Bradford Council has shown it is willing to act to help a pensioner who says his life has been made a misery by pigeons roosting in an abandoned property next door to his in Otley Road.

Officers and councillors should be praised for the decision to take enforcement action to make the property secure and remove the nuisance pigeons. After waiting two months for the property owner to respond to an enforcement notice, the Council will now step in and carry out the work itself, obtaining a warrant from magistrates to enter the building.

That will be music to the ears of 81-year-old Mohammed Nazir, who has had to put up with the noise and the smell of the pigeons which have infested the former shop and flat after it was left empty years ago.

But although it will provide a short term solution, while the property remains empty it will always have the potential to attract nuisance tenants of one sort or another, and will continue to rot and decay until it is brought back into use in some form. And it is just one of scores of similar derelict and disused shops, pubs, houses, schools and other properties around the city, all of which are in need of some sort of action.

Hopefully, the enforcement action is a signal that the Council is going to be coming down hard on land owners who continually ignore notices to improve their buildings.

Coun Howard Middleton, who took up Mr Nazir’s case, says the pigeon-infested building is an example of the kind of property that should be restored and lived in again to avoid new homes being built on greenfield sites. Which is exactly what the T&A and local community groups have been calling for through our continuing Green Spaces campaign.

What we now need to see is continued action from the Council to push landlords harder to either tidy up their properties or sell them on to someone who will. And don’t allow them to simply let buildings literally rot away. It’s a waste of a vital resource, and a blight on the whole city.