Behind closed doors
On the outside they look like ordinary guesthouses but inside, rogue landlords are using Blackpool’s former hotels to house dozens of people in unsanitary conditions. Marie-Claire Kidd reports on how the council is fighting back
In some ways Blackpool has hardly changed since its heyday. Stroll along the promenade and, like 50 years ago, there are ice creams, donkeys, one-armed bandits, souvenirs and, if the weather’s good, swimmers and sunbathers. In the streets of Blackpool row upon row of guesthouses are peppered with chippies and pubs.
But behind the hotel facades, things have changed. Where once holidaymakers visited in droves and stayed for a fortnight they now trickle in for just a day or two. Guesthouses used to be goldmines, but many now trade as houses in multiple occupation - typically houses or flats, often divided into bedsits and let to three or more people who make up at least two households. In its heyday there were 5,500 guesthouses in the Lancashire town, now there are 1,650.
Undercover activity
Up until two years ago, Blackpool Council could only guess how many former guesthouses were operating as HMOs - now, thanks to the local authority’s concerted effort to find out what’s going on behind close doors, it’s identified 3,500 HMOs, but there could be more trading as hotels.
Many landlords operate HMOs secretly and in breach of housing and planning regulations - all privately rented properties of three or more storeys, occupied by five or more people, are required to be licensed by the local authority. The rules are designed to ensure properties offer adequate amenities.
The council decided it was time to crack down on bad landlords to stop the proliferation of people living in poor conditions, which would undermine its efforts to regenerate the area.
Over the past two years, a collection of its housing and planning enforcement, police and fire officers - known as the monitoring and intervention in the private sector team - has inspec-ted 12,600 commercial and residential properties, covering the inner part of the town. People were found living in awful conditions, and the survey has led to dozens of landlords being convicted.
One of them, James O’Kane, was discovered to be connected with six hotels, housing 43 people. Last September, the council successfully prosecuted him for his involvement in two of them. He was fined £10,000 for operating the Tynan Hotel and ordered to pay £890 in court costs and safety-related charges. A further 11 cases involving bad landlords are currently pending.
The enforcement team was funded by an area-based Communities and Local Government department grant of around £70,000 per year. This has now been cut, but Blackpool Council sees its work cracking down on unlicensed landlords as a priority, so it’s scraping the money together to keep it going. ‘It’s a bold approach,’ sums up Alex Bracken, housing enforcement manager at Blackpool Council. ‘The survey has allowed us to link health and housing conditions. It’s given us a clear picture of the condition of our stock profile in the private sector. We can use the data to map problem properties that can be targeted for future intervention,’ she adds.
Public benefits
Ms Bracken explains that the council can now shape regeneration policies around its findings. The council is drawing up neighbourhood plans, but estimates that making the unlicensed HMOs habitable, and certain parts of town attractive to families, would cost £300 million. ‘That’s an unrealistic ask in the current climate, to put it mildly,’ says Steve Matthews, Blackpool’s head of strategic housing.
Starting small, the council is offering incentives for the owners of former guesthouses to improve their properties themselves. Where it can afford to, the local authority also purchases guesthouses and remodels some of them as family homes in partnership with local housing associations. It is also in talks with private sector developers about converting former hotels into homes for sale.
‘There’s something about coastal towns that draws people in - people looking for a new start and not finding it,’ states Mr Matthews.
Bad landlords take advantage of vulnerable people’s circumstances. Paul Bamber, landlord and chair of trustees at the Ashley Foundation, a charity which runs three homeless hostels in Blackpool, says owners of former guesthouses ‘can pick up a 10-bed property for next to nothing and bring in £620 a week.’
These individuals, who only care about making easy money, give all of Blackpool’s landlords a bad reputation, says Mr Bamber. ‘People tar everybody with the same brush.
Mr Matthews says some guesthouses are being turned into homes by their owners. ‘They don’t want to run it as a business - they want to live in it. We’re helping them to do that.’
The local authority’s aim is to transform central Blackpool into a stable residential area offering affordable housing. Unlicensed HMOs need to be shut down for this to be achieved. ‘HMOs drive social deprivation,’ concludes Mr Matthews. ‘We’re going to find it difficult to drive significant investment as long as we have a significant HMO problem.’
No place like home
Earlier this month a raid at the Magic Lantern, a disused Chinese restaurant on Coronation Street in Blackpool (pictured right), found 35 Chinese nationals sharing 11 rooms on two floors above the former dining room.
The accommodation had no kitchen and only two toilets. Officers in Blackpool Council’s monitoring and intervention in the private sector team shut the HMO down with an emergency prohibition order.
The council helped those who needed supoprt to find temporary temporary accommodation. It is now in the process of helping some of them find a permanent home.
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Readers' comments (1)
Chris | 13/08/2010 9:59 am
It is a shame that the enforcement team has been taken away. No doubt the inconvenience the team was causing the private landlords, and the disruption of their state funded gravy train helped the decision to cut the service.
Can I suggest the councils use a highly difficult technique of examining the benefit claim addresses, and where there are several at one address then you are likely to have located an unregistered HMO. Equally, have a check on where the direct payment cheques go, and where multiple payments are headed to the same private landlord look into their operations to be sure they are not endangering lives or robbing the tax payer.
Of course, neither of these options would detect the example given where the landlord was exploiting immigrants, but then many posters on this site do not believe such exists as they are convinced that every immigrant is socially housed and recieving full benefits.
If the respectable private landlords fear their name being dragged down by their collegues actions then it's high time that they clearned up the industry, shopped their wayward colleagues, and thus ensure that meeting social need and making a profit can be equitable.
Well done Blackpool for defending the health and welfare of working class people regardless of origin. I hope that you find a way to continue the work, as also in authorities across our land where this exploitation and endangerment grows through State support.
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