Becky lived with her mum 24 hours a day by the end. When Jean’s health deteriorated at the age of 80, Becky gave up her job teaching and moved back into her childhood home. “She wanted to pass peacefully at home,” Becky tells me. “It was hard, obviously.”
After Jean’s death, once all the formalities had been completed, Becky started the process of selling the family house in Bradway. The market was slow, but they’d had a few viewings. Then, in August, the estate agent called Becky. “There’s this man trying to get hold of you”, they said. They didn’t know who he was, but he seemed pretty persistent.
Had Becky ever heard of Andrew Milne?
Becky e-mailed this mysterious correspondent. Milne replied quickly. He owned the freehold, he informed her, and the ground rent was in arrears. That didn’t sound right to Becky — it had always been paid as far as she was aware, and there hadn’t been any demands through the letterbox.
But soon any talk of ground rent was forgotten. Milne had spotted something — something he intended to exploit. When the house had been built, 64 years earlier, there was no requirement to register leases with the land registry. So while the lease existed, it wasn’t on the public record.
This was a bit of admin that Becky’s parents probably hadn’t realised they needed to sort out. But the punctuation-free e-mail that followed left no room for tidying up paperwork. Horrified, Becky read Milne’s words. “I accordingly am entitled to vacant possession of the property”, he asserted. “I am writing to give you 7 days notice that I will have a locksmith and agent attend to recover possession for me and change the locks”.
Despite paying only around £400 for the freehold of Becky’s mum’s house, Milne now intended to take the whole thing. It had recently gone on the market for £300,000.
The impact on Becky was devastating. “You're on your own and you don’t know what to do… it's just absolutely horrendous,” she says. She barely slept for weeks, and her arthritis flared up with the stress.
Not only that, but she started to dread going to her beloved childhood home. “I was actually scared to go, in case somebody was there and had either got in the house or was trying to change the locks,” she says. “My mum and dad worked hard all my life to ensure that we inherited the house from them. And my mum — I wanted to make sure she had the best love and care, especially being poorly like she was. And for somebody to send a letter saying I’m going to take possession and change the locks in seven days — it puts the fear of God in you.”
Thankfully, the people at the Land Registry were much more understanding. In view of the situation, they expedited registering the lease, and within 48 hours it was in her name.
Milne’s claim on the property was now completely baseless. But that didn’t mean he was going to let up. Soon the letters were flooding in; there had been alterations, he claimed, breaches of covenants. If Becky ever wanted to sell the property, she would need to buy the freehold off him — for £100,000.
“He was saying: ‘you’ll never sell it’, because he wouldn’t give permission because of the alterations”, Becky says. Milne dropped his price to £25,000; Becky’s solicitors went back with an offer of £1,000. Since then, despite setting several deadlines, they haven’t heard from him. The house is in limbo.
But this week, Becky’s been feeling more confident. At a meeting in Bradway Community Hall on Monday, over 30 residents got together to discuss how they should collectively respond to Milne. It was also attended by a couple of those in Crosspool who received letters a few weeks earlier, to give their advice. Becky and many others shared their stories of receiving the letters and trying to work out what to do. “I was absolutely astounded at the amount of people who were actually at this meeting and were being affected,” Becky says. The mood was sympathetic, but determined to resist. In fact, Becky credits Milne with bringing the community together. “People actually feel kind of empowered against this man.”
We asked Milne why he claimed he was entitled to the property, and what his response was to the distress Becky had experienced. But this time, instead of threats, or diatribes about leaseholds, we heard only silence.
We have tried, many times, to ask Milne what he would say to those who have felt pressured or even terrified by his letters, which we reported on last week, a story that has had a massive response. But this is one question he never wants to answer.
So, when everything else fails, you have to go back to the oldest trick in the journalist’s book: the ‘doorstep’.
It was time to find Andrew Milne.
But where to look? Handily, after we published our first article, various people who had previously dealt with Milne got in touch. They seemed remarkably keen to help. After a few conversations we had three different addresses — none of which were anywhere near Sheffield.
It made sense to start with the one he had been using in his “very aggressive” letters. Despite his business address in the City of London, these were apparently being sent from a very long way away: the small town of Pensarn in North Wales. On Tuesday, I went down to the station and hopped on the next train headed west.
One stop along the line after Rhyl (another place where Milne has history) Pensarn sits on a pebbly coastline. It’s probably seen better days; there are a fair few run down buildings along its high street. But by far the most dominant — and derelict — is The Park Free House.
The pub, locals told me, has been closed for years and years — no-one remembers quite when, but it seems the previous tenants were evicted by Milne after a legal dispute over rubbish collection. One window is smashed, others are boarded up. Green paint peels from the door frames, and an old can of Monster lies in a puddle outside the back door.
The downstairs still contains pub fittings. In the window, there’s a food hygiene certificate (0 out of 5 — “Urgent Improvement Necessary”) and “BT Sport live here” stickers. Upstairs, most of the rooms are piled high with furniture.
I had assumed this address was just one that Milne used for post, which was probably being redirected, but he’s definitely been seen around the town. “He’s all ‘I own this, I own that’”, someone in Scrappy Jack’s cafe reports, adopting a posh accent. The people in the local charity shop tell me he occasionally pops in to donate a single shirt. And tantalisingly, I’m told he was here only a few days ago, having another job lot of furniture unloaded for safe keeping in the pub.
Milne’s clearly not in — locals tell me that if he was, his Jaguar would be parked opposite. It’s a dead end. I get the train back to Sheffield disappointed, but feeling like we’re making progress.
Onto address number 2. At times like these, there’s something to be said for having a network of sister titles. My colleague Andrew Kersley, who works for The Londoner, was tasked with scoping out another property we’d linked to Milne — a flat in South Kensington.
The feel here couldn’t be more different to Pensarn. Several Ferraris, a Bentley and other prestige cars line the streets of the Georgian terraces. This is one of London’s most desirable postcodes, where flats regularly sell for millions. The buzzer buzzes but to no avail. The neighbour doesn’t know the man. Another dead end.
Which leaves us with just one option left to explore: property number 3, a semi-detached house on the Wirral. Laurence Thompson — who works for our Merseyside sister title, The Post — happens to live not far away, and kindly offers to put me up.
We scope it out on Thursday evening, and sure enough, Milne’s Jaguar is on the drive. Third time lucky. We decide that waiting for the morning is the better option — he’s more likely to actually answer the door, and there’ll be better light for filming the encounter. The Tribune’s budget doesn’t stretch to employing film crews, so we’re using our phones.
We get up early on Friday and head over while it’s still dark. But when we rock up, the drive is empty and the lights are off. We’ve been given the slip.
Despondent, we head into The Post’s Liverpool office for the day. Milne, we realise, probably caught the first train to London for the day’s business. We were there early, but not early enough. To have trekked west for the second time in a week and still turned up nothing is pretty dispiriting. Investigative journalism, I’m quickly realising, isn’t all glamour.
But as the morning’s coffee slowly percolates through my weary brain, a fuzzy thought in my head slowly clarifies. What if we’ve got it wrong? What if Milne hasn’t gone to London? Have we also been overawed by his City of London credentials? What if the reason he’s sending legal letters from a run down Welsh pub is simply because, strange as it might seem, that’s where he actually works?
I call up a local business and ask, as nicely as I can, whether there’s a Jaguar outside The Park. Storm Claudia is lashing at the windows, and the owner takes some persuasion to step outside and have a look. But when they do, they confirm my hunch. Milne is in.
Suddenly reinvigorated, Laurence and I jump into my battered Honda and begin the long drive over to Pensarn. The roads are covered in standing water and traffic trundles along at a slow pace. Eventually we pull up. We can see the car — he’s here.
We ring the doorbell, hopeful that this time we might finally get some answers out of Milne, some sense of why he has made dozens of people’s lives a misery by abusing his position as a solicitor. We wait, knock, still nothing. If he’s in the building, he’s not coming down.
We drive round the block and park up where we can see if he leaves the front. Laurence and I discuss fatherhood and films. Hours pass, and still no sign. The brutal weather isn’t on our side — it’s definitely not the day for a seaside stroll. And the locals don’t rate our chances. “He’s not going to answer”, the landlord of The Yacht tells me bluntly when I pop in to use the facilities.
The hours drag past and the storm continues to rage. As the skies darken, a solitary light flickers on in the otherwise dark pub. He's definitely inside the building. We could be here for hours yet, and given Laurence’s wife is expecting a baby in a few days’ time it doesn’t feel fair to keep him here longer. We hammer on the front door some more, and loudly call up to the window. It’s right above us, and we’re sure Milne must be able to hear — but he doesn’t even look out.
To come within a few metres and not get any answers is frustrating. If Milne won’t come out, we can’t make him; but the change in his posture towards our reporting is striking. Just over a week ago, he was threatening The Tribune with a defamation lawsuit at the High Court. Now he won’t respond to our emails or even answer his door.
For people like Becky, the wait to learn more about Milne continues. “I can’t understand how a solicitor — someone who is meant to uphold the law — can do something like this,” she tells me. “It’s heartbreaking.”
