A tenant who shared a house in Hounslow with nine other occupants was pulled out of a blazing house fire in August 2011.

Fire fighters thought they had saved the tenant’s life; sadly he passed away in hospital not long after being admitted. Fortunately the other eight tenants escaped unharmed.

Inspectors were called in and discovered a multitude of safety breaches and a prosecution against the landlady was launched.

The inspectors reported that there was no quick safe escape route for tenants to take to get out of the property. The property did not contain any firefighting equipment or smoke alarms and that any form of a fire risk assessment had ever been undertaken.

 

The landlady received the fine of £160,000 in April at the Kingston Crown Court after she was convicted of breaching four fire regulations at a trial in March.

Neil Orbell, the London Fire Brigade’s assistant commissioner for fire safety, said: "Landlords have a responsibility to keep their tenants safe from fire and if they are ignoring those responsibilities and putting the people living in their properties at risk we will not hesitate to prosecute.

"The sentence handed down to Mrs Rana is a stark reminder to landlords that the courts take fire safety as seriously as we do and that the penalties for ignoring it are severe."