Mysterious tennants and fires

Well maybe I should get a lottery ticket this for tomorrow's draw. Yesterday afternoon, somebody called back! Mark Dodson said the person I needed to speak to is Shelia Harris on 020 8356 4701.

So I called her today and she was very helpful. At the moment she in a team of one and she has just had permission to recruit an empty homes officer and an enforcement officer to deal with empty properties, which is fantastic news. She says she mainly deals with temporary housing for homeless people so understandably, empty homes take a back burner. She hopes the job ads for the EPO and EO will be on the website soon.

50 Lordship Park – someone is living there. She gave the impression that he is slightly eccentric which is probably why the house looks like no one is living in it. She said he collects things. I wonder if he is the guy that we used to see when we were young pushing a cart around Stamford Hill collecting planks of wood, old boxes and other items.

So looks like I'll leave this one for now.

The other property she recognised even though I did not have an address, the building is called St Mary's Lodge. She said once they have an empty properties officer in place they can go about getting a compulsory purchase order, but this will take a long time.

She said in the mean time I can write to my local councillor, MP and also the lead councillor for Housing, Alan Lang. She says there is a story about it on the councils website. I have just tried to find this, with no luck.

But I did find, another website about St Mary's Lodge. Absolutely fascinating.

There appears to be a group set up called St Mary's Lodge Preservation Committee who are campaigning hard to get this property back into use.

http://www.stmaryslodge.co.uk/current_status.htm

So I guess I better get in contact with them.