A landlord who flouted the law, has been ordered to pay a massive £280k fine by ignoring orders to demolish an outbuilding. The building was deemed as not fit for housing and was built without any planning permission.

The landlord turned an outbuilding of his property into six tiny flats over 5 years ago. In the same year the council told him to stop using the outbuilding as flats and to remove the bathrooms and kitchens.

He decided not to comply and for a period of four years carried on regardless receiving rents for the flats, despite receiving enforcement notices from the Council and the planning inspector.

Eventually the council's wheels turned in motion and in 2013 it began proceedings citing the Proceeds of Crime Act. The council believed that the landlord was illegally receiving rent for the flats that were unauthorised.

Earlier this month (Nov 2104) the presiding judge at Blackfriars Crown Court, Islington, ruled for the council and slapped the guilty party with one of largest fines ever handed to a landlord, £280,000.

The breakdown of the figure was a £190,000 fine, a confiscation order of £76,562.07 and the council’s costs of £15,042.50.

The £76,562.07 confiscation amount has to be paid within 28 days and the remainder of the fine within a three month period.

If the landlord is unable to pay the fines within the timescale then a prison term could be faced.

 

Islington’s housing chief Councillor James Murray, said: “More and more people in Islington are renting privately – and the housing crisis is so bad that desperate tenants are vulnerable to being exploited by rogue landlords.

“We want to make sure people have decent places to live – not places like these six small, sub-standard flats crammed into an outbuilding.

“We will take action against property owners like this who are trying to cash in on Londoners’ desperate search for housing by offering accommodation that flouts the rules or is too small to live in.”