A Gateshead pensioner hit with a new threat of eviction from his home has been granted a temporary reprieve – but a judge has warned he is in the “last chance saloon”.
Ken May was facing the prospect of bailiffs removing him from his council house in Wardley this week, but efforts to kick him out of the home he has lived in since 1955 have been suspended for now. The 69-year-old has been embroiled in a long-running dispute with Gateshead Council over the state of his property in Standfield Gardens, which he moved into when he was just a baby.
Mr May has previously been ordered to clean up the mess around the house and have it reconnected to the electricity grid, after he had used a petrol generator to power it. The latest development in the saga saw the retired merchant seaman served with a new eviction notice earlier this month, on the grounds that he was refusing to let council housing officials carry out inspections at the home.
Read More: Gateshead pensioner fighting eviction from childhood home insists he's going nowhere
He was due at Gateshead County Court on Tuesday morning as he appealed to get that warrant suspended and, despite Mr May failing to attend the hearing, a judge has agreed to stop the eviction going ahead on May 25. Deputy district judge Peter Furness issued a 42-day reprieve for Mr May, but warned that he should appear in court next time the case is heard.
The judge said: “I am not minded to play any games with Mr May. If he wants to defend then he has the right, but he has to do it properly. He is very fortunate that the last chance saloon is open for one more night, but it won’t necessarily be in the future.”
He added: “He should have been here. I am not prepared to engage in any further games or whatever. There may be a perfectly good reason why he is not here but it is in his interests for him to be here next time. I am not here to fight his corner, I am here to see that it is fair.”
The judge had questioned whether Gateshead Council’s actions were “flawed” – saying he himself had struggled to understand the specific reasoning behind the latest eviction threat and he could, therefore, not be sure that Mr May had either. He queried whether the council was right to try and “resurrect” a previous possession order on Mr May’s house from 2022, rather than apply for a new one with updated reasoning.
The council has been given 14 days to decide which order to pursue, after which Mr May will have 28 days to respond.
Mr Furness added: “I am not going to make him homeless when he is not here and I was not even sure myself why he was going to be homeless. That is not to say that the application does not have merit, it may have merit.”
The court heard that, before a future hearing is set, there is an expectation that Mr May will “comply with the rights of access in the interim”. Representing the council, solicitor Roddy Currie said the local authority had “nowhere else to go” other than eviction proceedings.
He told the court that council workers refurbished the property and reconnected its electrics last year, having discovered that the electricity meter had been bypassed – something that could have risked an explosion. But he added that rubbish still litters the front garden and concerns remain over what state the inside is in.
Mr Currie argued: “We gave him this last opportunity. We invested several thousand pounds and a lot of man hours in getting his property in a reasonable condition so he could move back in. We paid for electricity to be reconnected – he was not charged for any of this and has simply refused to cooperate with inspections that we are entitled to carry out under the tenancy agreement.”
The Local Democracy Reporting Service has attempted to contact Mr May. A council spokesperson said the authority would "continue to work with Mr May to amicably resolve the matter".
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