Isn't it ironic: tackling poor landlords is a local council election issue, but what happens when the council is the landlord?

The accidental landlord takes her local council to task over dry rot in a neighbouring property
£2,000 per month: a three-bedroom house in Pump Lane SE14, close to New Cross Gate station. Call KFH, 020 8012 2724

My local Labour Party shoved a leaflet through my door promising to tackle “rouge” landlords if they managed to topple the Tories in the local government elections on May 3.

I assume they mean “rogue” landlords who break the law by renting out unsafe or unlicensed properties.

However, I hope they are also referring to rubbish landlords who fail to maintain their properties and leave tenants living in damp, smelly homes while consistently ignoring requests to carry out repairs. If so, there’s one in particular I would like them to tackle.

It’s probably the borough’s biggest landlord, happens to own the terrace house next to mine and the property is in such a shocking state of disrepair that it has caused literally thousands of pounds of damage to my home.

For years this landlord ignored my requests for them to clean out their blocked gutters, which were so choked with silt that trees had begun to grow out of them. As a result, rainwater constantly spilled over the top, drenching the party wall. The landlord did nothing until I complained about the damp in the first-floor bedrooms of both houses as a consequence of the blocked gutters.

Then the cheapskate sent a jobsworth who only cleaned out a couple of yards of the gutter because “that’s all he’d been paid to do”. After a few more angry phone calls from me, someone else was sent to finish the job, but the damage was done. A few weeks ago, I moved a wardrobe in the damp-afflicted bedroom and saw that the skirting was rotten. A damp specialist told me I have dry rot as a result of the wall being repeatedly soaked from next door.

Dry rot is the worst kind of rot. Left untreated it can spread throughout a house, eating away at the floorboards, the joists and the very fabric of the building. It can destroy the building. Trust me folks, you really don’t ever want to hear the words: “You have dry rot.”

I need to rip out and replace the rotten skirting and hack off and replace the plaster on one wall. Both have to be treated with a chemical to kill off the fungus. I’ve had a quote for £3,000 and the bill will go up if it turns out that the fungus has spread to the joists.

I went with a damp expert to inspect the neighbour’s house, where we saw that the landlord had replastered their bedroom where they’d had damp, but hadn’t bothered to redecorate.

The tenant said he didn’t see any point complaining as the rest of the house was such a mess. In particular, water from the bathroom was leaking into the kitchen.

When the property had blocked drains I reported the foul smell but the landlord didn’t do anything until sewage started to seep under my fence and I threatened to report them to the environmental health department.

If the Labour Party wants to track down and bring rubbish landlords to account, good luck to them. My neighbouring landlord won’t be difficult to find because, guess what — it’s the local council.

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