acquiring ownership of dangerous garage

I posted yesterday about a garage that used to be linked to our flat. Unfortunatley, I managed to discover that it had been removed from the estate legally (next door neighbour bought it from the vendor ten years ago), so we didn't have the same joy as Tom Stickland.

We did, however, start looking at a garage which is freehold, hidden in the corner and which has fallen into disrepair. It has a council 'Dangerous Structures' notice on it which the deadline was Dec 07, however, nothing seems to have been done about it. We have the name of the legal owner from it's title register but are struggling to track him down.

So I would like a bit of advice on how to proceed as we would like to acquire this garage and repair it ourselves.

As it has this notice, does that mean that the council will possess it if the owner can't be found (suprisingly, no one seems to know who owns it except me as garages aren't listed independently on LRO, I had to find it manually by map search and found it linked on the bottom!)

Is it wiser to continue to try to locate this original owner and make an offer or just to break into the garage, make repairs and move in (i'm aware that adverse possession has changed and also that even if we repair, if the true owner should show up, he can evict us, take possession and even sue!).

We really want this garage. As far as I see, we have 3 options. We are just a little wary of raising interest in case someone else gets the same idea.

Any advice gratefully received.