Lincoln Council plans to revoke the licence of  student lettings agency Orange Living Limited, which trades as Loc8me, after it was convicted of operating unlicensed HMOs.

It says both the agency and its director Raffaele Russo are not fit and proper to hold an HMO licence or manage a licensed HMO – and is now taking legal action against them. The firm was previously called Charlestown Student Properties Limited until it changed its name in January.

In October 2019, the letting agent was fined £80,000 for failing to have the correct licence for shared houses that it rented out. A council investigation had been triggered by a fire in the attic of one of the properties leased out by the company in Loughborough.

Missing batteries

Firefighters discovered the smoke detection was battery-only and that some of the batteries were missing.

The detector in the attic had sounded, but not very loudly, and there were no fire doors along the protected escape route from the second floor. One of the residents in the property said they had twice told student lettings firm Loc8me’s maintenance team about the issue with the faulty detector and lack of fire doors in the days before the fire.

This led to Charnwood Borough Council officials discovering the Loughborough-based firm had four three-storey homes in the town which should have had HMO licences. Orange Living accepted it had failed to license the properties and was subsequently placed on a rogue landlord database for two years.

The council now says the HMO owner can submit a new mandatory HMO licence application proposing an alternative manager that isn’t associated with Raffaele Russo or Orange Living Limited.

Both City of Lincoln Council and Russo have declined to comment.