A nine month prison sentence was handed out to a Coventry landlord as his rented property was occupied by sixteen people, a serious and dangerous contravention of fire safety rules.

The landlord admitted to eight separate charges of breaching the safety rules, as well as committing the offence of attempting to stop a fire officer from entering into the property for an inspection.

The guilty landlord was ordered to pay the West Midlands Fire Service’s costs of £7,436.70, a figure he could easily afford from receiving monthly rents of £4,000 from the tenants.

All came to 'light' when a life threatening fire broke out in the property because of a faulty ground floor fridge-freezer.

Thankfully in the early hours of the morning, one of the tenants woke up in time and managed to help the other occupants to safety. Attending fire officers reported that three of the sixteen tenants, who were on the driveway, were suffering from smoke inhalation.

The officers closely inspected the property and to their disgust found that there were not any fire alarms installed and just five battery-operated smoke detectors, some of which did not work.

 

As in all HMO’s there is a requirement for fire doors, however besides not being registered as a house in multiple occupancy, there wasn’t one single safety door. The property did not contain a fire blanket in the kitchen and the tenants on the upper floors had no escape exit, the front door had been deadlocked.

The Prosecutor for the Fire Service, Mark Jackson, said: “The case is concerned with numerous fire safety breaches at a property owned by the defendant which was being used as a house in multiple occupancy.”

Whilst passing sentence the judge Alan Parker said: “Many people were at direct risk when the fire broke out. When so many people are living in individual rooms, the risk of there being a huge tragedy significantly increases.”