A letting agent has been fined £20,000 over offences relating to a House in Multiple Occupation. The landlord has also been fined.
Jarvis Properties managed a property in Reading, Berkshire, for landlord Abdul Sheikh. The three-storey property was issued with an HMO licence by Reading Borough Council, on July 17, 2009, limiting the number of occupants to seven. Following a complaint from one of the residents regarding poor conditions and disrepair in May 2011, the council carried out an investigation.
The property was found to be overcrowded, with 11 people living at the property. The fire alarm system was not working, and other fire safety provisions such as fire doors, emergency lights were not being maintained. Fire safety notices were incorrectly positioned and did not direct occupiers to exit via a safe route.
An internal shower room extractor fan was not working and electrical wires were exposed.
The investigation also found that the shower and the toilet in the top-floor shower room blocked up due to a failed macerator unit resulting in foul water filling up both the shower tray and toilet and leaking through to the ceiling below and landing on the banister to the communal stairs and hallway below.
A court found the agent had failed to manage the HMO properly or comply with health and safety conditions on the HMO licence, and failed to provide information when asked.
The landlord was fined £500 and has been ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £15, as well as legal costs of £200 – a total of £715 – after pleading guilty to failing to provide requested information.
District Judge Lynne Matthews said that she considered the offences to be serious, and that when the defendant became aware of the failures they failed to do anything about it for some considerable time. She said the tenants deserved to have better living accommodation and were entitled to working sanitary facilities.
Reading Council’s assistant lead councillor for neighbourhood and housing, Richard Davies, said: “This is a fantastic result for the council’s housing and environmental protection team – and more importantly, this is a great result for tenants across the borough.
“Raising the standards of housing across all tenures is a top priority for the council, including rental properties in the private sector, and this case should act as a deterrent to a minority of irresponsible landlords, as well as letting agents.”
But Jarvis Properties accused the council of being “more interested in court fines than co-operating to get works done in adequate timeframes”.
In a statement, the company said: “More help should be given to landlords across the borough to raise standards if this is indeed the intention of the council. Many landlords and investors have already left the HMO market and we fear many more will do so in the future due to excessive red tape.”
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Comments
The way that I read Ray Evans post was that he was questioning exactly what you remarked:
"unless they can show they did everything they could to get the landlord to meet their obligations".
So maybe you should spend a bit longer absorbing others posts and less time making the condescending arsey comments.
@Ray Evans
Thought you were more knowledgeable Ray?
In a HMO situation if an agent is involved then the agent will almost always be found the guilt party - and fined accordingly - unless they can show they did everything they could to get the landlord to meet their obligations.
Also there will have been enforcement orders issued, bound to have been, and on the agent as they were collecting the rent, a key factor in who is the "responsible person".
Finally the agent is the alleged professional and should know better. Happy to continue though because of the commissions they were earning no doubt.
Mind now they will be out of business as thay will lose "fit and proper person" status (as will the landlord) as a result of the conviction. That is the real penalty here as they now cannot hold deposits either. One assumes whichever TDP scheme they were using (if any!!) will soon be expelling them as a member, as will TPO id they were members (doubtful too).
Landord £715. Agent £2000. Nice headline but what does it tell us?
Although the faults in and about the property are totally unacceptable and the law has been broken in that respect, this headline report does not give enough facts about the case to show who was the real guilty party.
Landlord - was he informed properly about the problems by the Agent and did he refuse to rectify them?
Agent - has he written records of inspections and that he informed the Landlord properly of the problems and the Landlord refused to rectify them?
If one or both are guilty of breaking the law then they should have been have given a prison sentence and also fined accordingly. Time to get tough on these serious breaches.
Anyone who uses the stairs will be going through the motions.
@ Start a petition -
People are lazy, if you have people coming into your office you need them to sign it a paper petition because they wont go to a website after they have left your office.
The link to that needs to be emailed to all your existing tenants
Get as much exposure as possible. Shapps has his head in the sand
I do however think this petition covers more that the DPS issue
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/28848
Joe
@London Joe
Someone already has..........
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/19419
I know it seems pointless but can all the agents that want regulation not get together and lobby their local mp or start a petition - ARLA and NFLOPP are doing nothing.
Surely if we make enough noise we can get Shapps to do something. We have people coming into our offices daily we could get them to sign a petition of behalf of tenants that want regulated agents.
Shapps is only concerned about the financial implications of regulating the unregulated - he is not concerned about the tenants who in some cases like above are living in squalid conditions. I reported an agent recently to the council who was "managing" a flat for 2 years and never got a gas test and failed to do basic safety checks as there where broken sockets with exposed internals and a child in the flat. Shapps is allowing these unregulated agents to put peoples lives at risk also.
If we all sit back and wait for our "governing bodies" to do something we are going to be waiting for a long time.
Joe
That's it. When found out the agent blames the council! Anyone would think the council didn't send many warning letters to both agent and landlord.
How would they like s**t falling on a bannister and then running your hand down it to stabilise yourself. These agents were obviously just going through the motions!!
Agin it proves that unregulated back street agents as the bain of this Industry. They can be set up overnight and run by anyone even with previous criminal records.
Good the Court should have just closed them down.