A Carmarthenshire landlord has been fined £2,000 for failing to comply with the terms of an improvement notice served on his HMO. After several complaints from tenants, council environmental health officers carried out a full inspection of the property under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System. They found numerous problems with the accommodation, including issues with fire safety, damp, mould growth, issues with heating and food safety.
The landlord was then served with an improvement notice ordering him to bring the property up to scratch. He failed to comply with this and the work was not completed.
Balasubramanian Pulendrathasan was convicted at Llanelli Magistrates Court in his absence of an offence contrary to Section 30 of the Housing Act 2004. He was fined £2,000 and order to pay costs of £1,160.
Councillor Hugh Evans said that the landlord "showed a total disregard for the local authority and for the health safety and wellbeing of his tenants."
We've heard a lot about HMOs this week, with John Healey's proposals to "tackle concerns" about them. There's a whole other blog post on the "war on landlords" coming up shortly, but this story just shows how unnecessary that war is. The legislation to tackle "rogue landlords" is there already. Those who don't maintain their properties to a decent standard, those who don't look after their tenants property, those who damage the industry for the rest of us – there are ways of dealing with them, as this case has shown. We don't need more legislation – we need better enforcement.
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