List of empty council homes given to squatters (From Streatham Guardian)

Lambeth Council gives empty homes list to squatters

7:20am Thursday 19th March 2009 in News By Matt Watts

Squatters used a legal loophole to force Lambeth Council to hand over a list of all its empty properties - providing them with hundreds of potential targets to squat.

Critics have accused the local authority of “incompetence” in the way it handled a Freedom Of Information (FOI) request from The Advisory Service for Squattors submitted in September last year, demanding a list of all its empty homes.

Lib Dem opposition leader, Councillor Ashley Lumsden, said a senior council source told him it was because of “a grave error” by housing officers in publishing a list of all its properties in the appendix of a council document. Because the information was in the public domain, the request could not be denied.

But the council said a legal precedent set by another council meant it had to hand over details of an estimated 800 properties, even though officers feared it would potentially lead to a marked rise in squatting in the borough.

As yet these fears have not been realised - with the number of squatted properties in the borough falling in the past six months from 49 to 45.

The council has also struggled with squatters in recent years. An entire estate, Limerick Court, on the border of Streatham and Balham was squatted by more than a hundred people for six months until their eviction last summer.

Councillor Lumsden insists that the issue is another example of the incompetence of the Labour-run council in managing the borough’s housing, and he believes the number of properties squatted is far higher than the official figures suggests.

He said: “This is a housing tragedy that is rapidly turning to farce. The administration seems hell-bent on destroying public housing in Lambeth through a mixture of brain-numbing incompetence and sheer bloody-mindedness.”

He said this latest revelation was in a long line of blunders by the housing department that has seen it overspend by an estimated £23 million, and the number of empty council homes double since 2006 to close to 900.

A Lambeth Living spokeswoman said the number of squatters in the borough fell over the past six months reflecting the success of the council’s zero tolerance approach towards squatters.

She added: “When responding to FOI requests we have to operate within the letter of the law. Clearly we are determined to protect our properties for the benefit of those who are genuinely homeless, and we thoroughly explored every option to see if we had to respond to this request.

“A legal precedent had already been set in response to a similar FOI inquiry to Bexley Council.On challenging the request, they were instructed by the Information Tribunal that they had a legal duty to provide the address details of empty properties which were not owned by individuals.”

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