Letting agents are marketing illegal properties, a BBC programme alleged last night.
It named an agent, which according to its website, is an NAEA member. The property shown was a flat without any external windows, behind a fake garage door, being let out for £1,000 a month to a family whose first language is not English.
Inside Out, broadcast in London, also drew attention to a new generation of ‘beds in sheds’ – more upmarket, generally well built structures at the end of gardens, but which had nevertheless been built without any planning permission.
The programme said that many owners claimed the new-looking properties had been built four years ago, meaning that they could no longer be subject to enforcement action. Inside Out described the properties as being under the radar, and despite their better appearance sub-standard.
In the case of the 1930s block of garages, Inside Out showed a flat without windows, where the tenants said they were paying £1,000 rent a month. The agent was named as Milestone, of Willesden, which displays the NAEA and TPO logos on its websites.
Milestone denied to the BBC that it even had the property on its books and asked the reporter to leave.
Ombudsman Christopher Hamer appeared on the programme, saying that it was agents’ responsibility to make further inquiries about the properties they are handling.
Comments
If you come here with nothing you get nothing for nothing (£1000?) -just clear off back to wherever you come from!
You always know you've rattled someone when they resort to insulting you :-)
Do you have a television? if you watch stuff that doesn't have a telephone poll it is possible to find programs that show the conditions that some tenants have left behind. Some of the folk who are hot bedding in these sheds consider themselves very lucky to be here.
Leicester is a bit of a pit to most folk in the UK but it has long been home to many Asian families who are sleeping 12 or 14 to a 3 bed terrace, they are more than happy with their lot, potable running water and mains sewerage are considered luxury.
Please get your head out of your backside and realise that not everyone aspires to double glazing and central heating. It is pathetic and patronising to suggest they shouldn't have to live like they do.
I wouldn't say that the ability to pay £1000 per month in rent would class them as poor or desparate - if that's the benchmark I must be almost destitute!
I don't agree with whats happening here, and any agent who has involved themselves should be dealt with severely but this is a planning issue not a lettings issue and should be dealt with by the local planning offices - as Brent Council were shown doing last night in the programme - and not be blamed on letting agents.
If they are complicit then hang them but they aren't laying the bricks to build them
By the same logic people make a free choice to borrow money from loan sharks because unless they were spirited in at the dead of night its obvious there are banks, credit unions, pawn brokers, peer-to-peer lenders etc around. The reality is that people turn to loan sharks because they're desperate.
I agree that anyone who thinks the state should provide them with a nice house in Kensington that 99.9% of the working population could never dream of affording should push off. However, we are talking here about poor, vulnerable people who are preyed on by rogues.
Suggesting that slum landlords are providing a service by giving the poorest and most disadvantaged members of society the opportunity to live in a jerry-built illegally converted outhouse is not something I, as a professional letting agent, would dream of suggesting, either publicly or in private.
@steve from leicester
We have property in our Croydon portfolio for under £1000 and 4 beds at 1100-1200. None more than 6yrs old. We have no shortage of tenants.
As I said in my previous post, don't go thinking people are stupid just because they don't speak english as a first lanquage. Unless they were spirited into the property at the dead of night without a chance to see any of the property around them it would be hard not to notice that what you were being shown was not the same as the houses in the street. They choose to live in an expensive part of the capital city of one of Europe's most expensive countries, they have a budget of £1000 for rent, they probably made an informed choice.
I don't speak Croatian but I know if I went to Croatia to live and someone showed me a garage for 8800 Kuna I'd walk away
The current image of 'beds in sheds' that the beeb would like to foster is not always reality; not all of them are damp unheated slums. My wife lived in Southall in the 70's and it was going on then with asian landlords literally putting beds in wooden garden sheds and then taking huge amounts of money off their own to let them 'live' there. The councils mostly turn a blind eye to the well built ones because it eases the lack of housing issue for them.
Ray Comer - I don't live in London but I know that £1,000 a month doesn't get you very much in London. And regardless of what brought them to the UK, don't you think they might be just a teensy weensy bit disadvantaged by not being able to speak English and vulnerable to crooked landlords?
Anthony Kerrigan - do you think beds in sheds are "safe warm and dry"?
I have just finished building an extension on the back of my house. Had a dispute with my builder and lived for 6 months in totally substandard conditions, with no back wall never mind windows. Can't help but agree with "Guardian Nimbies" as long as it is safe warm and dry any other inadaquicies should be reflected in the rent.
If you have a £1000pcm to spend on accommodation you don't live in a garage in someones back garden unless it is by choice.
And what difference does it make if their first language is not english? just because they don't speak english as a first language doesn't make them stupid; they still know its a converted garage. Thats just the BBC trying to put their normal "its a race issue" slant on it
If beds in sheds allows people to have shelter which they themselves are happy to occupy at a price which fits theirr budget, is it really down to a Guardianesque society to be so concerned about their living conditions?
In the past I have lived in; a derelict cottage, a tent and a caravan in order to work, that might not have suited my Nimby neighbours but it while it was not my ideal accommodation it was better than not having work.