Raw sewage in living room among complaints heard by property tribunal

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Raw sewage leaking into a living room, rodents, bed bug and mite infestations, overcrowding and fire safety issues make up just some of the complaints levelled at rogue landlords in tribunal filings in the past year.

The findings come after the Guardian analysed hundreds of documents from the first-tier property tribunal involving tenants renting house-shares of five or more people (or three or more in parts of London) sharing kitchen and bathroom facilities, known as houses of multiple occupation or HMOs.

These properties often have the worst conditions in the private rented sector, including overcrowding, damp, fire safety issues and other hazards, some of which represent a serious risk to tenants’ health.

The Guardian analysed more than 250 documents from the first-tier property tribunal, which rules on HMO licensing issues. It revealed 129 instances of landlords fined for leasing such properties without holding a HMO licence – a document required bycouncils to help ensure standards are upheld.

However, the documents also provide an important snapshot of conditions for residents in substandard private housing. The rulings include evidence of:

Raw sewage leaking from a toilet and seeping through the living room ceiling, which had to be collected in plastic containers.

Multiple properties that had no fire detection system or smoke alarm; lacked an adequate central heating system; had infestations of rodents, bed bugs and pigeon mites, which were not adequately dealt with.

A London landlord renting out a property through a company the tribunal found did not exist.

A converted church rented to students was inadequately secured after a burglary and the burglar was later found to be living in the attic. At the same property, a fire took place when smoke alarms were not working.

Landlords have been forced to pay out ?1.75m to their tenants in the past year although tenants’ unions and advocacy groups have warned that the true number of illegal house shares is likely to be significantly higher.

About a third of those forced to pay out rent repayment orders (RROs) by the tribunal for running unlicensed HMOs were limited companies, including letting agencies and property investment firms.

Justice for Tenants, which offers free advice and legal representation for tenants who take legal action against their landlords, said it had helped thousands of tenants recover more than ?1m of rent from tribunal decisions, and more than ?2m of rent if settlements before the tribunals are included.

It added: “The reality is that we only see the tip of the iceberg in the tribunal. The rogue landlords target migrants with no safety net, no knowledge of their rights and poor written English. This makes it very unlikely that the tenants will be aware of their right to a rent repayment order, allowing the criminal business model to continue.

“It can be heartbreaking to see the conditions many of the tenants of those HMOs live in, often living with damp, mould, broken windows, exposed electric cables, and under constant threat of being illegally evicted.

“However, there is cause for optimism; with the increasing rate of enforcement, it may soon reach a tipping point where rogue landlords either exit the business or start providing shared houses that meet the minimum legal standards, giving the most disadvantaged in our society a decent place they can call home.”

Flat Justice, a community interest group that supports tenants who take legal action against their landlords, says that those it represents and supports often only find out that their home is unlicensed because of a different crisis in their living situation.

“Nonetheless, many landlords will push the narrative that licensing is a purposeless technicality that they have fallen victim to,” said a spokesperson for Flat Justice. “It isn’t: licensing offences are, more often than not, a comorbidity of other instances of malpractice. And renters share a justified anger that they have given most of their earnings to somebody who has not met basic legal requirements.

“In cases we have done at the first-tier and upper tribunal, resistance to any regulation of landlord practices is an undercurrent in many landlords’ defences. Thankfully, this does not stand in the tribunal, but the defences are an insight into how entrenched this view of property has become – that it is an income stream for a landlord first and a home for a tenant only a very distant second.”