignores the strawman/sarcasm)
Politicians play a key part in creating the context that drives peoples behaviour - that's what policy, regulations and service provisioning is all about. (It even applies to fly tipping, but that's a distraction)
There will always be problems but if a problem is endemic it's time to look at policy or its implementation.
It certainly applies to housing.
Under Thatcher council housing construction dried up and after her almost nothing was built. http://fullfact.org/factchecks/council_house_building_margaret_that...
A complete policy failure by consecutive governments in my opinion.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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That's twice recently I've seen a reference to " strawman " What does it mean ?
The contexts don't seem to fit the " man of straw " idea - someone with no financial assets.
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Make an analogy/similar example, then attack that to 'scupper' the original point, even though the analogy has some key different properties to the original point, invalidating the analogy for the purpose of the argument. Can be deliberate or simply a bad example.
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As I seem to be the person criticised for using a "Straw Man" logical fallacy, let me add some points.
FPR's sweeping proposition was that: "You can't regulate a market you have made illegal. By making something illegal you have ended your ability to regulate it and handed over that responsibility to the black market."
I'm not interested in "scuppering" Finsbury Park Ranger's point. I am interested in clarifying areas of agreement/disagreement and possibly widening some areas of consensus. My example of gun control wasn't an analogy. It was one of the well known examples where FPR's proposition has been tested. A further example is control of drugs and pornography. Slavery in its modern forms and people trafficking are others.
I tend to think that illegal conversions of homes and especially ignoring issues of say, overcrowding and fire safety, are often difficult to control and there will indeed be a black market of people who break the law. Because they can get away with it; and because the profits are high. But that's not a justification for inaction.
I may be wrong, but I take the basic question raised by FPR to be: what should be the extent of the role and powers of the State and Local State? Which is a question I treat very seriously. Especially as in England we now have three main parties who seem to accept a new "normal": that the role and power must shrink/be "rolled back".
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Again can I suggest scepticism about single sweeping solutions to complex problems. In this case, I suspect that one of the real problems is that far too many people seem to be hunting for and arguing in favour of "the only real solution".
To be clear, I'm referring to general public debates, not just this site. For example, we have the: "build more social housing" argument - which I agree with though it's plainly not the whole answer. And there's the "market, market, market and by the way did I mention the market" solution. Plus the growing debate about cities and gentrification and "social cleansing". And we haven't even started down a list which includes land-banking; international property investment; property taxes; Engels on The Housing Question; the myth of "Mixed Communities", population churn; architecture; etc etc.
There's a Policy Exchange report you may be interested to look at, FPR. It's not the answer of course. And right-wing think tanks are not my usual browsing over Christmas. But, finally getting round to posting and thinking about some photos of a few streets in Bloomsbury, I was prompted to reread Create Streets.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor to May 2014)
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Burton Street is just around the corner from where I work and is a good example of a mix of social housing, private renting and ownership. Your second picture of Cartwright Gardens is a mix of hotels and accommodation for UCL students. In fact the whole area around there is a great example of mixed tenure and it all contributes to a lively and attractive place to live (and work)
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Thumbs up for the no-silver bullet, no single-solution line of thinking.
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Do we need to stop big posh houses being turned into flats? Illegally converted yes, converted, not necessarily. After all, many big posh houses were built to house large families with servants and there aren't anything like as many of those these days, and many big posh houses were always rented as rooms even back in the day. 221B Baker Street would be a good example - Holmes and Watson rented rooms in a larger house.
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No offence FPR, but Harringay (as opposed to bigger divisions like Haringey, London, England, Great Britiain, Uk, etc...) is pretty tiny. The fact that the planning authorities have decided that it's not a good idea to convert more houses in a specific handful of streets doesn't mean our only options are to burn the planning rule book or concrete the Green Belt!
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