Landlord legals: Fines handed out to landlords this year

While the Government is proposing to give local councils greater powers to crack down on landlords who break the law, there are already significant penalties in place. Current maximum fines include:

• £1,000 for a first offence of letting to someone who doesn’t have the legal right to live in the UK
• £5,000 for breaching the Tenancy Fees Act
• £5,000 for violating Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) rules
• £30,000 for electrical safety breaches

And councils can issue all these fines – anything up to £30,000 - without having to go to court. If an offence is serious enough, the council may then take court action, which could result in criminal prosecution, an unlimited fine and even jail time.

But because of a shortage of funding, many local authorities simply can’t afford the resources required to identify all the rogue landlords in their area. That means some are still flying under the radar and getting away with criminal activity. So, if the Government wants to give councils more tools to take action against rogue landlords, they’re going to have to put some funding in place to pay for it.

Meanwhile, despite a lack of resources being a huge issue, it’s clear that many councils are doing what they can to deal with the worst offenders – especially bad Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO) landlords who are endangering the lives of multiple tenants.

Here are just some of the fines handed out to landlords this year:

January

• A Bristol landlord was ordered to pay a total of £37,000 - a fine of £12,000 and costs of £25,000 – after being convicted of committing multiple consumer protection offences. He had been attempting to hide his identity from tenants in order to keep security deposit money and avoid responsibility for charging banned and hidden fees.

March

• A landlord in Derby was ordered to pay a total of just over £1,600 for illegally evicting a young family - a £600 fine, costs of £950 and a £60 victim surcharge.

April

• A Northampton landlord was found guilty of operating four unlicensed and defective HMOs. Specific charges included: not keeping a fire escape free from obstruction, not maintaining fire alarms and failing to maintain the property in good repair. He was fined £100,000 and had to pay £15,000 in court costs and an £181 statutory victim surcharge.

• The First Tier Tribunal in Reading ordered an HMO landlord to pay a total of £22,861 for operating an unlicensed HMO. The council had originally handed down a penalty notice in in July 2022, but the landlord had appealed it, arguing that his tenants had illegally sublet the property without his knowledge. He lost his appeal after all the former tenants confirmed they had paid their individual monthly rents directly to him.

• A landlord operating an HMO in Stroud that had been licensed for 20 tenants, was fined a total of £10,478 by Cheltenham Magistrates Court, due to the building falling below acceptable safety standards and presenting a serious fire safety risk.

• A landlord of a student property in Nottingham was found guilty of behaving in a “coercive and abusive” manner towards his tenants and ordered to pay them nearly £3,000 via a rent repayment order.

May

• Cambridge City Council issued a landlord with a Financial Penalty Notice amounting to just under £3,530 for failing to licence their HMO. The landlord was also required to carry out remedial works and undertake recognised landlord training within six months as a condition of the HMO licence being granted.

London set to see highest ever level of fines this year!

In London, during the first three months of 2023 alone, a total of £8.6m was handed out in landlord fines – that’s an increase of £500,000 on the same period last year. The borough of Camden tops the enforcement case list, while Hammersmith and Fulham has the highest average value of fines, at £19,800 per case.

Just three of the prosecutions from March that contributed to this record level of fines:

• A landlord in Barking was ordered to pay £8,000 in fines and costs for letting rooms in a house that had damp, rats and cockroaches, no fire doors and exposed electrical wiring.
• In Hounslow, a landlord was fined £115,000 for letting a “squalid and dirty” apartment, which he had ‘hidden’ in an illegal conversion on the side of his home.
• And a landlord in Brent was fined a massive £165,000 for squeezing 18 people - including seven children - into one house. 

While a lot of these cases might sound extreme, it’s evidence of the kind of impact that larger fines and court costs could have on your finances. Even a relatively small fine has the potential to wipe out several months’ profit from a rental property, so it really isn’t worth taking any risks when it comes to complying with the law.

By far the best way to make sure your property is always legally let is to work with a professional letting and managing agent that’s a member of ARLA Propertymark, as we are. At Your Move, we’re professionally trained and qualified to look after your investment and we can respond quickly to changes in the law to keep you and your property fully compliant.

If you currently self-manage or you’re a new landlord and you’d like to discuss our service, just get in touch with your local Your Move branch and speak to one of the team.