Snow is on the way to London as I write and I am like a kid at Xmas. I love snow, I love the look of it and even the chaos it brings with it.

I got so excited at the prospect when listening to the weather on the radio the other night that I missed the sink whilst draining my spaghetti and poured boiling water on my foot and ended up In Kings College hospital A&E.

This caused me to appear in Lambeth County court yesterday defending a mortgage repossession case wearing slippers.

They have got used to my last minute, unplanned appearances in Hawaiian shirts and converse but I think the slippers tipped the judges hands, enabling them to finally decide if I actually know what I am doing or am just a confident blagger.

I have of course known the answer to that one for some time.

Oxford gets tough on HMOs

A bitty news week on the housing front, I’m sure you will agree. However the story that struck me the most is Oxford City Council’s announcement, reported in a number of places, that they are extending HMO licensing to ALL HMOs not just those of 5 person or more and 3 or more floors.

They are threatening fines of £20,000 for not licensing and estimate that this will require 5,000 properties to register. Whether a landlord registers or gets done for not registering its a nice little earner all round I would say.

Of course amongst the landlord fraternity this has gone down like Abu Hamza speaking at an English Defence League meeting.

We all know that HMOs tend to have the worst property standards going and the highest rate of social problems amongst their tenants but they are an essential part of the PRS and with the age limit for the Shared room rate of housing benefit raised to 35 in January we will need more HMOs than ever.

A balance must be struck between, on the one hand raising standards and safety in these properties, with suitable penalties for breaches and on the other disincentivising landlords from bothering to rent out HMOs.

I followed a thread on Property 118 about this where many landlords aired their views on HMO licence fees and if those views are extrapolated across the country it doesn’t bode well for the future of HMOs.

As a council worker I have to say I don’t know where they will find the staff or resources to police this project or what Oxford landlords will do in response. Certainly one to watch.

The bedroom tax rears its head

The prospect of bedroom tax has been rearing its ugly head again. For those of you that may have missed this one it isn’t a tax on when you get ‘jiggy in the kissing club’ with your spouse but a fiendish method to save more public purse pounds by cutting benefits where a tenant has more bedrooms than they need.

Government got defeated on this in a vote back in December but they have vowed to push it through again in February.   These plans are being attacked by a growing band of social landlords who are quite rightly pointing out that once again it is the poorest who get kicked in the teeth.

Yes there are the odd cases out there, beloved of the Daily Mail and Express of people doing very nicely on benefits but most aren’t. Could you live on £65 a week JSA? Losing £14 a week from your limited benefits can be crippling for some and the bedroom tax doesn’t take into account people’s more complex individual circumstances.

The bedroom tax in practice

24 Dash ran just one such example. Welshpool tenant Jamie Carter and his daughter and autistic son were moved from their flat by social services as being unfit for their occupation and into a 3 bedroom house.

Under Bedroom Tax rules he would have to choose between losing much needed benefit or downsizing to a 2 bed and forcing his autistic son to share a room with his sister.

Mr Carter, who needs the accommodation and has to provide a certain number of respite hours requiring specific accommodation each week said:

“I love my children, I don’t want to lose them. I don’t know how I would provide a good life for them – I’m out of work and this tax could just cripple me.”

Of course some people will be happy to downsize and free up larger accommodation for others but Jamie Carter’s family are just one example of ordinary people with more complex lives than government plans take into account.

DHP – Councils are losing it

Right, that’s my weekly slag off of government out of the way, now lets have a go at councils.
The tight-arse award of the week goes to Wirral Council as reported in the Guardian  Many people don’t know there is a thing called DHP. Which stands for Discretionary Housing Payment.

This is an extra fund attached to housing benefit, through which a council could decide to top up people’s rent shortfall or make single payments to help out those in difficulty.

As with all council budgets, funding is on a ‘Use it or lose it’ basis. If they underspend by £50,000 on the DHP budget by the end of March they lose it for the following year, so it makes sense to spend it helping your most vulnerable local residents doesn’t it?

So why do so many council underspend on DHP? Wirral topped the league of 6 councils who are reported to have spent less than 50% of their allocated budgets with just 8 weeks to go before the end of the financial year.

You would think these departments think its their own bloody money.

Of course the system itself is just plain daft. If a company were so efficient that they managed to underspend on a service they would expect to be rewarded but councils get penalised for saving money. It’s a mad world.

And finally the ‘Kick Shapps’ moment.

Housing Excellence ran the wonderfully titled “No dust on Shapps” article.  “the Prime Minister and the Government is determined to put housing centre stage, meaning tangible progress is already being made – with plenty more moves on the way , said Mr Shapps.

The thing is he has been saying this for nearly 2 years but not much is happening.

In the article he makes much of the fact that he is ending the practice of many years whereby councils have to give a proportion of the rent they collect to central government stating “For years, councils have been captives of a centralised system”.

What he is conveniently leaving out is that this boon is only in return for councils taking on billions in housing debt in return for keeping the rents.

One wag posting on a website this week asked when the government would be introducing the ‘Reformation of Reality Bill? When indeed?. Now, where’s my slippers?

Ben Reeve Lewis

Ben’s runs  Home Saving Expert, where he shares his secrets on defending people’s homes from mortgage repossession Visit his blog and get some help and advice on mortgage difficulties,  catch up with him on Twitter and check out his free report “An Encouraging note on Dealing with your Mortgage Lender” and have it sent right to your inbox.

Pasta picture by naotakern

It shows that landlords and agents ARE being prosecuted and fined by the Courts – sometimes quite heavily.

R v Weston and Williams - Worcester Crown Court

Here the defendants ran a letting agency called Premier Places in Redditch and Worcester.  They were members of TDS but failed to ring fence tenancy deposit funds.  This eventually cost the  TDS scheme more than £63,000 when it had to pay out to the tenants.

Weston, who ran the business, pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud at Worcester Crown Court and Williams pleaded guilty to three counts of forgery.  They were given suspended prison sentences and ordered to undertake community service.

A report linked to from Destin states that TDS were furious at this sentance which they felt was unduly lenient.  However the Judge is reported as saying that Weston was bankrupt and the events had had a devastating effect on his family; also he exhibited genuine remorse.

R v Mathew Richard Tapper – Brent Magistrates Court

Here Tapper was a private sector landlord prosecuted by Harrow Council for failing to rectify ‘excess cold’ hazards at his property.

The total fine and costs came to £3,505

R v Christopher Stewart Andrews – Redhill Magistrates Court

Here the prosecution was brought by Reigate & Banstead BC after the defendant failed to carry out works to reduce the risks from fire in a basement flat at 58 London Road, Redhill.

He did not attend the hearing but in his absence was fined the maximum penalty of £5000 and ordered to pay  the  Council’s full costs of £1100.

A total of £6,100.

R v Martin Horsfall – Leeds Magistrates Court

Leeds CC declared a selective licensing area in part of its district (Cross Green and East End Park).  The defendant had four properties which he failed to license despite being asked to do so by the Council (although he denied recieving them).  The report on the Council website stated:

Council officers went to considerable lengths to engage with Mr Horsfall …. Mr Horsfall denied receiving any correspondence or having any recollection of any of the phone calls despite records of the conversations being made.

Mr Horsfall applied to have his case reopened after originally being prosecuted on the 17 of March 2011 in his absence. He claimed he had not received the legal summonses due to him moving address, despite seven of the summonses being opened and returned to the courts.

Mr Horsfall’s properties gave further cause for concern after visits were made to one of his properties by officers of the council which highlighted a serious lack of fire safety provision.

He was fined £14,000 plus costs of over £6,817.62.  Total £20,817.62.

R v Peter and Frances Kavanagh – Salford Magistrates Court

This is another failure to comply with selective licensing.  The report in Salford Online states

The Kavanagh’s failed to show at court and were found guilty in their absence. They were each fined £525 for every property they failed to get a licence for – amounting to £5,250.

They were also ordered to pay £580 towards court costs and £30 in victims surcharges.

So that is a total of £5,860

R v Blue Square Projects - Nuneaton Magistrates Court

This is prosecution for failure to comply with an improvement notice relating to a dangerous property.

Blue Square Projects of Edgbaston were renting out a property in Dordon to the tenant, her partner and four children. Following the tenant’s complaint to North Warwickshire Borough Council, the Environmental Health Team visited the property to find rotten windows, mould in the bathroom, bedroom and living room, faulty radiators and overloaded electrical sockets. The Council then advised Blue Square Projects to rectify the damage, which they subsequently failed to do.

However, surprise surprise, the work did not get done.

Assistant Director: Housing, Angela Coates explained : ” This was a catalogue of disasters, with contractors turning up when the tenant was absent or not turning up at all when promised. “

As the property was still a risk to the health and safety of the tenants, the Council decided to take the matter to court, and to carry out the works themselves and recharge Blue Square Projects.

The company was fined  £2,093 after his solicitors pleaded guilty on his behalf by post.

R v Bis-Mil-Lah Enterprises Ltd – Luton Magistrates Court

Here the defendant owned  two detached outbuildings of a property at 50 Brook Street which were being used as self-contained dwellings without planning permission. An enforcement notice was served by Luton Council because the buildings were being let for accommodation without planning permission and were unsuitable as residential premises.

Needless to say, the company failed to comply with the notice.  Taking account of the benefit derived from the letting, the company was fined £15,000 for non-compliance and ordered it to pay a £10,000 contribution towards the Council’s costs.

Total £25,000.

R v Karen Gamon – Bodmin Magistrates Court

This case involves breaches of the House in Multiple Occupation Management Regulations by the defendant landlord Ms Gamon.

Miss Gamon was informed of the HMO Management Regulations breaches by the Council but failed over a significant period of time to carry out necessary works to improve the standards in her property to an acceptable level.

Works specified included the requirements to remove stored combustibles restricting safe use of the means of escape in the property, make safe the loose and cracked concrete tiled entrance pathway steps, remedy penetrating damp to the ground floor porch and remove large accumulations of refuse to the rear of the property.

She was fined £1,700 with costs of £173.67 and a £15 victim surcharge – total £1,888.67.

R v Darren Harrison – Burton Magistrates Court

This is another case involving breach of the HMO regulations.

when council officers inspected Mr Harrison’s property in Elizabeth Drive, Tamworth in November last year, the smoke alarm system was not working, he failed to provide the local authority with gas and electrical safety certificates for the property, the bathroom and shower areas were poorly maintained and unhygienic, the light fitting in the ground floor toilet was defective and could not be used, the kitchen was in an unhygienic condition and there was no notice on display providing contact information to the occupants of the premises.

Harrison (who operates as Staffordshire Lettings) failed to provide the council with gas and electrical safety certificates for the property.

He was fined  £4,965 and ordered to pay prosecution costs of £2,400, plus a £15 victim surcharge.  A total of  £7,380.

*****

Nine cases with nine different penalties.  They seem fairly variable to me, but at least it shows that successful prosecutions are being done.

Hi. I’ve read with interest (and thanks) Tessa’s blogs on “leave versus licence” and have a (perhaps obvious) follow on question:

If I own an HMO with, say, 5 rooms let to separate individuals, can I really give each one of them an AST that gives them use of (quiet enjoyment of) the house? I guess not. I suppose I must state in the AST that they are renting a specific room; and if this is the case then can I give them the right to use the communal ears by mentioning such in a Schedule … or could I give them use of the communal areas under a licence?

Many thanks, Robert

How you do it Robert, is to give an AST for the tenants room and shared use of the rest of the property.  It is quite a normal arrangement and you can get special tenancy agreements for this situation (the normal ASTs will not be suitable).

For example on Landlord Law I have several tenancy agreements that can be used in this situation, including one where the landlord pays the bills, and one with a guarantee included.

So when letting to several people you have a choice – do you let to them all together as ‘joint tenants’ where they all sign the same agreement.  Or do you let out individual rooms to them on separate ASTs.

Have a look at this page on tenancy agreements (you need to scroll down a bit) where I set out some of the pros and cons for each.

A day in the life of TRO Ben Reeve Lewis.

The Case of the Devious TRO

Explanation: Tenancy Relations Officers (TRO) work for local council’s providing advice on landlord tenant law and investigating allegations of harassment and Illegal Eviction and prosecuting landlords. All names are false but the stories are true.

We have a lot of HMOs in our borough (Houses in Multiple Occupation – bed sits basically). Around 13,400 to be precise, all multi tenanted (obviously….der!!!!) and for the most part absolutely dire in terms of property conditions and standards of management.

A proper licensed HMO should have a number of things in place, such as fire doors and escapes and even simple things like the landlords name displayed in a prominent part of the building.

Please don’t shoot the messenger!

Tenants in HMOs are usually at the sharp end of letting and will tend to get pushed around a fair bit by their landlords. They are often the most difficult to defend as well because of what we call in the housing advice world “Chaotic Lifestyles” that arise through common difficulties with drink and drugs and mental health issues (and PLEEEEASE don’t write in saying I am tarring all HMO tenants with the same brush – of course I know that there are many who don’t have those problems) and many are refugees and asylum seekers on the margin of the community.

HMO tenants in trouble

I get called by the Wondji brothers from Ethiopia, decidedly in the latter camp. They are foreign students with no recourse to public funds so are having to fend for themselves. They are having problems with the landlord who they are paying rent to which is inclusive of money for gas and electricity but he keeps disconnecting the supplies for unknown reasons.

They aren’t any arrears of rent but they have threatened to stop paying him if he keeps leaving them in the cold. He retaliated by slapping the younger brother about a bit and that is when they called for assistance.

The property in question is a 4 floor property stacked up above the landlord’s business which is a convenience store on the ground floor. The Landlord is a Nigerian national but with the name Tom Brown.

Due diligence

I have found over the years that it is best, if at all possible, to do as much background checking on a landlord and the tenant’s story before you go in feet first. That way there is less chance of you being taken in by lies or unexpected information, and I find that if a rogue landlord knows you have already been doing a bit of digging it tends to worry them a bit and gives you an edge.

I called the energy company and found that he hadn’t been paying his bills and there were £1,200 arrears on both gas and electricity, so they had disconnected the supplies.

Legal point (and a little known one at that): When tenants are paying their rent inclusive of money for utilities and the supply is disconnected because of non payment, the council can step and use it’s powers under a ludicrously titled piece of legislation known as Section 33 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976, and pay off the outstanding bills to get supply reconnected (or to prevent disconnection if it is threatened). The tenant then pays their rent to the council until the debt is discharged and the landlord isn’t allowed to treat the missing monies as rent arrears.

First contact

I then called Tom Brown and asked him what was going on. He told me there was a problem with the utility supply and he had tried to fix it but the engineer didn’t manage it. I did my usual trick and asked several detailed questions about the problem which he lied his way through before I dropped the bombshell that he was a lying little toe-rag because I had called the energy companies and they had told me it had been disconnected because of non payment. He hung up on me.

I allowed myself a few minutes of pleasant gloating before grabbing my jacket and shooting around to the property.

A charming residence, all mod cons

The Wondji boys were the only occupants in what looked to be a derelict building. The first floor had once been a dentists and still had the chair screwed to the floor.  Dust and detritus, and probably the odd tooth, were strewn around.

The lads then took me to the top floor where their room was. There was no balustrade outside their door. So if they got up for a wee in the night, and took more than one step from their door they would drop 4 floors.

They also showed me the bathroom. The plumbing arrangements were ingenious. There was no waste pipe for the bath, instead a brick had been knocked out of the wall so that when you pulled the plug, the water ran onto the floor and slowly drained out through the wall where it landed on the roof of the store room for the shop on the ground floor.

Another illegal eviction

I went back to the office and called environmental health. While all this was going on Tom Brown had become incensed that the tenants had gotten the council involved, and went to the property and assaulted the same brother again, (obviously the one with the lucky face). He then threw them out and locked the building with a padlock.

I called him and advised him that he had committed both harassment and illegal eviction and that if he didn’t relent we would go to court and obtain an injunction for re-entry and to restrain his behaviour. His reply was lost in the shouting.

Ben goes to Court

So I toddled off with the Wondji boys to our local court and got one. I called him and asked him when he was going to come in and collect it.

His reply was lost in the shouting again.

The problem of service

Then the problem started because I had to then serve it and he now knows I have a court order out on him, so if I bump into the man who I think is him and introduce myself he will know what I am there to do and will simply deny who he is (this happens a lot).

I launch myself off to the address regardless, to wing it and as I am approaching I see an African guy unloading supplies for the shop from a green Mercedes parked outside. I presume that this is Tom Brown but don’t want to blow my cover. I have to get him to admit to being Mr Brown though. That’s my problem.

A lightbulb moment

I then come up with a genius idea and approach him pretending to be someone looking to buy his car. I tell him that I have seen the details in the local paper. He looks mystified and tells me it isn’t for sale and then goes back into the shop with an arm full of toilet rolls.

When he comes back out I pretend to be scrutinising a piece of paper and pick up the conversation again, saying “But this doesn’t make sense, there is a photo of the car with the same registration number and contact details, name and everything”. He then walks towards me, distinctly curious now saying “Name?”, I reply swiftly “Yeah, are you Tom Brown?”, to which he instantly replies “Yes, but……”.

I smile broadly and hit him with the injunction.

Sometimes I feel like Columbo, Jim Rockford and Sherlock Holmes all rolled into one!!!!!

Ben Reeve-Lewis

About Ben Reeve-Lewis: Ben has worked in housing in one form or another since 1987. He has variously been a Homelessness caseworker, Head of Homelessness for a local authority, a TRO and Housing law trainer. He now divides his time between doing contract Tenancy Relations work and as a Freelance housing law training consultant for the CIH, Shelter, Sitra and many more. Read more about Ben here.

Photo by ell brown

• All HMO landlords have to comply with the special management regulations (and can be prosecuted and fined if they don’t), and
• the property may need to be licensed.

The rules on HMOs changed in 2006 when the Housing Act 2004 came into force, along with a new definition.  This is set out in section 254 onwards.  It is rather a long definition and I am not going to try to summarise it here (the Housing Act is online anyway so you can go and read it for yourself).

There are various types of HMO but so far as rented houses are concerned, you need to know that a property will be an HMO if it is let to 3 or more tenants who form 2 or more ‘households’ and who share facilities such as a kitchen, bathroom or toilet.

A ‘household’ is basically a family unit, which includes unmarried couples.

What the act does not say though, is that it depends on (or is affected by) the type of tenancy agreement you have.

So landlords who are letting out properties to single people and are making them all sign the one tenancy agreement in the hope that they will avoid the legislation (as was possible in the past) are just deceiving themselves. If there are three or more tenants and they are unrelated, the tenancy is almost certainly an HMO.

So if you have tenants coming and going at different times, it would probably be a lot more convenient all round if you gave them their own tenancy agreement for their room and shared use of the common parts.  Particularly if your only reason for having the one tenancy agreement is to avoid the HMO legislation.

If you want to find out more about HMOs and the law relating to them, there is quite a lot information and guidance on my Landlord Law site, in particular in the FAQ sections.