Landlords fined for fire safety breaches

Two rogue landlords from Hull have been fined after being found guilty of breaching fire safety regulations.

The brace of prosecutions were decided upon by Hull City Council for offences in two separate cases.

Fire safety fines

Firstly, Mr John Holmes was fined £1,600 for failures relating to a house in multiple occupation (HMO). In addition, Holmes was ordered to pay £700 in court costs, alongside a £125 victim surcharge.

This followed a ruling from Hull City Council’s environmental health department that there were failings in several properties owned by Mr Holmes in the city. In one property, the inspectors discovered a blocked fire escape and inadequate emergency lighting.

Another instance saw problems reported with the electrical wiring in a separate property. Mr Holmes was given informal requests for improvement works, all of which were ignored.

A subsequent visit to the HMO saw officers find an internal fire escape, serving six flats, to be blocked off.

Landlords fined for fire safety breaches

Failures

In the second case, rogue landlord Ashraf Khan was given a fine of £660 and told to pay costs of £504, with a victim surcharge of £66.

What’s more, Khan was charged a further £10,000 for improvement works arranged by the council.

Mr Khan ignored a previous improvement notice that was issued from the council, after officers had found electrical faults, shoddy fire precautions and window defects.

Councillor John Black, portfolio holder for housing, said, ‘we have a duty to protect private sector tenants and this proves that we take our role seriously. We tried to work with each landlord to reach a satisfactory conclusion but the work remained uncompleted, which is way we had no choice but to take this enforcement action.’[1]

[1] https://www.lettingagenttoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2016/5/landlords-hit-with-fines-for-fire-safety-failings