Landlords of houses in multiple occupation who fail to provide tenants with decent and safe accommodation risk crushing financial penalties and, in the worst instances, criminal prosecution. In one case, a property owner who allowed two such premises to sink into a miserable state found herself adrift in a sea of legal trouble.
The adjoining houses were together licensed for occupation by up to 14 tenants. A number of visits by housing officials and police officers revealed their deplorable condition. The local authority responded by imposing a £90,000 civil penalty on the landlord for a total of 10 breaches of the Management of Houses in Multiple Occupation (England) Regulations 2006, five in respect of each property.
The breaches related to failures to ensure, amongst other things, that alarms and fire fighting equipment were in good working order and that gas and power installations were properly tested. There were also failures in respect of the cleanliness, furnishing and decoration of the properties and the disposal of rubbish.
The landlord appealed to the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) on the basis that it was her managing agents’ responsibility to maintain the properties. She also asserted that the tenants had caused considerable damage. The FTT, however, rejected her defence of reasonable excuse and found that she was primarily culpable for the breaches. It did, however, reduce the amount of the penalty to £70,500.
In upholding the landlord’s appeal against the adjusted amount of the penalty, the Upper Tribunal (UT) noted that the FTT’s decision in that respect was bereft of reasoning. When assessing the gravity of the breaches, it had adopted the local authority’s policy whilst giving only the sketchiest description of that policy. If the landlord chose to pursue her appeal further, the UT directed that there should be a rehearing of the matter before a freshly constituted FTT panel.