Professional agencies marketing empty homes to potential SQUATTERS (and they'll even help you break in for a fee!)

Published 05th Mar 2011

The advert wouldn’t look out of place in any estate agent’s window: ‘Ground floor Victorian flat. Garden. Parking. Lovely Road. Five minutes from Woking station.’

The property is being ‘marketed’ — along with scores of others — from the third-floor office of a building near a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in an alleyway in East London.

The addresses are displayed on a noticeboard on the wall. Most give just the house number and the street: there’s one in Winnington Road, N2 … Abbey Road NW18 … Gypsy Road Gardens SE27 … Normandy Road NW10.
Backed up: Squatters, such as these in Highgate, North London have a network of support to rely on - much to the annoyance of homeowners

Backed up: Squatters, such as these in Highgate, North London have a network of support to rely on - much to the annoyance of homeowners

‘Take your pick,’ says a young woman with short spiky hair who is manning the premises.

The properties put up on the noticeboard have one thing in common. They are empty. Well, for the moment at least. Nor will it cost the stream of ‘customers’ looking for somewhere to live, who troop in and out of these premises in Whitechapel every day, a penny to move in.

All that is needed is a ‘crowbar, torch and screwdriver’ (the tools are featured on flyers and posters in the office) to break in if an open window or unlocked door cannot be found.

If you don’t have a house-breaking kit to hand, don’t worry: the Advisory Service For Squatters (ASS) knows a man who does. Matt has a posting on the ASS website called ‘handyman services’ offering ‘electrician work, plumbing, gas work, locksmith’.

‘I can help u open secure buildings,’ he writes. ‘I have my own tools. Don’t be afraid to call me, even if u have problem with [sic] something is not listed.’

Matt, it turns out, is a 20-year-old Hungarian. He works — when he is not breaking the law — as an operator in the control room of a taxi firm.

I pose as a squatter, and Matt tells me he had ‘opened’ more than 100 properties for squatters, mainly in London, for a ‘small fee’.

‘There are many ways to get in if you cannot get in through an open window or door,’ he boasts. ‘You can force the window, and then just fix it or replace the damage. You just have to make it invisible. The police can’t do anything then.’

He’s right, sadly. This area of the law isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, as scores of middle-class homeowners — more affluent post codes are increasingly being targeted — are now finding to their cost in the capital and elsewhere.

Take ‘Winnington Road’, for example, one of the addresses on that insidious ‘hit-list’ back at the HQ of the Advisory Service for Squatters. The house, it transpires, is in Hampstead. It was built two years ago but has only recently been sold.

The new owners, a couple in their 40s, were visiting the property when we arrived to check it out. They were horrified to discover that their home, worth around £8 million, might be about to be invaded. They said they would be installing ‘security immediately — someone to stay here day and night’ until they moved in.

Neighbours told us they had been visited by police warning them about the threat of squatters in the area.

Squatting itself is not illegal, for England is one of the few countries in the world that recognises so-called ‘squatters’ rights’. But breaking into a ‘vacant’ building — a skill in which Matt the Handyman excels — to gain occupation is.

Not that there is fat chance of ‘Matt’ or any other culprit being prosecuted. As the ASS gleefully points out in their handbook, police can only make an arrest ‘if there were witnesses’, and the ‘ASS know the law better than most owners or their solicitors, and better than many judges’.

In other words, they know every loophole in the book. So much so that volunteers from the group often represent fellow squatters in court during eviction proceedings. They also help organise ‘Practical Squatting Evenings’ at locations throughout London, where they provide workshops on how to occupy homes.

More alarmingly, squatters all over Britain use the group’s website and social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to communicate with each other and share ‘intelligence’ about potential squats — or ‘empties’ as they are known in this pernicious subculture.

The importance of this ‘research’ is spelt out in an 83-page booklet, published by the ASS, called the Squatters Handbook (yours for £1.50). ‘There are two important things that you should try to find out about a place, especially if you are going to do a lot of work on it: who owns it, and what are their plans?’

The information, potential squatters are told, can usually be found through the Land Registry (‘each search costs £4’) and by scouring the planning register at the town hall.

The results of this detective work are often posted on squatters’ forums on the internet, along with photographs of properties. One such forum has more than 12,000 members; another, Squatters Unite, has 300 members.

It would be difficult to imagine a more cynical and co-ordinated assault on the property owning class, a campaign spearheaded by the wretched Advisory Service for Squatters.

Their ‘calling card’ is becoming as ubiquitous in London as legitimate estate agents boards: it’s a legal notice from the Squatters Handbook.

One such ‘notice’ was left in the window of the five-bedroom house John Hamilton-Brown was renovating in North London.

‘Take Notice,’ it warned, ‘that we live in this property, it is our home and we intend to stay here …

‘That any entry or attempt to enter these premises without our permission is therefore a criminal offence ... That if you attempt to enter by violence we will prosecute you. You may receive a sentence of up to six months’ imprisonment and/or a fine of up to £5,000; that if you want to get us out you will have to issue a claim for possession in the County Court or in the High Court.’

That was in January, shortly after 36-year-old Mr Hamilton-Brown bought the £1 million property with the intention of turning it into a home for his wife Rebecca and their two daughters, aged four and two. He is still waiting to get back in.

‘It breaks my heart to walk past the house with the kids and be asked by our oldest “When can we move in?” and “Why can’t we go inside and have a look?” explained a weary, quietly furious Mr Hamilton-Brown.

‘I dread to think what we’ll discover when we finally get our house back. The neighbours tell me they have been unable to sleep because these scroungers have been holding parties until five or six in the morning most nights, then sleeping it off in the day.’

About a dozen squatters from France, Spain, Poland and England forced a window in the early hours to get in. There were no witnesses, so he couldn’t call the police because it was a civil matter. His only option was to go to court.

Mr Hamilton-Brown was not eligible for Legal Aid, so he represented himself to save money. The squatters, on the other hand, did have a solicitor. Because they were EU citizens and unemployed, they qualified for free legal advice.

‘It’s just wrong,’ said Mr Hamilton-Brown.

After four trips to court and nearly two blood-pressure raising months — when, as the Mail reported last week, he was forced to communicate with the squatters through his own letterbox — they are finally due to be evicted next week.

‘No doubt they’re already planning their next move, and another family will be forced to go through what we have been through,’ said Mr Hamilton-Brown, who has been living with his family in a flat nearby.

Such stories are, alas, becoming commonplace. Statistics released by legal publisher Sweet & Maxwell show that 29 cases related to squatters and trespassers were heard in the High Court in the year to December 2009, the most up-to-date figures available. This compares with just 10 the previous year, two in 2007, and just one in 2005.

This, however, represents only the tip of the iceberg, because, traditionally, very few prosecutions against squatters reach this stage. The squatters are too clever for that, dragging out the legal process until the last possible moment, then moving on before an actual court hearing is due. The government said it was now ‘considering strengthening the law to give homeowners more rights’

Today, there are few areas of Britain’s major cities which aren’t blighted by squatters. Numbers have been boosted by an influx of squatters from Europe, forced out by debt crises in their own countries.

And one of their first ports of call when they arrive in Britain is the Advisory Service for Squatters in Whitechapel. Take the following appeal that was recently posted on the ASS website. It was from a 21-year-old unemployed Latvian and is far from an isolated example.

‘Can someone lend me a drill,’ he writes. ‘I need to open a squat … no one I know has one. Or, you can come with me to open it, and I’ll give you the best room.’

The Latvian was believed to have been among the 30-strong group who took over the former home of ITV director John Ormerod in Highgate on Boxing Day before being removed by bailiffs.

Such tactics are, whatever they might say publicly, encouraged by the ASS — a collective funded by private donations. Among the volunteers on duty this week, when a Mail reporter posing as a ‘first-time’ squatter visited the premises, was the young woman with short spiky hair we referred to earlier. Her name is Jess.

She was sitting on the floor advising a couple about a forthcoming court case. Her advice to our reporter about how to gain entry to a property: ‘Use a crowbar.’

‘You can do anything if no one sees you,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t worry about CCTV — there is more footage in London than there are people to watch it.

‘But if you are going to use tools, then you need someone to be on the lookout. If the cops come, and even if it is as plain as day that you are holding a crowbar, just drop it, because then it is just your word against theirs.’

Jess gave the reporter a copy of the Squatters Handbook. On Page 21, there are detailed instructions, along with a diagram, of how to take apart locks.

‘Technically, changing a lock is criminal damage, but it is the first thing you need to do,’ Jess said.

Another tip on the same page: break in during the day, and wear council-style overalls to avoid suspicion. ‘Some places are almost impossible to get into without making a lot of noise and alerting neighbours. If this is the case, choose a sensible time of the day — most people get a bit jumpy if they hear suspicious noises at night. Some people [squatters] wear high-visibility vests and go in during the day.’

Or how about this piece of advice: ‘If there is an alarm, it could be worth setting it off as an experiment to see what response there is and how much time you might have.

Systems vary, but sensors can sometimes be de-activated by covering them in tape or by removing the batteries, and the noise can be dulled on some alarms by piling on a few coats.

‘Ask around for more detailed advice, but normally the best policy is to ignore the alarm, secure the building and worry about it afterwards.’

he people who run the ASS are rather coy about revealing their identity, preferring to give only their Christian names.

But the group, we have learned, rent their office from the co-owners of the building.

Among them is Sonia Markham, a director of the radical publication the Friends of Freedom Press, which supports squatters and has an office in the same building.

She is also the sister-in-law of the late Corin Redgrave, actor, prominent Trotskyist, and member of the Workers Revolutionary Party.

Mrs Markham lives with her husband in a street in leafy Wandsworth where homes sell for £1 million. Would she like squatters moving into her front room?

‘If it were my house, I wouldn’t be particularly pleased,’ she admitted this week. She insists, however, that she did not condone squatters taking the law into their own hands, and said she had ‘no connection’ with the Squatters Advisory Service — which seems puzzling.

In the wake of the slew of damaging headlines about squatters in recent months, the government said it was now ‘considering strengthening the law to give homeowners more rights’.

Source: ' Daily Mail '

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