Commercial property owners are pressing the Government to bring the law on squatting in line with homes and private premises.
Prop-Manage head of management David Robbins
It is illegal — under the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act — to take over or squat in residential property. Now three senior local and national politicians have written to the Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, demanding an amendment to last year’s legislation to ban squatting from all commercial property.
In the letter, jointly signed by Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary; former minister Dame Tessa Jowell, and Lib Peck, leader of Lambeth Council, the trio claim there has been a significant increase in the number of squatters “now specifically targeting non-residential buildings”.
Citing one example, their letter describes how a group that had been evicted from a London Buddhist Temple then took over a building at 111 Westminster Bridge Road, where they were later joined by other groups of squatters. The building’s assets were removed and sold and, while the police investigated one allegation of rape and a series of violent assaults during the eight-week squat, the final bill to reinstate and repair the building was at least £100,000.
David Robbins is head of management at commercial property agents, Prop-Manage. “At present, businesses with an empty property are concerned that they not only have to pay full business rates,” he said, “but that they also have to spend significant sums of money securing their premises and could face lengthy and costly legal proceedings to evict squatters.”
As a guide, Prop-Manage has issued a six-point “immediate action” plan to help non-residential owners make their vacant property less attractive to squatters. It suggests:
Said to be “sympathetic to the problem” of commercial property squatters, the Minister has ordered his department’s officials to begin gathering evidence about the impact and scale of squatting in commercial property since the law changed.
Squatting in residential buildings became a criminal offence in England and Wales on 1 September, 2012. An offence is deemed to have been committed where “a person occupies or is found in a residential building as a trespasser, having entered as a trespasser, knows or ought to know that he or she is trespassing and is living in the building or intends to live there for any period”. The penalty for anyone found guilty of residential squatting can be as high as six months in prison with a maximum £5,000 fine.
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I completely agree – particularly on the point about small businesses not only having to pay business rates (which are still extortionately high) but also having to worry about paying extra costs to secure their building against squatters. Why isn’t it already banned?