Landlord Crammed 40 Tenants in Dilapidated Former Pub

A landlord ended with a £15,000 court bill for shoehorning 40 tenants into a dilapidated former pub. 

Hayden Rogers failed to turn up before magistrates at Mold, Flintshire, to plead to 12 breaches of house in multiple occupation regulations. 

He was convicted and fined £13,000 with £2,633 in costs. 

The court heard that the former Old Quay House building in Connah’s Quay, Flintshire was unsafe, with inadequate fire escapes and fire safety equipment. 

An inspection also revealed severe electrical defects, poor heating and missing smoke detectors. 

In Basildon, Essex, another shared house landlord was fined £2,525 for renting out a four-roomed home with a shared kitchen to 12 tenants. Adeole Makinde was found guilty of failing to obtain an HMO licence for the property at Chafford Hundred, Essex, and five other housing management offences after denying the charges. 

Magistrates were told she failed to provide adequate fire safety protection for her tenants and those housing officers had several concerns about the conditions the tenants were living in. 

Barkingside magistrates fined landlord Harmandeep Singh £5,000 with costs of £2,070 for renting out an unsafe and unlicensed house in multiple occupation in Seven King’s, Ilford, East London. 

The court was told she rented out rooms on each floor of the three-storey mid-terraced house that had poor fire safety protection for tenants. 

In nearby Barking, another landlord, Nasmul Haq, was convicted of running an unlicensed HMO housing several tenants, even though he only had permission for a single family to move in. 

Magistrates at Barkingside fined him £12,500 for breaching house in multiple occupation licensing and management rules. He was also ordered to pay £1,218 costs. 

In Hatfield, landlord Sarah Goldsmith crammed ten tenants into four bedrooms - one of which was little larger than a single bed. 

She was charged with eight HMO offences. Goldsmith accepted a ban on renting out property for ten years in an out-of-court settlement after the hearing. She had to pay £31,800 in July 2014 for similar HMO offences.