CESAR DE Sousa Melo received London’s first rogue landlord banning order over safety risks – including fire – at a number of unlicensed houses in multiple occupation (HMOs).

In June 2018, it was reported that all London councils had agreed to participate in the Mayor of London’s Rogue Landlord and Agent Checker, designed to name and shame those who bring the sector into disrepute. The aim of the database is to deter private landlords and letting agents from behaving unlawfully and also to empower renters, supporting local councils and others to use their enforcement powers.

It includes details of landlords or agents who have been successfully prosecuted or fined by a council in London; successfully prosecuted or given a prohibition notice by London Fire Brigade; or expelled from a mandatory consumer redress scheme (and as a result no longer able to operate legally). Records include the name of the landlord or agent, the enforcement authority, the address relating to the conviction, the offences, the amount of the fine, the date of enforcement and of expiry of each record.

Information is currently publicly displayed on private landlords and letting agents who have been prosecuted or fined by the London Boroughs of Brent, Camden, Greenwich, Islington, Kingston, Newham, Redbridge, Southwark, Sutton, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Westminster. All other London councils to add their enforcement records to it as soon as possible. Some boroughs have uploaded records which cannot be viewed publicly, but which are available to other London councils to help with their enforcement activities.

24 Housing has now reported that Camden Council has obtained the first banning order against Mr Melo, who was found to have ‘repeatedly placed tenants’ lives at risk through letting unsafe housing’. After a first tier tribunal in October he was banned for four years from letting any housing in England, with penalties for breaching this including imprisonment for up to 51 weeks or a court fine ‘or both’, or a civil financial penalty of up to £30,000.

Mr Melo came to the council’s attention after a rogue landlord referral was received in May 2018, investigations later finding he was letting several unlicensed HMOs. A raid on one in King’s Cross found three bedrooms ‘with bunk beds in some rooms’, alongside fire safety issues and general disrepair. For these, Mr Melo received two civil penalty notices and fines totalling £15,000, with reports into health and safety at that property establishing in detail the issues found.

There were non working fire alarms, a kitchen door ‘broken off its hinges’ and general overcrowding due to a small kitchen, four bunk beds in one room and three beds plus two bunk beds in another two of the rooms – the news outlet noted that the beds were ‘packed in to ensure maximum commercial advantage’. Last August, warrants of entry were then obtained and inspections undertaken on flats in Euston and King’s Cross ‘after previous attempts to gain access had failed’.

These further inspections found more breaches of the Housing Act 2004, including that the Euston flat’s management ‘placed lives at risk’ because two tenants slept in a bedroom ‘created by a partition dividing the kitchen/diner’. That had left them with a means of escape through the kitchen even though the flat was on the seventh floor, while there were also no working smoke alarms ‘anywhere’.

The second King’s Cross property meanwhile saw tenants’ health and safety ‘compromised’ via ‘inadequate’ fire alarm systems, with tenants all young or from overseas, thus ‘vulnerable and able to be exploited with high rents in return for low housing standards’. Mr Melo had issued some with tenancy agreements where he said he was the landlord, even though he was subletting from the real owners.

As a consequence of these other properties, Mr Melo was convicted in April at Highbury Magistrates Court of seven banning order offences at those two flats, and was fined £14,000, with his operation at all flats having ‘now ceased’ and the flats having ‘since been made safe’.