A landlord has been ordered to pay almost £50,000 for failing to adhere to licensing legal requirements on several rental properties, despite numerous warnings.
County Durham council prosecuted Kamran Adil, of Gosforth, bringing nine charges under the Housing Act.
Since April 2022 private rented properties in some areas of the county have been required to be licensed under the Selective Licensing scheme, which was brought in to improve conditions in the private rented sector. The scheme requires all private landlords to obtain a licence to legally rent properties in designated areas of the county, which are subject to inspections to ensure compliance with licensing conditions.
Peterlee Magistrates' Court heard that Adil owns eight properties and that despite receiving several written and verbal warnings from the council, reminding him of the legal requirement to apply for a selective licence, he did not have any licence in place for the eight properties.
The court also heard that following an inspection of one of the properties, an officer found that the Electrical Condition Report for the address had been undertaken by an engineer who was not believed to be competent.
A Housing Act Notice was served to Adil as a result, giving 14 days to provide a copy of a valid electrical report but no response was received.
He was found guilty in his absence of eight counts of failing to licence a property and one count of failing to provide a copy of a valid Electrical Installation Condition Report.
He was fined a total of £45,000, ordered to pay costs of £330 and a victim surcharge of £2,000 - a total of £47,330.
A council spokeswoman says: "Selective licensing powers exist to help us ensure accommodation is safe and well managed for County Durham residents. By avoiding applying for the appropriate licences for his properties, Mr Adil has been left more than £45,000 worse off. This case should serve as a stark warning to other landlords and letting agents of the high financial penalty that can be imposed when they ignore the responsibilities of their role."
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Celebrate when you get the £45,000 from him. If he didn’t attend court, what makes them think he will pay up?
If he doesn't then prison.
Ofcourse he won't pay he's above the law in his eyes
Well Sandra I do agree, but I doubt there is a court in this country that would send him to prison
Charge against his property with interest accruing. The new Council investment plan
It has been commented on this website that landlords who are subject to large fines for regulatory offences often have foreign names. It could be the case that their English proficiency is quite poor and therefore they don't understand properly the written communications that they are receiving.
They may not understand the requirements of a licence either which can be fairly technical or the full consequences of not having one.
I can imagine how difficult it would be to understand the law if one had a holiday home abroad and were trying to let it - and one only had a poor understanding of the language in that country.
Seemed to under the legal requirements of the purchase though.
Not buying that Ellie. They know full well a license is needed they just think they will get away with it. They wouldn’t get away with it in Dubai for example. I know of people who have eventually lost their property because of inaction. It’s their own fault this is the UK get with the program or do your shenanigans elsewhere. The councils here look for a foreign name like mine and force inspections expecting lower standards. Once they know you have a good standard they leave you alone for a bit. And yes it does wind me up cos I’m trying to provide roofs over heads without all this council interference
I know of somebody who lost their property through inaction, too. He was an absentee landlord, and was behaving rather irresponsibly.
I am sure you are right, Jahan that there is prejudice sometimes, too, and prejudgements about the standard of property being offered.
''Me no understand ,no speak English'' how many times I've heard that line
His English is good enough to buy 8 properties, so can't be that bad.
I think the foreign sounding names may lead us to some conclusions, but not that they don't understand English!
If he managed to buy & rent out 8 properties he has a good grasp of English. I might be wrong but it sounds more like an example of why the press bash us landlords, lumping in the good with the bad.
That is possible, of course, but he may be letting to people without having a written tenancy agreement etc and he may speak the same first language as his tenants.
The main offence seem to have been a failure to get a licence rather than providing poor or unsafe accommodation.
Yes Mark exactly
Which ever way you look at it . It is a Big fine. I cannot think of any other group of people who face such massive fines.
It seems out of proportion to the nature of the rules that have been broken.
People committing a criminal offence where others have been hurt could be fined less. Where there is a relatively low level of harm somebody who committed actual bodily harm could receive just a Band B fine.
The fine for driving without a driving licence is up to £1000.
Yes Ellie, driving offences are much lower. No insurance £300 plus 6 points, no road tax only £30 plus 1.5 x what you should have paid. The police should be catching all these drivers. I hear of many cases of accidents with no insurance, makes it more difficult dealing with the insurance company and usually ends up costing you more.
What makes a landlord who doesn't look after a property think there above the law and cries I'm the victim.. Well I've no sympathy as I've been through it and my old landlords I hop are heading for court and prison I hope.
English lesson again for SBR: it is they’re, not there. In your spittle flecked rage do you think you could slow down and type English and not “hop” around?
You still haven't told us your story and why you hate all landlords.
@ John Young, Please don't encourage her.
I would love to hear your old landlord's version of events Sandra, probably worth the fine just to see the back of you I expect
He had a dubious EICR report certainly, but was the system dangerous? We don’t know. We all have these EICR’s which invariably result in a tweak here or there to meet the latest ‘regs’ which are regularly updated.
Owner occupiers have no obligation to get these EICR’s but most systems are very far from dangerous.
My electrician often comments that most existing systems are safe but ‘regs are regs’. I guess we could all be issued with parachutes when we fly off to Malaga and be marginally safer on our already very safe aircraft!
This foolish landlord deserves a fine but £50 k for what may well have been a ‘paperwork failure’ and no real risk to the tenant or others is more reflective of the ‘whack a landlord’ culture.
I thought the same, and let's not forget that the electrical reports are a relatively recent requirement. For hundreds of years, they weren't required at all.
He was found guilty in his absence of eight counts of failing to licence a property and one count of failing to provide a copy of a valid Electrical Installation Condition Report.
He ignored several notices from the council so I have no sympathy with him. You don't ignore ccouncil notices.
Judging by the guy's name I suspect he is one of these that don't concider that our laws apply to him good luck trying to get that fine paid
They always get the money. Well like all the other compliance requirements that now exists didn’t apply before even before 2022 he was probably renting legally as regards licensing because it didn’t exist.
You don’t have to do anything to break the law if the Law wasn’t there when you were first doing it. The changes to the law means you broken them. Landlords can be made Criminals over night without doing anything.
For the first 20 years I rented I didn’t need a gas certificate, domestic electrical condition report, energy performance certificate, ICO Registration, emergency lighting certificates, fire alarms certificates, Right 2 Rent, How 2 Rent, Repeated licensing every 5 years, it’s endless, so any of this didn’t exist for the first 20 years I was a landlord now every one of them a serious offence and loads of Anti landlords Organisations living off our backs parading as Charities, did someone there’s a housing Crisis/ unaffordable why ?.
Spot on Michael!
Let’s continue in the same vain, must be accredited, be a member of a landlord organisation, have a redress scheme, have an ombudsman, have sitting tenants, give up ownership. What happened to our primary objective supplying quality affordable houses to Rent, unfortunately now bogged down in paperwork.
U say it perfectly Michael
U don't MOT a car which is way more dangerous than a house and u get £100 fine. U don't license a house and u get a £50,000 fine. No wonder tenants can't get anywhere any more.
This case should serve as a stark warning to all landlords Oops tenants that when the punishment doesn't fit the crime, there will no homes available for u to live in & get a Landlord punished any more.
It’s very interesting to see and read about this court case as we have been challenging Durham County Council over their scheme and the areas they have included for quite some time.
For an area to be included in any selective landlord licencing scheme, my understanding of the Act is that there needs to be >19% private landlords in the area, then there needs to be at least one other issue that needs addressing such as high levels of ASB, Low Housing demand, high levels of deprivation etc.
Durham have covered vast areas of the county with a scheme reduced from an original scheme of 60,000 houses, down to 30,000 houses. Please note this is still £15M raised from landlords.
Through a series of FOI’s we have established that DCC have not actually reached the required private landlord percentages of 19% or above in the vast majority of the areas included in the scheme.
These results are showing PL percentages as low as 4.69%, so these areas should never been included in any licencing scheme under the Housing Acts 2004 criteria.
Blackhall where this landlord appears to have his houses is a difficult one to confirm without the full details. However I can advise that most of Blackhall’s areas included in the scheme do not meet the criteria with 14.6%, 14.5% and 5.43% with only one area meeting the criteria at 33.21%.
So if the scheme as a whole is not compliant with the Act (not all areas), how can such powers be used to bring these cases, enforce rulings and award such disproportionate fines?
There are so many serious implications here for landlords and questions need to be answered why such powers are being used without independent scrutiny, such as the CPS, there are so many parallels with the Post Office scandal with computer algorithms being used to actually “predict” the PL levels and no questions being asked on the accuracy, just accepted the computer results as being correct !
Well, they are clearly not correct.
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