Tenant left mountain of 3,000 beer cans in flat and only paid rent once

A couple who let their two-bedroom flat to a tenant from hell found their property destroyed and littered with 3,000 empty beer cans.

Landlords Sandra Considine, 58, and husband Chris, 70, rented their property in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, to a ‘friend in need’ for £30 a week in 2018.

But they were quickly blocked from returning to their property for seven years by the man, who never left and refused to pay any rent.

The unnamed tenant finally left the flat in January this year, leaving Sandra and Chris to confront the disgusting interior on their own.

The couple walked in to find their flat in an ‘inhumane’ state of squalor, with thousands of beer cans – many filled with urine – in every room, along with human excrement and empty takeaway boxes.

The tenant also caused thousands of pounds worth of damage to the walls, carpets, kitchen applicances, furniture and bathroom.

The disgusted couple say the whole apartment smells like ‘stale urine’ and they are now facing a hefty cleaning bill on top of the cost of fixing the damage.

Chris, who has been diagnosed with incurable cancer and had to give up work, says he is too ill to deal with the aftermath alongside his wife, who is also frail.

‘You just can’t believe it when you see it. We can only guess how many cans there were amongst the rubbish, it must be thousands,’ he said.

‘Because they’ve been there that long, it’s eroded the can metal because the wee is like acid. Thankfully, most of the human waste was tied up in bags, so at least that was something, but the state he was living in was inhumane.’

Grandmother-of-three Sandra added: ‘We got access in June, and what we found was horrible. It was filled with thousands of cans, all dumped in every room.

‘It’s waist height, a mixture of all sorts, it’s shocking. You can’t move stuff in case a can falls because they’re full of fluids. It’s ever such a long job.’

Sandra said they had to clear a lot of the mess quickly because of the heatwave, which made the smell even worse.

The tenant was a colleague of Chris’s at his former employer, DPD, who had fallen on hard times and was about to be made homeless.

Feeling bad for their friend, the couple moved him into their flat to keep him off the streets with the agreement that he’d help paint the walls.

Sandra added: ‘I felt sorry for the lad, my husband knew him from work. Apparently he was living in a tent before he moved in. We had this flat we bought for one of the daughters and thought why not move him in there temporarily.

‘The idea was that he was going to help us do it up. I asked him to pay £30 a week to cover the service charge and ground rent, which I thought was reasonable. I think he paid it once.’

After the time for him to stay in the flat had passed, Sandra said he kept stalling – but given they never had a written tenancy agreement, she couldn’t evict him.

‘I just got so bloody fed up with it, he seemed to know his rights. I never thought of myself as a landlord, not for one minute. It just went on and on and on,’ she said.

‘We were trying to be kind, but in the end, we just feel utterly exploited. I just hope I don’t have to pay for the water and electricity bills he’s built up.’

The couple’s daughter Rose Considine, 25, has since started a GoFundMe to help the family who don’t have the financial ability to pay for professional cleaners.

Rose, a mum-of-one, said: ‘Every single room of this flat was ruined. There are five rooms in total, and all are ruined. They let him in as a good will gesture, to get him back on his feet, and then he just completely cut off contact.

‘They have been completely mugged and taken advantage of for the last seven years, and I hope we can raise a bit of money to give them some relief after the whole nightmare ordeal.’

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