Letting agents in big London borough hit with £430,000 fines
Agents in Tower Hamlets landed with the huge total fines for both illegal fees and failing to sign up to a redress schemes.
Letting agents in one part of East London have faced fines totalling more than £430k for illegal fees and failing to belong to a redress scheme.
The London Borough of Tower Hamlets has imposed fines of £431,851 on letting and managing agents in the last six years, after concerns were raised by tenants living in licensed scheme properties.
Most of the fines, £308,101, were for illegal fees, with the remainder being for not signing up to a redress scheme, £123,750.
Extend scheme
The council is consulting on plans to renew its licensing scheme that extends across much of the borough. The current scheme came into force in April 2019 and is due to end in March next year.
Tower Hamlets currently operates three property licensing schemes. In addition to the mandatory HMO licensing scheme that applies throughout the borough, there is a selective licensing scheme in four wards that applies to most private rented properties.
One of the changes being proposed is to extend the next additional licensing scheme borough wide.
This proposal will cause some complications, the council says. In the west of the borough, some small HMOs are currently licensed under the selective licensing scheme. If additional licensing is extended borough wide, HMO landlords in that area could find they have the wrong type of licence and need to reapply.
Would love to know how I can go about fining TH for taking 2 years to repair a roof leak in a block they own the freehold and have THH (Tower Hamlets Homes) manage.
I also don’t understand this trend of reporting fines over an extended period to make it sound scarier. Any fines are bad but £70k a year sound a lot different to £430k!