The Owl Man has flown

David first occupied a self contained basement flat in Albion Drive in about 1977, with his partner and young son, as a tenant of a Housing Co-Operative. he had a Rent Act registered rent of £6 per week. The Co-Op was wound up in about 1978, after it had ceased collecting rent. The property was one of many then transferred to Hackney Council in April 1982 in anticipation of the GLCs abolition in 1984.

Since the 1980s David, an artist, was also licensed to keep wild birds of prey. He looked after disabled and injured birds that were given to him to care for. He built aviaries in the garden for owls, buzzards and  saker falcons and flew them on Hackney Marshes and other open spaces.

In about 1983 the old bus station in Shrubland Road was pulled down and new homes built. A café at 97 Shrubland Road was demolished at the same time but Hackney Council refused to reinstate the fence between the café site and the end of David’s garden so he occupied and fenced off that site too, cleared it of demolition rubble and so extended the garden. He built a carp pond there.

The Council refused to accept rent from David who told him that they did not want the responsibility as landlord to repair the house.  The basement flat became very damp and so he moved out to squat the upper ground floor flat.  By 1989 the upper maisonette, which had also been squatted, was derelict and vacant.

In 1995 the Council intended to auction off some of its properties and it discovered that the Land Registry title to the Albion Road house had never been changed from the GLC’s name. Like many ex-GLC properties,  Hackney had never set up a housing stock record and rent account ( “…..- yet another one!!” – Hackney Memo 24.4.95). Hackney’s ownership of the Albion Drive house was then once again forgotten about.

David instructed solicitors who applied to the Land Registry for him to be registered with title but Hackney contested the application and it was refused by the Land Registry. Hackney then began Court proceedings for possession and David came to Dowse & Co to fight the claim.

The possession claim was defended and the dispute was settled on terms for the flat and garden to be transferred into David’s name and, on the same day, the Council purchased the flat and garden back from him for £280,000 and paid his legal costs.

 David bought and now lives in a listed cottage in Wales with a salmon river at the end of his meadows. His wild birds live in the orchard. Bill Parry-Davies, his solicitor, said “ This beautiful old house was a community asset but Hackney wouldn't accept responsibility as landlord for its repair. As a result it’s right to claim possession had already expired by the time it commenced the Court claim. The most difficult thing about the case was the timing of the settlement. Nature takes its course so the deal had to fit in with the breeding, nesting and fledging habits of the wild birds.”

Iain Sinclair has written about meeting David in his “Olympic Diary” for London Review of Books.

Son wins court battle for father's Council flat

On 10th June a judge at Clerkenwell & Shoreditch County Court ruled that a son who had lived with his father, and cared for him in the final year of his life, was entitled to take over his father’s tenancy of a one bedroom Council flat.

Hackney argued that the son was not entitled to succeed to the tenancy because he had links to a girlfriend who had a flat elsewhere where he sometimes stayed and which he used as a postal address. But having heard evidence from a friend, and a neighbour, who had regularly visit the father’s flat over the years, the Judge ruled that the son had not lived there simply to care for his father but had made his home there, and not with his girlfriend, for at least the required 12 months up to the date of the father’s death.

The son’s solicitor Bill Parry-Davies, said “It is a great relief to our client that, after further upset when the tenancy was being contested following his father’s death, our client finally can call the flat his own”.

Hackney Council ordered to pay £43,500 compensation to its longsuffering lessee

Hackney Council has been ordered to pay a lessee £43,500 compensation and her legal costs following years of dampness and disrepair at her maisonette. The Council has also had to apologise to the Court for failing to comply with a Court order to carry out the works.

The Court orders conclude a longstanding dispute which arose when the Council failed to repair the bowing front wall of the building which was left with wooden supports around the windows to prevent collapse.

The lessee’s solicitors, Dowse & Co., first wrote to the Council on 23.4.04 asking for its proposals for repair. Surveyors and structural engineers were appointed who identified the structural works required and agreed a Specification of Works in February 2005. But despite this no works were done. In October 2005 steel acrow props were put in the bedroom to prevent its ceiling collapsing from dampness.

Court proceedings were commenced in October 2005 and the Council defended the case right up until the day of the trial on 15 March 2007. At Court the Council agreed to pay £11,000 compensation, all the legal costs and to carry out all the agreed repairs, at its own expense, by August 2007.

But the Council failed to commence any repairs and so the Court ordered it to complete the work before February 2008 and to pay additional compensation. However by June 2008 structural engineers reported that, although the front wall of the building had by then been rebuilt, extensive repair work still remained incomplete.

The case finally concluded at a Court hearing in July 2009 when the Council had to apologise to the Court that it had been, and still remained, in breach of the Court’s order. The Council agreed to pay the lessee a further sum of £32,500 compensation and her legal costs. Finally in August 2009 the surveyor certified that the all repairs had finally been done and the compensation has now been paid..

The lessee said “ All I ever wanted was for the repairs to be done. I was caused a lot of anxiety and upset by the way the Council treated me and by its delays. And I lost so much money because the maisonette couldn’t be occupied until the work was finished.”

Bill Parry-Davies of Dowse & Co. said “ Landlords have legal duties to repair the structure of its tenants' and lessees' homes. In default the Council had to compensate for all the lessee's distress and her losses, all the legal costs and do all the building works. It could have saved the public over £100,00 by getting on with the repairs when first asked in 2004. It’s a scandalous waste of money which could have been spent on good causes instead.”