Please could Mrs A Smith let all owner occupiers know how to get absentee landlords to maintain their properties fully (Your say, April 15)?

I will explain. We have four properties very close to us in Shirley all previously privately owned and maintained in good order they are now all rentals and to various degrees are suffering from a total lack of external maintenance.

Two of the properties are a shop and a flat both owned by someone who lives abroad. On these two properties the render is falling off the external walls and the woodwork badly needs attention to such a degree that people have started fly-tipping outside this property as it looks like a dump.

I have approached the shop tenants previously, but they claim ignorance and letters from the council are completely ignored, also as the landlord is abroad he seems to be outside of the council’s remit.

Two other houses have stopped any maintenance at all of their large gardens and have let their boundary fences totally collapse without any attempt to repair them – all these properties are well within 35 metres of our front drive and are rapidly causing the deterioration of what was once a nice area.

I did approach our MP (Gavin Barwell) about the council’s new powers, but he is totally against it and stated the council already has existing powers; but as demonstrated by the example above, these powers are completely toothless with bad landlords, which means very bad news for any owner occupier living near a letting area with a bad landlord.

Again I ask Mrs Smith what are we supposed to do?

I just hope these new council powers are properly enforceable, if so for a one-off payment of £350 (if you pay early) covering five years, I cannot see why any good landlord would object to anything that would make rogue landlords properly maintain their properties and hence look after their tenants.

Also if the area is not allowed to deteriorate and improved by the correct maintenance the rental value will also increase, so it is a win-win situation for everybody.

KEITH COOPER
Shirley