A COUPLE who live on the same site as Belsize Fire Station have won a battle to stay – causing a major headache for developers looking to buy the Grade II-listed building.

The boarded-up fire station in Lancaster Grove was put up for sale this week, three months after being shut down through cuts imposed by London Mayor Boris Johnson.

The New Journal understands it is being sold with a “protected residential tenancy” after a former fire service worker and partner dug in their heels despite facing pressure to leave for more than three years.

It means any developer would have to negotiate with the tenant or build around the single flat in the middle of the 0.44-acre site.

Steve Dark, from the commercial property consultants at Dron & Wright, told the New Journal: “The property is being sold with a protected tenancy. Obviously, this is going to have an impact. Anyone who bought it can and would have to buy it complete with the tenant. There has been a lot of interest, despite its listing.”

A London Fire Brigade report in 2011 detailed a push to “secure vacant possession of the flat at Belsize Fire Station”, adding that “the number of residential tenants on fire stations has progressively reduced in recent years with one remaining at Belsize Fire Station”.

But in another recent disposal strategy report it was conceded that the secure tenant would not be leaving and that “officers are proposing to meet the tenants to explain the impact that this may have, ie visits by potential purchasers, presence of security guards at stations”.

The couple are believed to have lived in the flat for more than 20 years. They declined to comment when contacted by the New Journal.

The Belsize Park fire station freehold was put up for sale last week. It is 16,600 square feet with estate agents speculating that the sale could be as high as £20million.

Union representatives had told the New Journal that the entire site had been valued at more than £40m four years ago. But estate agents are now talking about figures of more than half that. 

Paul Embery, from the London Fire Brigades Union, said the London Fire Brigade had encountered “massive problems” in selling its headquarters at Embankment. 

The New Journal has also learned that proposals to sell off a parade of firefighters’ cottages behind West Hampstead fire station has also become mired with problems. The Brigade published a statement in 2011 saying it was bringing four cottages “back into public use to help London’s housing shortage”.

Like the Belsize flat, the cottages were built at the rear of West Hampstead fire station in West End Lane in the early 1900s to house serving firefighters.

According to a response to the Fortune Green and West Hampstead Neighbourhood Forum, from Dron & Wright, the “sale of cottages behind West Hampstead fire station could not go ahead”.

It added: “Our client's attempts to effect a disposal of the cottages so that they can be brought back into use have been limited by the difficulties of creating suitable access to them via the fire station yard area or via other adjoining properties.”

London Fire Brigade said that the main savings from the station closures would be operating costs and not receipts from the sales.