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TODAY'S OTHER NEWS

Guardian names UK’s worst landlord

The Guardian has named and shamed a North London landlord after she topped a list of letting agents and landlords who have been convicted for housing offences.

Katia Goremsandu, 64, who owns several rental properties in Haringey, north London, has been convicted seven times and fined a total of £16,565 for letting uninhabitable rooms. Offences include using a sticker to disguise a faulty fire alarm and leaving tenants living in damp and freezing homes.

Haringey council estimates that Goremsandu’s rental income is around £188,000 a year, including housing benefit payments.

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The Guardian article was prompted by a list of convicted landlords put together by Environmental Health News (EHN) after it won a freedom of information case against the Ministry of Justice.

The list reveals that 2,006 convictions between 2006 and 2014 have resulted in fines of £3m in total.

The landlord name that appears most frequently is Goremsandu while the most prosecuted firm was Burnley-based Aspire Developments.

In a separate article Goremsandu blamed tenants for the condition of her properties.

She told the paper: “The mentality of a homeless person or the person who doesn’t have work or a property is ‘why should [the landlord] have [a property] and I don’t’,” she told the Guardian on Wednesday. “And they bash it, they break it. It is a well-known fact. It is a state of mind. They punish you for being a landlord.”

Want to comment on this story? If so...if any post is considered to victimise, harass, degrade or intimidate an individual or group of individuals on any basis, then the post may be deleted and the individual immediately banned from posting in future.

  • Kenny Sahota

    This is one award that no-one wanted to win! Her lack of care for her tenants is abysmal. Let's hope that she gets correctly punished for her actions.

  • warwickllt fortescue

    I would like to hear her side of the story, as WE ALL KNOW how accurate newspaper reporting is in the UK. How strange do you think it would be if someone decidied to go in for a dig at landlords, in order to sell their garbage? Still I do use the Guardian to wipe my paintprushes out on...

  • icon

    Until properties are taken off Landlords like this, forfeited, nothing will change. This site has been featuring stories like this for several years, and will for the next 20 years unless and until serious penalties are available AND enforced. End of, otherwise do not bleat.

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