A landlord has admitted breaching planning rules at two properties in south London.
He submitted a guilty plea in response to Southwark council’s prosecution and was sentenced to pay £42,637.20 in illegal gains and a further £10,000 in fines and costs at the Inner London Crown Court.
Mawan Musa, from Camberwell, lives in the same building in which he constructed three illegal basement flats.
Musa also added what the council calls “a haphazard and sub-standard rear window extension” on the roof of another property. Neither of these developments had any planning permission.
Southwark council’s planning enforcement team led the prosecution, when the illegal and sub-standard developments were not removed.
The court agreed that Musa had illegally gained £42,637.20 in rent, after reviewing financial investigations carried out by the council’s trading standards team.
A spokesperson for the council says: “Everyone deserves a good quality place to live. Planning rules and space standards make sure that new developments are good quality and a decent size.
“This was a shameless attempt to shoehorn three tiny flats into one basement, along with an illegal roof extension. This outcome serves as a warning that we will not tolerate planning breaches. It also supports us in cracking down on those who try to benefit from renting illegal and sub-standard properties in Southwark.”
The development is now in compliance with planning permission.
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Fair enough he got fined.
A Council spokesperson said everyone deserves a decent quality place to live.
The Council didn’t say why they deserve it, didn’t say its because they were born, don’t work, milk the System or doing drugs.
Didn’t mention where those decent quality place’s are available.
Didn’t mention that they have driven out thousands of landlords who previously supplied this type of Accommodation.
Didn’t mention to Sky high Rents caused directly by Council’s interference and taxation making Renting unaffordable.
Didn’t mention Removing Section 21 added thousands more to the Homeless list.
That’s fine the tax payers will pay for them in B& B or Hotels far more expensive than living in less than pristine private accommodation.
Didn’t mention forcing Private landlords to switch to Limited Companies costing Revenue hundreds of millions at least, its reported one LL alone will pay £10’000’000, less did they go to the London School of Economics.
Well that’s three less places for people to stay isn’t it. I suppose they can find a good shop doorway to sleep.
Someone explain to me what does the council do with the £42k extracted?
Xmas 🎅🻠party
Unless the place was a death trap surely the tenants were better off there than on the street?
If you look at census records from 100 plus years ago, most small working class homes housed big families AND often a couple of lodgers.
In fact in Glasgow there's a statue to a character called Lobby Dosser - lobby as in hall or vestibule and Dosser as in sleeper. Mattresses were often put down on the lobby floor at night and put away in a cupboard in day time. No doubt Councils would now fine the official occupiers for what was actually an act of kindness and a means to supplementing the meagre household income.
As I have said before, benefits are now far too generous and the expectations of the workshy match or exceed those of the workers.
It's all very good councils wanting to drive standards up, but in doing so that drives costs up, so what happens to those that can't afford the increased rents for the better properties ? well here in Norwich they are given a tent and live in it under the fly over , that seems to me to be a backward step
In my day we used to live in a hole in the ground with a sheet over it , eat gravel each morning and dad would hit us over the head with a croquet mallet
But we were happy :)
You had a sheet?
You were lucky!
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