The landlord of two flats in Cardiff has been fined over £4,500 for failing to fix fire safety defects after being served a legal notice.
Landlord Christopher Harper had failed to rectify fire safety defects at two of his rented flats in Cardiff.
The notices ordered him to fix a number of faults including a defective fire alarm, an insecure front door, and “inadequate structural fire protection”.
Harper also failed to submit gas and electricity certificates “in line with the licensing requirements”.
Harper did not appear for a court hearing and was convicted in his absence.
He was charged with “failing to comply with operative improvement notices under the Housing Act 2004” and was fined a total of £3,000 and ordered to pay £360 in costs. Additionally, he was ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £1,200.
A Cardiff council spokesperson says: “The majority of private sector landlords provide a very good service for their residents, but unfortunately there is a minority that do not.
"When we take these matters to court, we do this to benefit the residents living at these properties, so that the faults identified are fixed and the properties are safe to live in. Our officers will continue to act on intelligence that we receive, and in this case we will continue to pursue the landlord until the faults have been rectified.
"This case shows that when we successfully prosecute a private sector landlord, we do follow up these cases to ensure the issues are resolved. In this case, it became clear that Mr Harper wasn't willing to rectify the faults, so legal notices were served on him.
“Failure to respond and action these legal notices have resulted him being brought court again and ordered to pay a further £4,500.”
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I am not condoning the landlord, but the system. How is fining the landlord going to fix the problem? If the council were concerned about the tenants, they should have fixed the problem themselves instead of wasting thousands of pounds in prosecuting the landlord and taken the cost out of the rent.
Jim Haliburton
The HMO daddy
Wasn't this once the case? The council used to issue the order, then fixed the problem if the landlord failed to respond and then they raised a charge for all the costs.
I suppose fining a landlord is now more beneficial as it fills the council coffers rather than solving the problem.
How long do you think it would take for the council to do the repairs?
Jim I disagree but agree they need doing but since the landlord hasn’t fixed after a notice - the gentle/ push - if council do them they must get bck the money yes from the L L. That will end up in court. So the other option is to court and prosecute L L. First.
Please clarify what the common law legislation actually is? As a concerned landlord tenant and landlord customer, there is obvious concern about the fair trading aspects of the confirmed common law legislation, common law tenancy agreements. Investigations, paricularly of negligent cases reveals that the system does not comply with the law of the land, the fused loop (Implied statute +common law) in good faith agreements because the implied statute for customer tenant and landlord care is missing. The good faith agreements before starting, are wiped-out in bad cases by the power groups for common law 'U'-turn top-industry solicitors or civil service 'woke' ideology civil service/politicians or common law (Letting agents, Property Mark, Landlord Law, SAL, NRLA, solicitors, media groups (Mashroom/ NRLA/Landlord Law), course providers) ‘U’-turn failure to comply with the law of the land (implied statute + common law) because of the failure in FUSION of the key loop (Implied Statute + common law) MISTAKE. See government website common law vs Implied statute law FUSED loop. which is missing as another Act of Parliament for implied statute is required to take out the biases UK wide, to make the system work. Good landlords face hefty fines and forced losses in a system failure by the government's sledge hammer common law policies as implied statute breach has not been clarified by the common law top industry solicitors or civil service/councils. The system does not make any business sense. Show the underdog customers Implied statute for customer care (Implied statute + common law) - as weighed against the comparable world-class contract law FUSED loop that is missing with the power groups biases.
If you are going to comment like this, I think you need to be commenting on some lawyers forum, not on a landlords forum.
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