A council investigation has exposed a landlord accused of cramming tenants into an unsafe property.
A semi-detached house in Waltham Drive, Harrow, was exposed as a cash cow for a landlord that had sub-divided the property to accommodate 11 adults, with three tenants even paying more than £160 to each share a single room.
Council leader Susan Hall (Conservative) said: “We appear to be seeing the resurrection of East End tenement overcrowding in suburban London with levels of exploitation to match.
“Placing up three people in one room with little more than mattresses for décor and charging £160 a week for sets a sorry new standard for rip-off Britain."
Housing officers also discovered there were no smoke alarms in the property and a large amount of rubbish dumped in the garden. The council is now investigating the property for being an unlicensed HMO and for possible breaches of fire, electrical and gas safety regulations.
Hall said: “This isn’t a victimless crime because the occupants of these beds in sheds lash-ups use council services, like rubbish collection, but the local authority doesn’t give us any grant for them – for the simple reason we don’t know they are there.”
The council is now seeking to interview the landlord, who is understood to live in Bradford. The case is one of around 100 cases of unlicensed HMOs being investigated by Harrow Council.
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