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| Protesters demonstrating before a Commons debate over the issuing of eviction notices to tenants who complain. | Image Source: theguardian.com |
Dozens of private renters staged a demonstration outside parliament last Monday evening to put pressure on MPs to ban so-called “revenge evictions”. The demo came ahead of Friday’s House of Commons debate on proposals from Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather that are designed to stop landlords evicting tenants who complain about essential repairs or poor conditions.
There is growing evidence that an increasing number of renters are being forced to put up with properties that are damp, dangerous and badly in need of repair, but feel powerless to speak out, for fear that they will be thrown out and forced to find somewhere else to live, perhaps in another area.
Last week, Citizens Advice revealed that 20% more people sought help over eviction – despite being up-to-date with their rent – in the three months from July to September this year, compared with the same period last year. The charity also dealt with 14% more repairs and maintenance issues, and added that young people were more likely than older renters to have problems with private landlords.
There have been a number of cases in the news involving rogue landlords. Earlier this month it was reported that David Kohali was ordered to pay a total of £281,000 – thought to be a record penalty – for illegally renting out so-called “beds in sheds” in north London. And in August, another London landlord, Yaakov Marom, pleaded guilty to failing to comply with a council prohibition order to stop renting out a room that could only be accessed by crawling up a staircase on all fours.
By law, rented properties must be safe and fit to live in. The trouble is, many aren’t, due to a rogue minority of landlords ignoring their obligations. If you think your landlord is breaking the law or acting unfairly, what can you do?
A tenant’s first port of call should be the landlord or letting agent. Set out your concerns in writing and ask for them to be rectified within a reasonable amount of time. Check outTenant.Repair, a free service to help private renters in England fix maintenance problems themselves and report issues to their landlords.
If nothing happens, it may be time to think about calling in the local authority’s environmental health department. Under the Housing Act 2004, environmental health officers will use the “housing, health and safety rating system” (HHSRS) to check a property is safe. The HHSRS looks at 29 health and safety areas, and each hazard found is scored as either category 1 or 2 (category 1 is most serious). The most common hazards relate to damp and mould, excess cold, overcrowding, fire, lack of adequate heating, leaks, inadequate security, and risk of falling (for example on stairs).
The most basic action a council officer can take is to issue the landlord with a “hazard awareness notice” – but this doesn’t require any action to be taken. However, an “improvement notice” does. This will require the landlord to carry out repairs within a set period of time.
In serious cases, more severe courses of action open to the council include prohibition orders, which ban a property, or part of one, from being rented out, and demolition orders, which do as the name suggests. The council can also complete work itself and bill the landlord. In most cases the landlord is only at risk of prosecution if he or she ignores an improvement notice or other order – which is perhaps why some are happy to let unsafe properties. Even if a landlord fails to comply with a notice, the council will have to weigh up the chances of a prosecution. Once in court, any fine is set by the magistrate, with many appearing woefully inadequate.
“Under the Housing Act 2004 the maximum fine for a HHSRS notice is £5,000,” explains David Smith, housing solicitor at Anthony Gold Solicitors. “You might have seven hazards on one notice, but the maximum fine is still £5,000.”
In some cases local authorities go through expensive and time-consuming prosecutions, only for the magistrate to give the landlord no more than a slap on the wrist.
The Local Government Association, which represents local authorities, is highly critical of the process for prosecuting bad landlords. It cites one case where a landlord received a fine of £100, even though six tenants were left living in a property for a year without fire alarms or proper escape routes.
On top of any fine, landlords can also be hit with costs and a victim surcharge. However, costs awarded by the courts do not always meet the full costs incurred by the council. Alex Hilton, director of campaigning group Generation Rent, says this makes councils less willing to prosecute landlords.
“Because environmental health officers only recoup the notional costs of a prosecution when it is successful and not the cost of enforcement leading to the prosecution, councils see enforcement as a drain on resources,” he says. “This is because the fines go to the Treasury. In our Renters’ Manifesto we called for local authorities to keep the fines so that councils can see the value of investing in effective enforcement.”
Much bigger fines can be levied for other non-HHSRS offences. The Health and Safety Executive can prosecute landlords who break gas safety rules, and landlords can ultimately be jailed if their failure to maintain gas appliances leads to someone dying. Breaches of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 can also incur big penalties.
When it comes to planning, the rules are slightly different, and the course of action the council will take depends on what planning regulation has been breached.
“For beds in sheds, a prohibition notice is likely to be issued straightaway, which would ban the shed from being used as a residential property – and this is usually followed up by a demolition order,” says the Association of Residential Letting Agents (Arla).
One group of landlords potentially subject to tougher rules and higher fines is that letting “houses in multiple occupation”. HMOs, let on a room-by-room basis, are lucrative for landlords, but it is a complex area of the private rented sector, and subject to a lot more rules than other property.
“Large” HMOs, rented to five or more people making up more than one “household” (ie a family or couple), and at least three storeys high, require a licence, while some councils will also licence “small” HMOs, too.
Most court cases which result in five-figure fines are for HMOs; landlords can be fined up to £20,000 just for not having a licence. If they have also committed “management offences” such as letting rooms that don’t meet the minimum size, they can be fined up to £5,000 per offence.
Some local authorities have introduced selective licensing, which means all landlords are required to hold a licence to rent out property. These schemes are normally introduced in areas with high levels of antisocial behaviour. The London borough of Newham introduced selective licensing covering all private rented properties in January 2013. Landlords letting property in the borough without a licence can be fined up to £20,000.
Learn more about the proper tenant-landlord relationship by following this Applegate Property Management Twitter account.
