No, Not Mumbai... London

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Suburban slumdogs: Scores of desperate migrants crammed into a shanty town of sheds and garages by ruthless landlords. No, not Mumbai... London

By STEVE BIRD

Last updated at 1:36 AM on 22nd October 2011

Sitting cross-legged on a sagging, damp mattress in a dilapidated, converted backyard shed, Harbrajan Singh admits that — despite being 4,000 miles from his home in India — he is living like a slumdog in a shanty town.

But rather than the shacks of Delhi or Mumbai, the father of three is among thousands of illegal immigrants renting sheds from rogue landlords across London suburbs and the Home Counties.

Row after row of terraced Thirties houses in Southall, a predominantly Asian area of West London, have had outhouses and garages transformed into makeshift bedsits barely big enough to lie down in. In some, bare electric wires trail dangerously from extension cables that lie alongside rubber piping carrying cold water from the main house.

Camp beds and inflatable mattresses are crammed into the ramshackle buildings alongside camping stoves and stained wash bowls.

Huge outhouses, highlighted above, are squeezed into the back gardens between two rows of houses in Southall

In others, the conversions have been carried out more professionally — with tiny kitchens and bathrooms complete with running hot water, gas central heating and mini-cookers.

A few even have electric showers and flat-screen TVs with cable channels. But the growing number of so-called ‘sheds with beds’ are blatantly flouting planning laws as unscrupulous landlords cash in on the influx of illegal immigrants to Britain.

For Mr Singh, 50, from the Punjab region of India, where his wife and three grown-up children still live, the hovel he calls home marks the end of a journey that saw him arrive in Britain five years ago hidden in the back of a lorry.

‘I am trapped,’ he says, pulling a dirty sleeping bag around his shoulders to insulate him from the draught that blows through the ill-fitting door of his £35-a-week shack.

Ealing Council found people living illegally in converted sheds and garages

‘I want to go home — back to India. I haven’t seen my children for years. But the local people smugglers I paid £15,000 to get here took my passport — they sold it on. I can’t go anywhere.’

Earlier this year, Slough council revealed it had investigated 2,500 outhouses since 2009, raising the prospect that — including other affected London boroughs — there could be 10,000 sheds with beds across the South East.

While the sheds are concealed from view in back-to-back gardens, sealed off by gates or alleyways, they can be seen easily on satellite images on Google Maps — or by peering out from the windows of planes flying overhead towards Heathrow airport.

Now, crooked landlords on similar estates in British cities are thought to be building garden accommodation to profit from the easy, tax- free income that can be made by housing migrants.

Yesterday, Julian Bell, the leader of Ealing Council which covers Southall, said the borough was facing a ‘perfect storm’ as the boost in the population, a shortage of rental properties, rising rents and cuts to local authority budgets (which pay for staff to spot rogue landlords) come together to create a housing crisis that will see an increase in sheds with beds.

The landlords are exploiting a loophole in the law. While outbuildings can be converted into ‘granny flats’ to house relatives, if they are rented out they must register it as a ‘house in multiple ocupancy’ and get it fully licensed with the local council — a move that would probably also alert the tax man.

Major Sanghera lives in a converted shed on Western Road, Southall

However, some landlords get round this by demanding that tenants claim they are relatives of the owner if challenged by council officials. Others say simply that the outhouses are being used as gyms, studies or playrooms.

And bureaucracy is on the landlords’ side. Under the Housing Act, local council officers have to give 24 hours’ notice before they can enter a property.

This provides an invaluable window of opportunity for the owner to remove evidence — including tenants — that shows the shed is rented.

Then, once the inspection has been carried out and the shed ticked off as an innocent extension, the occupants move back in.

The 'homes' are often converted sheds or garages

Mr Bell believes the law needs to change to give his officers the powers to effectively tackle the sheds with beds epidemic. ‘We are trying to tackle the problem, but our hands are tied. If we catch someone and issue an enforcement notice, they quickly comply and kick the tenants out,’ he says.

‘But they know the game. We can’t prosecute if they comply, but a month later they are doing it again. We are just going around in circles. We need to have cut £85 million from our budget by 2014 and can’t afford to throw money at this until the law changes.’

In the past 18 months, Ealing Council has carried out 399 investigations into outbuildings.

Eleven enforcement notices have been issued, but only one person in the borough has been prosecuted for breaching a planning notice. And that resulted in only a £250 fine and £1,280 pay-out towards council costs. A further six prosecutions in the borough are going through the courts.

Many of the inhabitants of the shanty town were smuggled into Britain illegally through Calais

Ealing is following in the footsteps of the nearby borough of Slough in Berkshire, which in 2009 received £175,000 extra funding to help combat sheds with beds and joined forces with the UK Border Agency to target the landlords.

Housing officers from Ealing are also accompanying Border Agency staff, who have powers to raid properties where suspected illegal immigrants are hiding out.

Once inside as ‘observers’, the council staff can then see whether the occupants are being housed illegally.

Major Sanghera, 41, a Muslim, also from India, pays a staggering £100 a week to live in a squalid Southall shed.

Despite a fresh lick of paint, the building’s faults — some potentially lethal — are clearly visible: electric plugs with exposed copper wires hang from the walls; holes where windows should be are concealed with hanging clothes that double as curtains; a fitted bathroom is so small that taking a shower would mean standing over the toilet.

Our investigation established that the Southall property where Mr Sanghera lives was inspected last year after council staff received complaints that it was crammed full of people. But, after issuing the 24-hour notice of inspection, the council found no signs that rooms were being rented out.

Landlords are exploiting a loophole in the law by claiming they are renting the properties to relatives

Yesterday, tenants there told how up to eight people pay a total of £1,300 a month to live in the two top floors of the main house.

The ‘landlord’ and his wife inhabit the ground floor, while Mr Sanghera pays them £400-a-month to live in the shed at the bottom of their backyard. The council is investigating the property.

At dawn each day, a growing gang of men in a Southall car park wait in the hope that a builder or local householder will hire them as labourers or odd job men to earn up to £50 a day.

Unlike those there who sleep rough, Mr Singh considers himself lucky to be able to pay for a roof over his head from the three days a week he works as a labourer. Some landlords even tried to maximise profit with so-called ‘hot-bedding’, where night-shift and day-shift workers share a bedroom at separate times of the day.

The sheds are often dirty and unhygienic

But for Mr Singh, the fact that he shares his shed with a man who works at night — and sleeps in it during the day — is just an added inconvenience in a life almost as shambolic as the home he inhabits.

Speaking through a Punjabi translator, he says that he never expected to end up living a life of squalor similar to those from the Third World shanty towns made famous by the film Slumdog Millionaire. He certainly did not expect to live in such conditions in Britain.

‘I have a big house in my home town in India. I thought there would be work here in London,’ says Mr Singh, as he stares at his shoes.

‘We saw Indian people who lived here come back to their home village and they always appeared wealthy. But here I am struggling to eat. The Sikh temple gives me food if I am starving.

‘If you want to do me a favour, send me home. I’ve made a big mistake and want to go back. But without a passport it’s difficult.’

A UK Border Agency spokesman said last night that, despite Mr Singh not having a passport, he could be helped to return home ‘with dignity’.

‘Where we find someone is in the UK illegally we will seek to remove them, but the UK Border Agency is also targeting those who exploit the vulnerable and make money from immigration crime,’ the spokesman said.

If migrants are found and evicted from the illegal sheds, it does not take them long to find another hovel.

Throughout Southall, adverts containing key words such as ‘box room’ or ‘studio’ to signify secret sheds for rent are posted in newsagents’ windows to entice homeless immigrants hiding from border police and immigration officials.

Some adverts are even posted by tenants who already rent them, but need someone else to share the room and, more importantly, the rent.

Some ads even ask those applying to conform to religious customs, including not eating pork or drinking alcohol.

One homeless Bulgarian man, who worked as a carpenter, was even persuaded to build a wooden cabin at the bottom of a landlord’s garden in the North East London borough of Newham — and was then charged rent to live in it.

Mr Bell said that the council was well aware that the poor housing had a knock-on effect on other council departments, as well as police, medical and education services.

‘People are living in such cramped and squalid conditions that they end up going to betting shops or pubs in order to warm up. These sheds with beds also lead to the dumping of rubbish or fly tipping.

‘But these people are often in danger because work on the sheds is sometimes substandard.’

Many of those living in the sheds have come to the UK to escape poverty highlighted in the film 'Slumdog Millionaire'

Jay Chodha, 35, became a target for unscrupulous landlords because he had a poor credit history and so could not sign on with well-known estate agents. ‘My wife and I were shown quite a lot sheds. There are loads advertised on websites such as Gumtree,’ he says.

‘These rooms were not the sort of place you could live in. My wife and I couldn’t consider bringing up our two young sons in such conditions.

‘Many had a horrible smell from damp. Few had proper heating — just an electric fire. They were often dark and cold because windows had been badly fitted. I saw one that had a ceiling caving in.’

He adds that, despite such appalling conditions, rents for the sheds exceeded £600 a month.

‘They don’t care. All they want is money. They said council tax was included, but I suspect it was a lie. It’s crazy — these people are cashing in on the influx of illegal immigrants. Thankfully, we found a decent landlord in the end.’

Campbell Robb, chief executive of housing charity Shelter, said a ‘chronic shortage of social housing’ was leading to more and more people being forced to rely on the rental sector.

‘It is shocking that a minority of rogue landlords are exploiting our housing crisis and getting away with it, leaving thousands of tenants trapped in unsafe housing,’ he said.

‘Recent research by us showed that councils in England made only 270 successful prosecutions against rogue landlords in the past year, despite the fact they say that almost 1,500 landlords are giving them repeated cause for concern. It is unacceptable that people are left to live in conditions like this.’

As the sun set on Southall one evening last week, Mr Singh and Mr Sanghera admit defeat, having failed to find any work.

Before returning to his shed, Mr Sanghera decides to see if the local mosque is offering any food handouts. Mr Singh will try the Sikh temple, before returning to the shed where his flatmate will be preparing to leave for his night shift.

‘If I don’t pay my rent in the next few days, I am out,’ he says. ‘It will mean a winter on the streets. Being homeless here in winter is very different to life on the streets in India.’

Taken from: http://www.dailymail...l#ixzz1bd8yUpLc

[proactive]

The article doesn't look like it was well researched. Major Sanghera a Muslim? The Mosque handing out free food? Some of the sheds tend to be badly constructed but most that I have seen are well built with cavity walls and insulation and double glazed. What the article doesn't tell you is that Ealing council's housing stock is swamped by Somalis. They come to the UK with about 5-7 kids and the father lies that he is separated from his wife so that the council has to house him separately. Because none of them work, they get free housing, health care and benefit payments. As they are treated as being two households by the benefits system they get higher rates of benefits. But the poor faujis because they are illegals don't get anything from the system but contribute to the local economy when they spend money in the local shops. Ealing council makes money as these sheds now have to registered for council tax which for the lowest band is about £800 a year. The council are cashing in, they have no incentive to enforce when they are benefiting from these developments. It is only because central government has given a cash pot to the councils to take enforcement action. One prosecution in a year, what a joke.