Hi Ken

The first thing to do is to ensure that you are clear on the ownership of the property, as any notice must be served on the correct person / company / trustees  etc, otherwise your at risk of recovering your funds.

I haven’t had much experience in relation to enforced sales with Charities, so it is one for your Lawyers at all stages.

Most Charities are registered with the Charities Commission, who have a wide range of powers to look into them and put things right.

There are two main types of charities

Unincorporated (trusts or associations)

Their governing document will usually be a deed or constitution or a scheme of the Charity Commission.

In an Unincorporated charity the property is usually held by the trustees or their nominees

Incorporated (Companies – Company House)

Most of these are charitable Companies registered at Companies House, Company is a legal entity in its own right

So it depends on which type of charity your dealing with, as to who is liable.

Trustees are generally under a  duty to ensure that the charity complies with charity law, requirements of the Charity Commission as regulator e and are under a specific duty to ensure the charity is and remains solvent etc.

The Trustee Act 2000 sets out their “Duty of Care” for Unincorporated. Incorporated charities the Trustee Act 2000 does not apply but the principles of general charity law impose similar duties.Trustees can be held personally liable.

I would have a chat with the Charity Commission in the first instance to see if they have had any dealings with the charity.

Then depending on what type of charity they are, you can serve the relevant notices on the appropriate body / trustee.

As long as any formal notice has been served correctly, then there is no reason why you could not pursue an enforced sale.

If the property is in the charity’s name and the charity is no longer in existence i.e. charity is a company but was dissolved a number of years ago.

Then after “reasonable enquiries”, you can serve the notice on the relevant person (depends on Act) i.e. Section 246 Housing Act 2004 “Person Having Control”, supplemented by Section 233 Local Government Act 1972.

The LA would serve notice do works in default as normal. The LA would then serve their Law & Property Act 1925 letter giving the relevant parties 3 months notice of sale and would  register the debt as a charge in the District Land Registry against the title.

Assuming that the charge is created under an appropriate piece of legislation and  binds all estates and interests, then you can force the sale of the property.

The difficulty you will have is that to obtain best price you would have to sell the property with vacant possession and as the property has squatters you are in difficulty.

However, after the three months has expired you can then become “mortgagee in possession” if you so wish, which would allow you to seek a possession order to recover possession of the property.

Most LA do not want to take possession of the property as it then places a responsibility on the LA to protect the property such as insurance, making safe and to act in the best interests of any other parties who have a charge. So there are risks with this approach.

The case law is quite extensive in this area , but you can obtain a possession order and then sell the property. These costs should be recoverable from the sale proceeds as long as they were reasonably incurred.

The same principle would apply to CPOs.

Once the LA are the owners, they would seek a possession order to remove the squatters and then sell the property on.

But ensure your Legal Services are on board from the start to ensure you are covered.

Regards

Andrew Lavender

We do not use Orders of Sale or Charging Orders as a lever when a property is occupied, whether occupation is lawful or not.

I have mentioned before an unregistered property/intestacy case. We have decided to leave the property/squatter as it/he is as long as there is no ASB.

In another case the squat was in an Insolvent's house. The first squatters were benign so we could not and did not act. The place went bad. The LA could not take action re the squatters, it's the owner's responsibility. He did not. We worked with 1) the mortgagee to develop grounds for repossession and 2) The Police who used an Anti-Social Behaviour Act Closing Order to empty the property then secure it. Once the property was empty, we leant against the Mortgagee to take responsibility using the Forced Sale argument. Given the owner had many creditors and the property value nudged it toward -ve equity, our approach ensured that the Mortgagee repossessed bloody quickly!