There’s more evidence of councils clamping down on landlords fly tipping - Landlord Today has run a series of reports on this recently, and a new story has come to light now.
Oldham council has prosecuted a landlord after fly-tipped waste was linked to a property he owned.
In November 2019 a large number of bin bags were found in the town, traced back to a rented property address.
Council officers visited the property and found there were no waste bins. The landlord - Roger Howarth, from Oxfordshire - was told to order the tenants new ones.
During the visit it was also discovered that the electric meter was dangerous and needed to be replaced. Howarth – who was registered with the council under its Selective Licensing Scheme – was told to replace it.
A follow up visit found no bins had been ordered and waste piled up in the rear yard. The electric meter had also not been replaced so officers had to resolve the issue with the energy supplier. A third visit found there were still no bins at the property and waste once again piled high in the back yard.
Now at Manchester Magistrates Court Howarth has found guilty in his absence of breaching section 95(2) of the Housing Act 2004 by not complying with his selective licence conditions.
He has been fined £1,000, with a £100 victim support, plus costs of £1,575 were awarded to the council.
A spokeswoman for the council says: “Oldham has many good landlords, but this case is a warning to those who don’t meet obligations to their tenants that we will take action to make things right - and will prosecute if necessary. It is much more expensive to lose in court than to be a decent landlord.”
The licensing of private rented properties was introduced in 2015 in certain areas of Oldham.
A consultation on extending the scheme finished earlier this year and the outcome will be published soon.
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I agree with Council on this one I hate rubbish laying around, strange no mention of Tenant who put it in back of property but why are Councils closing dumps where you could go and making it harder to use remaining facilities with Computers, a graduate with a laptop to double check you in, have to book a slot to go there, they must think we are sitting around at home doing nothing waiting for their time slot, do they not realise we have to get rid of it when we can to fit with everything else we do, not their silly child like games. Oldham used to be a nice place, the Depot of the Company I worked for operated from Vineyard St.
The LL’s in Oldham had 9 years grace to 2015 that we had to do since 2006 so unfair it should have been applied Nationally or not at all but I suppose in that case it wouldn’t have got off the ground there would have been uproar as it still only
applies to LL’s who rent to a type of person not type of property.
Why not ask tenants to provide bins for their own rubbish? Why is it up to the landlord to facilitate getting rid of tenants' rubbish by providing bins?
Did the landlord or the tenant fly tip? We're not told.
Tenant's rubbish, tenant's responsibility.
Imagine if we all had to behave like that.
Walking down the road eating ice-cream, oops no bin, well I'll just throw the paper on the street. No rubbish bin for my empty bottle of water, oh it's OK, let me just leave it here on the pavement.
Pathetic.
Totally agree!
Using this Council's logic, Walls, Coca Cola, McDonald's etc. would be prosecuted, not the litter louts!
What a surprise, another biased story. Look, any Landlord not carrying out his legal obligations needs to be asked to rectify the problem. If this fails then they need to be told and finally prosecuted if not actioned.
No bins at the property is the tenants responsibility and the Council's. Surely if the Council inspected surely they could talk to another department to expedite bins to be delivered to this address and ask the tenant why they did not order replacement bins themselves. With regard the meter, this must have been all good when property licensed and first let, so how did it become dangerous. In either case the Landlord should have contacted the supplier of electricity at this property to look into this matter and make safe the meter. This is a shared responsibility with the provider. But of course this is all the fault of the Landlord. Probably another Landlord whom will now sell up and who can bleme them!
To be right about this I never understood why some LL’s buys property so far away I have seen it over & over again sometimes hundreds of miles away, in which case its virtually impossible to self-manage and if pay an agent not much better he’s not going to do much either except to phone someone else to do it, now that’s 2 additional Bills to pay, it’s not feasible anymore with so many extra compliance rules to deal with, if you are going to keep a handle on the situation,
(this one Oxfordshire to Lancashire)
All my properties are within 30 miles of my home for this very reason.
You are both completely right, however as an ex-Serviceman that was posted overseas and around this country I bought run down houses near to where I lived at the time and restored them and then let. Since 2007 I have been a civy and it has been my intention to sell the furthest and consolidate my mortgages. Through life's challenges I am at last doing that now. We don't know why he has a house in Oldham. Though you are both right in your sentiments.
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