The owner of a West London rental house has been handed a Rent Repayment Order (RRO) and fines totalling £21,771.68 despite the tribunal finding that some of his tenants had behaved in ways that were, at times, ‘distressing.’

Stevan Gorgievski, who has owned 4 Biscay Road (main image) with his wife since 1993, told the tribunal that he took over direct management of the property in 2019 after his rent-to-rent operator, Kingsman Property Ltd, collapsed. Although he was living in Greece, he was occasionally helped by friend, Leslie Nurse.

Committed the offence of being in control of or managing an unlicensed HMO.”

The First-tier Tribunal found he “committed the offence of being in control of or managing an unlicensed HMO” between November 2021 and November 2022, despite his claim that he believed the property was licensed because of a framed document on the wall and an earlier application he saw referenced on the council website.

The application, though, had been started by the landlords’ former managing agent in 2018 and was not a valid submission as it only contained an email address. The judge therefore ruled that Gorgievski had “failed to take reasonable steps” to verify or obtain a valid licence.

highly unhygienic

The tribunal also heard extensive evidence about the tenants’ ‘highly unhygienic and unsociable manner’. Photos and videos showed vomit up the walls of the bathroom, a toilet covered in faeces, a broken door, smashed kitchen containers and a carbon-monoxide filter ripped from the wall.

Cleaning contractors eventually refused to return because of the state of the property. In one case, a tenant blocked the toilet and ‘left to go to work without cleaning it up completely.’

Judge Vance accepted that this behaviour caused “distress” and “inconvenience”, but concluded that the tenants’ misconduct and landlord failings “balanced each other out”. Proper licensing enforcement, he said, remained essential to deter evasion, even where tenants have acted badly.

Gorgievski was ordered to repay between £3,924 and £4,984 to each of the five tenants plus £350 towards tribunal fees.

You can read the full judgement here.