Council enforcement officers have raided a house in Wembley, north London, and found 19 tenants paying a landlord £1,000 a week.
Brent council’s licensing team discovered a garage that had been illegally turned into two bedrooms with a makeshift partition wall between them; a shed in the process of being converted into what appeared to be another bedroom and smoke alarms in a state of disrepair.
The tenants living at the property included two children.
Councillor Eleanor Southwood, cabinet member for housing and welfare reform in Brent, says: “A landlord making £4,000 a month from exploiting tenants like this is committing an offence. We won’t hesitate in taking action against people who continue to treat tenants badly and provide homes that are unsafe. Our licensing scheme is clear. It requires landlords to meet certain standards and a landlord or agent who rents out to tenants without a licence is breaking the law.”
The raid was a joint operation between the council, police and the UK Border Agency.
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Was the landlord's name Mr Smith or Jones?
I think probably NOT, somehow.
Its a fact ( and not being racist ) that people from some other countries do actually live in much smaller units ( and of far inferior quality ) to that in the UK, so result is =
Landlords from those countries don't see the same immorality as we do in packing in that many people into space which they might have available in their country of origin ( Not that I'm saying that its an excuse )
There could be much better Intelligence led enforcement by Local Authorities that bring more of these cases to light.
that probably explained the cheap rent. shame that it happens. tend to be tenants who cant afford the market rate and willing to pay less for a roof over their head because that is what they can afford to pay. council should provide more housing for these type of tenants than to allow the few to exploit the situation. anyho, the council doing so is at the taxpayers expense. they dont lose anything if they manage it badly. how do we taxpayer get protection then from the waste of public funds???
But its all the law-abiding majority of Landlords that are paying Licensing fees to fund the enforcement against the few, instead of the funding coming from Proceeds of Crime orders.
Selective Licensing is in NO way helping to prevent the abuse of regulations by the minority - just paying the L.A's to do it ( badly / insufficiently )
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