Ms Harms outside her Hampstead home

A GRANDMOTHER described on Tuesday how a “landlord from hell” had made her life a misery for the last six years.
Carolyn Harms, 70, appeared close to tears as she described how she has been confined to the basement of her crumbling maisonette in Christchurch Hill, Hampstead, since the ground floor ceiling caved in in 1998. Alterations by her landlord S & N Properties Limited (SNPL) were to blame, she told Camden councillors.
But despite repeated complaints to the landlord and the council’s legal, environmental health and housing departments, half of her home of 42 years is still out of bounds.
Damp caused by leaking boilers, pipes and ruptured foundations at the Victorian terrace are a threat to her health, her doctor has warned, while her three grandchildren cannot visit.
The severity of Ms Harms’ case – and the council’s failure to improve it – were instrumental in councillors’ decision to set up a probe into the borough’s private rental market last autumn.
On Tuesday night the investigating panel accepted that there had been major lapses in officials’ handling of Ms Harms’ case. The council has been unable to make progress despite securing two convictions against SNPL failing to comply with enforcement notices after making alterations to the conservation-area property.
Its bosses were fined only £1,200 plus £800 in costs – far less than the cost of repairs needed at the five-storey building, she told councillors.
Ms Harms said: “I cannot carry on living like this forever. I am 70 years old and I have been living there since 1962 but the council does not seem to understand that it is my home.
“Camden has the powers to act – why won’t it?”
Labour councillor John Rolfe questioned whether the council had “abandoned its legal duty” to Ms Harms before Christmas when it told her future complaints would be acknowledged but not investigated.
But officials escaped detailed public scrutiny when the probe’s chairwoman, Lib Dem Councillor Jane Schopflin, agreed that they would be quizzed in private at a later date.
Yesterday (Wednesday) it emerged that there was no legal framework for that second meeting to happen, meaning that officers will respond in writing at the panel’s next meeting.
Ms Harms’ efforts to secure repairs to her home have been hampered since SNPL bought the freehold at auction in 1998, she said.
One of its directors, Stephen Heuberger, gives his address as Haverstock Hill, Belsize Park. But Ms Harms says she has not been able to track anyone down for six years. Attempts by the New Journal also failed. All communication is carried out through solicitors.
Last year, according to files at companies’ house, SNPL was put into receivership after it defaulted on an £840,000 mortgage it had taken on the building in 2003, although it is now understood to have caught up on its payments.
‘Cowboy’ repairs carried out in 2002 after Ms Harms appeared on a documentary made by the BBC’s Watchdog team – shown at the meeting – are already showing their age, with wallpaper falling off and £6,000 of her possessions scrapped due to damage. Agents for SNPL failed to respond to the New Journal yesterday (Wednesday).