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Court shuts drugs den
This is the woman whose house has been shut down in a major drugs-busting operation by police and council chiefs.
Police used crackhouse closure legislation to win a closure order on Wendy Gaskell's council home in Selkirk Grove, Norley Hall.
The 28-year-old mother-of-three and her partner Mark Falla, a self-confessed heroin addict, were given just two hours to gather their possessions and leave the property after the court order was made.
Their home was boarded up and will remain sealed for three months.
Anyone who attempts to enter it is liable to be jailed for up to six months.
Wigan & Leigh Housing, which manages the borough's council homes, will now apply for Gaskell's permanent eviction and repossession of the house.
Wigan magistrates made the closure order after hearing evidence about activities at the house through statements from police, and diary records made by residents and collated by WALH's antisocial behaviour unit.
Residents who spoke out were allowed to remain anonymous because they were terrified of reprisals from Gaskell, Falla and their associates.
Gaskell had been a tenant at the address since May 2004, magistrates were told.
Housing chiefs began to receive complaints about activity at the house within five days of her moving in.
Residents believed drug-dealing was taking place and complained that their lives were blighted by noise and disorder associated with the property.
The court heard Gaskell's house had been subject to three drugs raids in the past seven months.
She and Falla, who is also known as Liptrot, both have convictions for Class A drug possession.
The couple lived at the house with their three children; sons aged eight and four and a baby girl just a few months old.
Photographs, produced in court, taken by police during searches, showed evidence of drug-taking and raised concerns about living conditions inside Gaskell's home.
Alison Heyworth, who applied for the closure order on behalf of Greater Manchester Police, told the court: "This house has acquired a reputation of being a place where people can go to obtain or take drugs.
"The order is needed to give immediate respite to the community, to get rid of the house's reputation and allow residents to go about their peaceful, law-abiding lives."
Police and council partnership hailed
Damning dossier on house of shame
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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