A property tribunal found that 195 Woolwich Road wasn’t licensed as an HMO from September 2023
Residents of a Greenwich HMO had to urinate in a bathtub or use the lavatories at a nearby furniture superstore for 58 days because their toilet was broken. Five people living in 195 Woolwich Road applied for a rent repayment alleging their landlords had not licensed the HMO.
A residential property tribunal decided to make a rent repayment order (RRO) of £5,300 to the residents after it was found that the four-bedroom maisonette had not been properly licensed since the residents moved in on September 13, 2023. The maximum possible RRO was £13,229.
The landlord accepted that they did not hold a licence from that time, but submitted it was because their long-term partner and fellow landlord on the property had suffered a “long-term, severe brain injury” in 2021 and still had “severe memory loss”. She also said she had lost a letter from Greenwich Council which outlined updates to the council’s HMO licensing policy.
The tribunal’s impression was that both landlords’ understanding of the licensing regime was limited and “they had no real understanding of the nature of mandatory licensing”. The tribunal did give some credit to the landlords because of the health situation, but ruled they should have been aware of the need for HMO licensing as they owned and managed other HMO properties.
As part of the tribunal, residents of 195 Woolwich Road submitted disrepair issues they had encountered as part of their tenancy, two of which were considered to “move the dial” in terms of calculating the RRO. The first concerned the house’s communal toilet.
One of the residents admitted and accepted responsibility for breaking the lavatory bowl in October 2023. However, the landlords assumed responsibility for having it fixed and it was not repaired for 58 days.
During that time, the en suite bathroom in one of the resident’s bedrooms had to be used, but when this was not available they “had to use the lavatories in a nearby furniture superstore, or urinate in the bathtub” which the tribunal described as “inconvenient and undignified”.
195 Woolwich Road is located less than half a mile from IKEA Greenwich, but IKEA said it was “not aware of any such situation having taken place at our IKEA Greenwich store”.
The other disrepair issue was to do with the house’s ventilation system which according to the residents, made an “excessive” noise from the day they moved in, to the extent they struggled to sleep. The faulty system also resulted in some mould growth within the property, they said.
The landlords initially thought the system served the whole block, but after finding out this was not the case a specialist company was contacted to have the system checked and repaired, the tribunal heard. The system was found to be operating at 50 per cent efficiency and vent openings within the flat were “seriously affected by mould”, according to a report from the proceedings.
The residents and the landlords disputed how many times complaints had been made to repair the system, but the tribunal disregarded this. It concluded: “We do not think this makes a great deal of difference. The fact is that for over a year, the ventilation system installed in the flat was not properly maintained, and that this had some effect (if not at the worst end of the scale) in terms of mould problems.”
Considering the licensing, disrepair and other issues, the tribunal calculated the RRO to be 40 per cent of the maximum possible figure of £13,229. This was rounded to £5,300.
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