Please explain this to me, where did the money go?

[Adrian W]

So this bloke seems to be a nutcase, digs tunnels under his house and stores rubbish.
It just happens that the house is on prime development land and it then gets sold for £1.2 million a few years later, in the mean time the bloke who is old dies. And somehow there is a bill for at least £400k owing to the council for something that they insisted on doing. Please explain this to me.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-188986...

[paulrockliffe]

I didn't realise a Council could evict you from a home that you own. The article reads as if it was Council accommodation, but then says he inherited it from his parents. Do they mean that he 'inherited' the Council tenancy when his parents died?

[Adrian W]

I assumed from reading the article that it was his, however you may be right and it was rented

[paulrockliffe]

They would have had to section him and get some sort of costs award against the value of his property. There's lots in there that doesn't make sense though. Surely the fix was simply to knock it down, fill the hole with the rubble and start again though.

[OscarIndia]

It was unsafe, so they condemned it and evicted him. He did own it, but the cost for making it sfe was £293k which he didn't pay.

[Adrian W]

paulrockliffe said:

They would have had to section him and get some sort of costs award against the value of his property. There's lots in there that doesn't make sense though. Surely the fix was simply to knock it down, fill the hole with the rubble and start again though.

So who comissioned the builders and what could cost £408000? i'd love to see that quote. phone cement company, order ready mix lorry, fill foundations with said cement...........£408000 please.

[Adrian W]

OscarIndia said:

It was unsafe, so they condemned it and evicted him. He did own it, but the cost for making it sfe was £293k which he didn't pay.

I wouldn't pay it either It seems from this article the council was spending his money like water.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10352222

Id love to know what the developer is going to do to the repaired (safe) house.

[Deva Link]

Adrian W said:

So who comissioned the builders and what could cost £408000? i'd love to see that quote. phone cement company, order ready mix lorry, fill foundations with said cement...........£408000 please.

The repairs cost just under £300K. They spent £45K putting him up in a hotel for 3yrs until the found him a flat (which he apparently tried to make a hole in ) and £70K on maintenance following the repairs.

There's some doubt about whether they can rocover the last two amounts.

I suppose the figures are typical local council public sector inflated figures so no surprise there. No idea why they didn't knock the place down, but, guessing, perhpas their legal requirement is to make it safe and they have no remit to flatten the place?

Doing work on private houses and putting a charge on them isn't all that unusual. I suppose evicting people is, but people don't normally try and destroy their own houses.

[ralphrj]

Deva Link said:

No idea why they didn't knock the place down

Ironically, in order to stop people buying up houses in the area, demolishing them and building new houses the council had designated the area as 'protected' (or whatever the correct term is).

Therefore, it was the council preventing the council from knocking down the house.

[Deva Link]

ralphrj said:

Therefore, it was the council preventing the council from knocking down the house.

Thanks. They could have just given it a gentle nudge though! There's quite a famous planning case where someone did that.

[Oakey]

If it was sold for £1.2million who had the money from this sale and why is there money owed to the council?

[Adrian W]

Even more odd, if you go on Streetview the house that the council spent so much on repairing seems to have been demolished.............................. Looks like a very fashionable area now!

[Deva Link]

Adrian W said:

Even more odd, if you go on Streetview the house that the council spent so much on repairing seems to have been demolished.............................. Looks like a very fashionable area now!

Don't know how old the pictures are but it's there in my view - at the top of Mortimer Road, at its junction with Stamford Road.

It must be still there for the auctioneers to have sold it! Although the article does say "the site where the derelict house sits has been granted planning permission for two three-storey town houses with gardens and basements" so perhaps they buyers pre-empted the auction, or moved very fast!

[98elise]

Deva Link said:

Don't know how old the pictures are but it's there in my view - at the top of Mortimer Road, at its junction with Stamford Road.

It must be still there for the auctioneers to have sold it! Although the article does say "the site where the derelict house sits has been granted planning permission for two three-storey town houses with gardens and basements" so perhaps they buyers pre-empted the auction, or moved very fast!

Good news for the developer is they won't have to dig those basements