Wednesday, 23 May 2012

closure order

Posted in: Need to Know | Ask the Experts

29/01/2011 9:43 pm

usha chandrakumar

usha chandrakumar

Posts: 1

I am a land lady. Due to ASBO  the police took our tenants to court and got closure order and evicted the tenants.The police asked us to hire a boarding company to board the house at our cost which we did. Then they advice us to hire a lawyer to go to court to get possession of the house which we have done . The tenants have left, we have the possession of the house now the police is saying we  still cant go in to the house because closure notice still stand. We are left with a high lawyers fee and the boarding cost.The judge had ordered the tenants to pay the arrears which we won't get it back because we don't have their forwarding address. The lawyers are not helpful any advice is costing us more and more fee.  Do we have to go to court to get the closure order lifted. Please advice. I want to renovate the property and  rent the property through an agent.

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Junior

Junior

Posts: 649

29/01/2011 10:43 pm

Do you not have Landlord Insurance has you are the Landlady and should cover the costs of a Solicitor under ditto  but without seeing the policy and what cover is hard to say.  Perhap 24 hours hotline with your Insurance Company

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Anonymous

Anonymous

31/01/2011 10:56 am

Caveat Emptor

A closure order does what it says, closes the property for three months. As the owner, you have to stand the cost of lost rent, boarding up etc etc.

Sorry, there is not really a simple answer to this, apart form the obvious of ensuring that your tenants adhere to the terms and conditions of thier tenancy, and serve S21 notice if they dont

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Anonymous

Anonymous

31/01/2011 12:06 pm

Usha

The Act does make allowances for 'authorised persons' (i.e. someone authorised by the chief officer of police) to have 'reasonable excuse' to enter a property which is under a Closure Order. However, it does note that this would be for 'essential maintenance or repairs', however I would imagine that as long as the police, or whoever went with them, were satisfied that the property was safe, you may struggle.

You mention that you taken legal action to recover possession of the property, you may be able to argue for access to assess any potential damage, but it doesn't look like the Act allows even that, let alone renovation work.

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Morse

Morse

Location: London
Posts: 12

31/01/2011 1:21 pm

Usha

When the police spoke to you about this prior to serving the Notice, did you not think to take legal action?  There is a way out of this, which your solicitors will be able to advise you of.  In the meantime, you should count yourself lucky that the police aren't seeking to recover their costs from you, and write off the lost rent. 

Presumably you knew about the problems, but were content to allow them to continue unabated...?

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Expert post

Abimbola Badejo

Abimbola Badejo

Posts: 101

31/01/2011 11:03 pm

There is provison in the act for you as owner to apply to discharge the closure order. That is probably the best course for you to take at the moment given that all other options have not produced the desired result for you. The earlier you make the application the better. Your solicitors should be able to give you advise on how to go about making an application to discharge the closure order. The nuisance residents are gone and you have obtained a possession order. It seems to me that the continuation of the closure order serves no useful purpose and ought to be discharged.

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tags Accountability, advice, affordable housing, Allocations, antisocial tenant, arrears, Best Practice, care and support, careers, comment, complaint, council, councils, discrimination, discussion, eviction, HA renting, help, homelessness prevention, Housing, housing association, housing associations, housing policy, rent, urgent

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