Squatting

Debate between Mike Weatherley and Mike Freer

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Brady.

I will start this debate with a quote:

“This place isn’t nice enough for me. I want somewhere posher, with a swimming pool if possible.”

Those are not the words of someone complaining about the gym facilities at the House of Commons. They are the words of one of London’s most prolific squatters about his latest free home in Hampstead, as reported in the Evening Standard last week. We are all covering his council tax contributions, his electricity bills and his gas bills, and we are all paying for the police to investigate each time a new break-in is reported.

As my hon. Friend the Minister stated in a recent letter to me, squatting is

“the unauthorised occupation of property belonging to another person and amounts to trespass on land”.

Some forms of trespass are criminal, such as those that take place on licensed aerodromes and railways, but I am focusing today on all the other forms of squatting. They relate to offices, flats and houses; to empty and occupied buildings, and to private and public property. These forms of squatting are unlawful but not criminal.

Squatting is a huge problem in Hove and Portslade and I have been campaigning on the issue since I was elected to Parliament. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Minister and our right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government have made joint announcements on the issue. I am also grateful to the organisations, such as Landlord Action, that have helped me to raise awareness of this issue around the country.

The Ministers’ announcements will be widely welcomed by those who have been adversely affected by squatters. I will make the case today that time is of the essence. The problem is getting worse, not better. However, there are two sides to this story and getting to the crux of the matter is not just about cracking down on trespassers themselves.

I wish to dispel the myth, once and for all, that squatters and homeless people are one and the same. My constituency has both wealth and deprivation. It is a Mecca for every character imaginable, which makes it such a wonderfully diverse place to live in. Homelessness is an issue locally, but we have a fantastic support network of local charities, including Emmaus, Brighton Housing Trust, Off The Fence and the YMCA, which look after a great number of vulnerable people. It is our duty to look after such people and I fully support the excellent work being carried out in this area.

Tackling homelessness is also a high priority for Brighton and Hove city council. The council is working hard to reduce the number of empty properties in the city and last year alone 168 long-term empty properties were brought back into use. In 1997, 200 council-owned properties were long-term empty but that figure is now down to just 28.

However, putting considerable resources into removing squatters and paying for the damage that they inevitably cause places a strain on council services. In the past 18 months, there have been 10 instances of squatting in council-owned properties in Brighton and Hove, which has cost local people more than £30,000 in legal bills alone. The repair bill for one particular property was £40,000, which again had to be picked up by the residents of Brighton and Hove. Squatters are damaging buildings that are in the process of refurbishment, which only exacerbates the housing shortage.

In my experience, squatters do not fit the profile of the kind of vulnerable people that we should be looking out for. I am generalising of course, but for the purpose of this discussion I want to make the point that serial squatters know the law. They submit freedom of information requests to councils to find out where there are empty buildings; they are “web-savvy” and highly resourceful; they run rings around the law, and what these professional squatters lack in respect for other people’s property they make up for in guile and tenacity. They are organised and frequently menacing.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of the Shelter website, which I was quite horrified to read? As he knows, my constituency has a persistent problem of squatters. But Shelter has a guide to squatting, about how to keep on the right side of the law, on its website. Does he agree that it is reprehensible to encourage people in this illegal activity?

[Mike Weatherley]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and I very much agree with him. I will go on to make some specific points about “The Squatters Handbook” shortly.

I said that squatters know the law well but the absolute opposite is true when it comes to the public in general, who would be shocked if they knew just how powerless they are to take on squatters. Many members of the public do not find that out until it is too late. Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 makes it an offence to use violence, or threats of violence, to gain access to premises when

“there is someone present on those premises…who is opposed to the entry”.

That section is what is usually referred to as squatters’ rights, but I do not believe that it exists to assist squatting. It is in place to prevent unscrupulous landlords from using violence or intimidation to evict legitimate tenants. Squatters, therefore, have such rights only by accident.

A local resident asked me a question in my local paper, The Argus:

“If squatting is a practice that is socially unacceptable, how is leaving a property empty for more than a year any more acceptable?”

My answer is simple—it is not acceptable at all. I have contacted my local council on a number of occasions about the issue of empty buildings belonging to exploitative developers. We should be careful, though, not to embrace squatting on the principle that “our enemy’s enemy is a friend”. We must get tough on bad landlords—and soon—but buildings can be temporarily empty for all sorts of reasons and many of those reasons are entirely acceptable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mike Weatherley and Mike Freer

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

3. What estimate he made of the effect on public finances of the introduction of a graduate tax.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

6. What estimate he made of the effect on public finances of the introduction of a graduate tax.