Camden Council has successfully prosecuted a landlord for failing to license a property she had divided into separate dwellings without installing safe fire exits and fire alarms.
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Mrs Alba Lopez, who operates from a commercial unit near to Euston station, had signed tenancy agreements to let two ex right-to-buy flats, and had constructed a partition to divide each flat’s living room into two separate bedrooms.
The design of the two flats was the same, and the unauthorised adaptations meant that the only escape route, for five of the six tenants, was via the shared kitchen.
The kitchen is statistically the most common site for a fire to start, and had a fire started in the kitchen, residents may not have been able to escape in time, as the two flats had no operational fire detection and alarm system. Room doors were thin, and were not made of half-hour fire-resisting material, they were not self-closing and the shared kitchen in each flat had no doors. Thus any fire could have spread rapidly.
In each case the occupation by more than four individuals, combined with the height of the building meant that each flat should have been licensed. Then the licence holder would have been made aware of the safety measures required.
Mrs Alba Lopez was prosecuted for failing to apply for a licence in respect of each flat, and management offences relating to the lack of fire precautions and shortcomings with respect to the wiring. She pleaded guilty to the failure to licence each flat in multiple occupation and for failure to provide adequate structural fire precautions in one flat.
The corresponding offence for failing to install structural fire precautions in the other flat, and failure to install suitable fire detection and alarm systems in both flats were taken into consideration by the Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court on 7 June 2012. She was fined a total of £2000 and was ordered to pay £1000 towards the Council’s costs plus £15 victim support payment.
Cllr Abdul Hai, Cabinet Member for Community Safety, Camden Council, said:
“We do not want flats, designed for families, to be altered and sub-let in multiple occupation. We take the health and safety of our residents extremely seriously and will use the strongest powers possible to prosecute unscrupulous landlords. Negligent landlords who flout the law will not be tolerated in Camden.”
Further Information
- Environmental Health Officers, employed by Camden Council have encountered several instances where a landlord has entered into an Assured Shorthold tenancy with an individual operating a letting agency. Then in order to make a profit, that individual or agency packs the property with as many tenants as they can, charging each individual a rent. Often they advertise on websites, and do not operate from premises with their name and business displayed. In some instances, the sub-let property has been altered, without consent, by dividing rooms, but little regard has been had to the safety of the tenants.
- In this case the flats were designed to be occupied by one family, and if a fire starts in a family home, a member of the family usually knows who else is in occupation and where they are likely to be. In a flat let to six separate tenants, each tenant comes and goes independently. Therefore it’s even more important to comply with health and safety regulations and apply for proper licensing which protects people living this way.
- Owners of ex right-to-buy properties are subject to the ‘permitted use’ clause in the lease which requires them to keep their property as a self-contained residential flat. There are important management reasons for including this clause within the lease. Whilst all applications to carry out structural alterations to properties are considered on their merits, any application to subdivide an ex right-to-buy flat or use it as a House in Multiple Occupation (HMO) is unlikely to be agreed.
British Standards relating to HIMOs:
- BS 9991:2011 Fire safety in the design, management and use of residential buildings. Code of practice
- BS 5839-6:2004 Fire detection and fire alarm systems for buildings. Code of practice for the design, installation and maintenance of fire detection and fire alarm systems in dwellings
- BS 5266-1:2011 Emergency lighting – Part 1: Code of practice for the emergency escape lighting of premises
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