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The Agar Grove property |
Bailiffs give retired couple half hour to quit £700,000 home. And the reason? An unpaid bill for roof repairs
‘We lived there for more than 30 years. I can’t believe they have done this’
BAILIFFS gave Audrey Jenkins and her husband Chard half an hour to get out of the house they had owned for 33 years.
“I didn’t know what they had come about,” she said. “I was terrified, and there were no police there or anyone I could talk to. They just said: ‘You’ve got 30 minutes’ and told me to go to the housing office in King’s Cross. Then they said the council was selling the house.”
As a result of failing to pay a £5,500 bill from the council’s environmental health department, Mr and Mrs Jenkins, both aged 75, are now living in a homeless hostel in Belsize Park. They are banned from returning to their house in Agar Grove, Camden Town, without a bailiff present to check they do not try to squat.
The house, which they own outright, is being sold against their will by receivers appointed after the council took out bankruptcy proceedings against the couple for failing to pay for compulsory repairs to their roof to tackle a colony of pigeons.
Similar four-storey houses in Agar Grove have been sold this year for £700,000.
After her first visit last week to the house following the eviction in July, Mrs Jenkins said she had lost two-and-a-half stone in weight through worry.
“We have lived there for more than 30 years,” she added. “My family have lived in Camden for 150 years and I just cannot believe they have done this.
“I cannot go into my own home unless I pay a bailiff £75 to stand there for two hours, and the house has been trashed. I accept we owe the money and we should have paid, but my husband was supposed to be dealing with it and he has been very unwell.
“I am the joint owner. I have worked all my life, until I was 70. You hear people talking about their human rights for all sorts of things but where are my rights in this?”
The couple are living in a one-room bedsit at the hostel in England’s Lane while legal proceedings, which Mrs Jenkins said were “completely over my head”, continue.
Now that lawyers, liquidators and bailiffs have become involved, the original £5,500 bill has risen to £36,000. The Jenkins’ three dogs are not allowed at the hostel and have had to be boarded at further expense and another source of worry to the couple.
Mrs Jenkins admits to being confused by the paperwork surrounding her case, and bewildered by the various Town Hall departments she has had to deal with since she was deposited on the pavement in her nightgown after the bailiffs’ 8.30am visit.
But the papers she has kept, which include a court writ served by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the accountancy firm appointed as receivers in the case, appear to show that every stage of the process against her and her husband was within the law. A receiver can seize assets from bankrupts and pay creditors, giving the original owners whatever is left. Mrs Jenkins is fighting for the right to sell the house on her own behalf so she can be sure she gets full market value.
A Town Hall press official said neighbours had complained about an “infestation” of pigeons at the semi-detached house, and a council pest control team had taken action. “This work was expensive and we had to recover the cost,” he added.
“We tried for many years to arrange a way for Mr and Mrs Jenkins to repay what they owed. As a last resort the solicitors referred it to the official receiver to take bankruptcy proceedings to ensure this debt was repaid.
“It was deeply saddening that Mr and Mrs Jenkins still did not respond to the official receiver and have now been evicted from their home.” |
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