Failure to license block as HMO costs property firm £85,000
Oxford-based rental PBSA operator told to pay 44 tenants a whopping and 'unusual' rent repayment order following Tribunal hearing.
A property management firm in Oxford has been ordered to pay nearly £85,000 to 44 of its student tenants after it was revealed that one of its blocks had not been licenced as an HMO.
The huge Rent Repayment Order (RRO) was handed down during a First Tier Property Tribunal, which heard that SC Osney Lane Management Ltd had, despite latterly applying for a licence from the city’s council, not licenced the property as required under its additional licensing scheme.
An Oxford City Council inspection in September 2021 of the upmarket PBSA Student Castle (pictured) block discovered that it didn’t have a licence which SC Osney Lane Management then applied for, and was issued, in December after a further inspection in October.
The council then told the student residents that they could apply for a RRO for the previous during period and put them in contact with advocacy firms Flat Justice and Justice for Tenants, who subsequently took on their claim.
Failure
The tribunal judge accepted that the failure to obtain a licence was by omission rather than deliberate but ruled that the flats had needed a licence and were therefore in breach of Oxford’s scheme, awarding each claimant a 35% rent refund.
Oxford was the first council in England to introduce a citywide additional licensing scheme in 2011, while it launched a citywide selective licensing scheme on 1st September that covers all private rented homes.
“Our new selective licensing scheme means that all private rented homes in Oxford now need a licence, not just HMOs,” she adds. “Everyone deserves a decent home, and our licensing schemes are vital in helping to ensure that private rented homes are safe, well maintained and well managed,” says Councillor Linda Smith, cabinet member for housing.
Read more about RROs.
And tenants wonder why rents getting more expensive.
Yes they did wrong as do we all sometimes with constant new retrospective legislation we can’t keep up with. But was the accommodation bad? No, but u can be sure it will have funds spent on making it better fore tenants next time, as now funds gone on RRO.
Oxford Council has made these tenants lives better, however the next lot of tenants hundred fold lives have got worse.
Feels like an abuse of power to me. The Law is there to be fair and just. Had the building failed its immediate and subsequent HMO license, then argument would be there that the tenants had not, in fact, enjoyed a “decent home”.
As it goes the building passed the requirements and the units let were fine. The council profiteers with a ludicrously high invoice/bill for what was possibly a human/administrative error.