Disposed of property from communal area

[Jasmine91]

Hi,

Wanted to know if anyone has had items disposed of that were stored in a ‘communal area’, in this case our loft. We were not issued any notice and items immediately disposed off including sentimental things like wedding dress, photo albums & old school books.

Surely the council should have stored the items & given us notice to collect it.

We own the flat on leasehold but we’re given keys & told by the seller that it was our to use. When I told this to the council they said we should have never had keys for the loft.

Wondering whether to try & take action against the council.

What does your lease say about storing things in communal areas, and your right to use the loft? If it states that you mustn’t store items in communal areas and doesn’t indicate that you have any right to the loft space (presumably it isn’t accessible from your flat but only from a communal hallway or landing? In which case it should be self evident that the loft isn’t included in the lease) then there’s no obligation for you to be given notice, though it is best practice. If the loft space isn’t within your lease and the council didn’t know you had keys to it then for all they knew the items there were abandoned and nothing to do with you. That’s where you’d come unstuck with trying to take legal action.

As PP said check your lease
Seems like a bad idea to be storing things like that in a communal area anyway!

Thank you for your help. The loft is not accessed through the flat but from a communal corridor. The loft space is not included in our lease, we were just under the impression that it was. Even though I’m not hopeful that we will be reimbursed for the items, I will still be making a complaint as this should not happen to anyone else. It seems that the council wanted to punish us rather than using the best practice of storing the items & giving us notice. I would have been fully prepared to pay any storage costs to retrieve the property.

You can try complaining and it may well mean that in future they opt to give notice before removing things - but essentially you stored your belongings in a part of the building that you have no legal right of access to, let alone to use as personal storage. How were the council to know the items belonged to you rather than the person who owned your flat previously or to anybody else? It’s nothing about the council wanting to punish you, they removed items they had no idea who owned from a part of the building that belongs solely to them - so I’d really advise not starting any complaint with anything other than acknowledging that it was your error and certainly not some silly claim of them punishing you!

Just because it wasn't meant to be there doesn't give the landlord the right to toss it.

Look at it this way - If someone were to park a car on your drive would you have the right to send it for scrap? Obviously not. And for the same reason that your landlord cannot junk whatever they find lying around where it shouldn't.

Doesn't matter what your lease says.

I appreciate you’re a solicitor or at least have a legal background, Collaborate; however, I work for a social landlord and we had more or less an identical situation a couple of years ago - a load of belongings left in the locked basement of a block of flats, to which only we (or so we thought) had access. It was taken to court and the judge sided with us, on the basis that the basement was not a communal space as outlined in the lease, we had no idea of knowing where the items had come from, and could therefore be considered abandoned.

But it would seem the legal perspective is a little more complicated than I first thought based on my above experience, so happy to stand corrected.

I understand your point, but We shouldn’t have been given keys for it if we shouldn’t have access. The council was shocked we had keys! Also it’s pretty obvious it’s our stuff, the loft is directly above our flat, there are only 4 flats in our block, and 2 flats directly beneath the loft, so it wouldn’t take a private investigator to find the owner. Appreciate all your comments guys :)