A Hackney-based landlord tried to appeal a £14,000 rent repayment order by pointing to his ‘modest’ income before he was grilled over his £1.3m home
An East London landlord has failed in his bid to overturn a court’s order to repay thousands of pounds in rent for running an unlicensed HMO. In 2024 four private renters who had lived at an ex-council flat on Hackney’s George Downing Estate took their landlord to court after it emerged he had not obtained an HMO licence for the duration of their tenancies between 2020 and 2022.
The court found in their favour and ordered the flat owner to repay them £14,000. But by September this year, landlord John Campbell had been granted a chance to appeal the decision and was back before a tribunal to argue the group had been “aggressive and opportunistic” in their claims since he had kept the property in good condition.
The tenants had alleged there were multiple issues in their home, including a boiler, stove and beds that were “breaking down constantly”. Giuseppina Cammarano, who lived at the property for less than a year, said she and her housemates had gone without heating and hot water for roughly a week in December 2020.
She added that on one occasion their landlord had sent his tenants a YouTube video about how to fix the boiler. Her erstwhile flatmate Maria Caballero said it had taken four months for the landlord to fix a broken blind.
Mr Campbell disputed the claims of disrepair, and said he was not aware of any obligation to get an HMO licence. But the group’s lawyer said this was impossible since he was the director of a property investment business.
The landlord argued that in either case the October 2020 cyber attack on Hackney Council which had “crippled” its IT infrastructure, including its online licensing systems – which would have made it impossible to submit a licence application until well after 2021.
He appealed to the tribunal by saying a substantial rent repayment would cause “real hardship” to him and his family, since he only reported a self-employment income of £26,100 in 2024/25, according to tax calculations he submitted.
However, after cross examination he admitted he owned a home worth around £1.4 million, in which he held roughly £800,000 in equity. The tribunal added that his tax calculations were “not conclusive evidence” of his income and suggested he could still sell the rental property if he could not find the money to reimburse his former tenants.
The court also rejected the suggestion that the IT hack was in any way significant to this case, since there was no suggestion Mr Campbell had applied for an HMO licence before 2022. Even so, the tribunal said it would have made zero difference because records showed the council’s property licensing page was still up and running in the aftermath of the cyber attack.
The tribunal did however reduce the amount he owed his tenants to roughly £11k after taking into account the fact that the property was let at a “decent standard” despite its being unlicensed. They also judged that the boiler had been repaired “promptly” and that one of the tenants had given “misleading evidence” about the landlord not protecting his rental deposit.
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