Knight evicted from council flat
A self-styled knight has been evicted from his council home after officers discovered he owned four properties, including one worth £700,000.
Camden evicted Sir Barry Brooks from a two-bedroom council flat in Primrose Hill for breaching its tenancy conditions, which ban tenants from owning other properties.
Mr Brooks, who bought his title on the internet, had a house in Exmouth, two in Bromley, and one in Princes Risborough that had been valued at £700,000 in 2004.
He was also listed as the tenant of a ground floor council flat in White City.
Camden allocated its flat to Mr Brooks in 1998 after he told the council he was homeless.
The council investigated the tenancy after becoming concerned Mr Brooks was not living at the flat. Its suspicions were aroused by the presence of his two top-of-the-range Jaguar cars, which had personalised number plates, outside a detached house in Bromley.
The court found there had been a breach of the tenancy agreement, and ordered Mr Brooks to pay £3,182.34 and costs in the region of £9,500.
David Padfield, assistant director for housing management at Camden, said: ‘This kind of abuse of council homes is completely unacceptable. Camden council will always take action against those who take homes away from the people who really need them.’
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Readers' comments (30)
Anonymous | 01/09/2010 9:27 am
Good job Camden! It only took you 12 years to figure this out! This kind of behaviour is going on under the nose of many, if not all, London Boroughs and is rarely dealt with. Councils need to be closer to their tenants and not just deal with tenants that don't pay their rent.
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Sidney Webb | 01/09/2010 10:09 am
What a disgrace that more checks were not carried out.
The article does not inform us why Mr Brooks had to pay the £3k - surely he was not claiming benefit as well?
The court should have forced the Knight to several months of community service, specifically assisting the homeless and disadvantaged.
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Anonymous | 01/09/2010 10:36 am
Or maybe he should be obliged to surrended his properties to the social housing system for the same length of time he was illegally occupying the Camden flat?
I know that's a bit optimistic, and too complicated from a legal perspective, but a shade over £12.5k for the benefit of a flat in Primrose Hill (one of the more desirable locations for those that don't know London) for a number of years doesn't seem to offer much discouragement to others from trying the same thing.
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Outside Housing | 01/09/2010 10:55 am
Camden, the borough in London that seems to get every bit of government money available for every initiative, far in excess of every other borough clearly can't manage to resolve a simple management problem in under 12 years?
So when they say "Camden council will always take action against those who take homes away from the people who really need them."
I assume they'll be taking action against themselves? Hopefully it won't them 12 years!
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Junior | 01/09/2010 11:25 am
We cannot get our Housing Officer's to go and investigate and is this normally in all tenant's tenancy agreement.
How do you get your Housing Officer to enforce this condition.
Again we know of Tenant's whom should be obliged to surrended Tenancy Agreement due to earning's. Due to vehicle driving i.e. top of the range vehicle sitting outside house.
Again we know of Tenant's whom should be obliged to surrended Tenancy due to selliing drug's in or around the property rent from the Housing Association.
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Anonymous | 01/09/2010 12:01 pm
Presumably the tenant defended the case? And presumably it was won on the basis of the tenant having signed Camden's tenancy agreement clause forbidding the ownership of residential property? Or was it won on the basis that it was proven not to be his 'principal or only home'? Whatever the moral rights or wrongs of this situation, it needed to have been reported (if possible) in more detail. Might it have implications for those who may not have the capital or income to buy property in the area where they need to reside, but may own modest holiday homes of some kind somewhere else?
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Mr P | 01/09/2010 12:07 pm
I think you're all being a bit hard on Camden bearing in mind that the facts available are minimal. As i see it fault lies with the lying fraudster.
If anything this highlights the problems with secure tenancies. If this guy had been subject to periodic assessments to see if he still needed the property this situation could have been discovered much earlier.
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Only One | 01/09/2010 5:28 pm
Junior - yes you can obtain possession of a tenancy due to increased income, or having a top of the range car. A safer bet would be to read the article again and discover that the reason was because he owned 4 other properties in breach of the tenancy he'd been granted.
Selling drugs is another issue altogether (no matter what car the dealers drive...blacked out windows I'd guess!) - you'd need a prosecution or court evidence the house has been used to deal drugs from before any court would consider terminating the tenacy.
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Krustallos | 01/09/2010 8:34 pm
The article doesn't say whether Mr Brooks had these properties at the time when he was housed by Camden. That's actually quite important. It's quite possible that he was homeless at the time and has become wealthy since. Unless he had the houses back in 1998, Camden are hardly to blame here - unless councils routinely carry out in-depth financial checks on all their current tenants (talk about the surveillance state!) how are they supposed to spot this sort of thing?
In fact he appears to have been evicted for non-occupation, which is a breach of tenancy. Simply purchasing a house elsewhere is not against most tenancy agreements - what after all is the difference between buying an investment property and putting your money in the stock market?
Only One, did you intend to tell Junior that it's NOT possible to obtain possession on the grounds that the tenant owns a posh car or were you being sarcastic? Either way, the notion that council housing should be taken away if your bank balance increases seems to be potential Tory government policy now which doesn't strike me as a positive development. What that would presumably mean in practice is that anyone who came into money would be forced to buy their council flat under RTB or lose it. More privatisation, in other words.
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Melvin Bone | 02/09/2010 9:03 am
This sounds like a prime example of why lifetime tenancies should be stopped.
Or do you think that this Knight should have been allowed to keep his secure tenancy in this situation as long as he had remained resident?
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