A landlord in Bath has been fined £4,900 for failing to ensure that he applied for a licence to operate a licensable rental property in the Wells Road area of the city, as well as a number of other offences including fire safety.
Inspections last year revealed unsafe conditions in HMOs across the city | Library image courtesy of B&NES Council
Richard Seccombe of Wells Road in Bath, appeared at Bath Magistrates Court on Thursday 27th April in a prosecution taken by Bath & North East Somerset Council.
He was fined a total of £4,900 and ordered to pay costs of £1,249.60, along with a victims’ surcharge of £170 after pleading guilty to nine offences.
He was charged with failing to licence a House in Multiple Occupancy (HMO) under the Council’s Mandatory Licensing and Additional Licensing schemes.
He also pleaded guilty to seven offences relating to the Management of HMOs – failing to maintain a safe means of escape from fire, failing to provide working smoke alarms, failing to provide a sufficient fire resistant door to the kitchen, failing to provide escape locks to bedrooms and the front door, broken glass in the back door, an unguarded deep hole in the garden with no hand rails to steps and a cracked bedroom window.
The charges relate to a property at Wells Road, Bath.
The property was identified by the Council’s Housing Services as operating without a licence in September 2016.
The property was a three-storey house occupied by the landlord and up to four tenants.
The landlord had previously been convicted by the Council for failure to comply with an improvement notice designed to protect the health, safety and welfare of his then tenants.
As a result of the current breaches and in light of his previous conviction the Council took the decision to prosecute. Since being made aware of the need to be licensed, the landlord has put the property up for sale and evicted his tenants.
Councillor Liz Richardson (Conservative, Chew Valley North) Bath & North East Somerset Council’s Cabinet Member for Homes and Planning, said: “We are pleased with the outcome of this prosecution and the level of fine, which reflects the seriousness of the offence.
“Housing Services will always try to work in partnership with landlords to improve housing standards. In most cases this works, but where it fails and landlords needlessly put the safety of their tenants at risk, we will consider taking strong enforcement action to send a clear message that operating properties outside of the law will not be tolerated in Bath and North East Somerset.”
Larger properties that require a Mandatory Licence are HMOs which are occupied by five or more persons forming two or more households and have three or more storeys.
Mandatory Licensing was introduced in 2006 to ensure that larger HMOs which present the greatest potential risk to tenants are those that are regulated the closest.
Additional licensing was brought in by the Council in 2014 to address issues of poor management in small HMOs with three or more persons in certain areas of Bath.
Failure to licence a licensable HMO is an offence under the Housing Act 2004.
For more information on the legal requirements for Houses in Multiple Occupation, visit: www.bathnes.gov.uk/hmos.
