An estate agency in East London has been ordered to pay one of its former HMO tenants £6,240 via a rent repayment order following a First-Tier Tribunal hearing.

It heard that Kenneth Lloyds Ltd, which has a single branch on Commercial Road in Limehouse, had a rent-to-rent agreement with the property’s owner Mrs Aftaban Ali and had sub-let rooms at the address.

During the hearing the tribunal heard that Ali had specified that the flat should only be rented out to a single unit and not as separate bedsits but despite this, evidence presented by tenant Enoch Adjety including correspondence from Greenwich council, showed the oppositive to be true.

The property was inhabited by five unrelated people, making it an HMO, and that the property also was supposed to have been licenced within the council’s borough-wide additional licensing scheme for HMOs.

Management issues

Adjety also told the tribunal that there were property management issues at the address following a fire in a commercial premises beneath the flat.

The tribunal found that the ‘superior landlord’ Mrs Ali had submitted a licence application once she had realised the situation and, referencing the recent landmark Rakusen v Jepsen case, highlighted how it was the ‘immediate landlord’ i.e. Kenneth Lloyds Ltd, against which a rent repayment order could be made, not Ali.

This case is another example of how agents running properties cannot dodge their responsibility to licence a flat or house by claiming it is the property’s owner, not its managing agent, who should pay any rent back to tenants.

Kenneth Lloyds, which failed to respond to the tribunal or attend the hearing, has got off lightly. Adjety was only one of five tenants living at the address at the time, so the RRO could have been much higher.

The Negotiator contacted Kenneth Lloyds for comment.

Read more about HMO regulation in London.