A dispute between one of the UK’s most successful landlords and a self-employed gas man has ended up in court – and the national press.
Judith and Fergus Wilson owned about 700 properties in Kent at one point. Yet despite the wealth generated by their buy-to-let portfolio the couple are refusing to pay a court debt to a self-employed gas engineer.
The story of the court battle was told in the Daily Mirror last week.
Paul Masterson was called out to one of the Wilsons’ houses in Ashford, Kent, in June last year. He discovered that the property had a flue beneath a bedroom window which did not comply with British Standards.
He duly issued an “At Risk” notice in line with the Gas Safe procedure and billed the Wilsons £66 for his work. He also explained why the flue was dangerous and why the boiler couldn’t be used.
But the Wilsons decided that by issuing the “At Risk” warning, Masterton had made it impossible to let the house and issued Masterson with a summons for £5,000 for loss of rent.
“I have no idea how he calculated this figure, I believe it is merely the fact that it is the maximum you can claim in a small claims court,” said Masterson.
Masterton claimed a resounding victory at the hearing in Maidstone in May. The judge ruled that the Wilsons had “ample opportunity” to repair the flue to avoid losing rent. He added that Masterson was right in “exercising the caution which one hopes that a gas inspector would exercise”.
Masterton was awarded costs of £3,000 towards his legal bill of more than £5,500, but the Wilsons haven’t paid up.
“Even though I’ve won the court battle, they’ve ignored the judgment as they know that it will cost me a large sum again to have it enforced,” Masterson told the Daily Mirror.
“At the end of this I could have a debt of more than £10,000 and all because a landlord believed he knew best about my line of work and resented having to spend money on remedial work.”
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Comments
My sympathy is with the plumber 1000% As Graeme says, "WHY hasn't the plumber been awarded 100% of his costs?" - well said. There's something wrong there with the system?
No disrespect to the editor of this story but, if is true word for word, then the Landlords concerned are despicable b****rds in my opinion. It's hard enough being self-employed in the current economy (I am) without people like this behaving this way.
PS - the Courts have something to answer to here also: The Judge awarded in favour of the plumber but he is still out of pocket?????
In this situation why hasn't the plumber been awarded 100% of his costs? He was only doing his job correctly and just because an arrogant greedy landlord took umbrage and decided to go to court for no good reason he has had to defend himself and pay for the privilege.
If this story is true, those landlords should be ashamed of themselves - talk about raw greed and complete disregard for the safety of tenants. They give all other responsible and professional landlords a bad name - just pay up!