Fines and prosecutions


Fire ‘hazard’ HMO landlords fined The defects found were ‘not


A COUPLE were fined £5,000 in court bills for not properly licensing a property in York, which featured fire safety defects. York Press reported on the


prosecution of Aligul and Gulten Kala, who rented out a three storey building on Blossom Street in York as a house in multiple occupation (HMO). On inspection, council officers found a ‘litany of fire safety and other defects’, with six people renting five rooms throughout the property. Mr Kula applied for housing


benefit for one tenant and quoted monthly rent of ‘more than twice that’, which a housing and community officer had been told he would charge.


enough to justify closing the building immediately’, but would have ‘had to be rectified as part of the licence application process’, and included: no carbon monoxide detectors; trip hazards on fire escape routes; unchecked fire extinguishers; both kitchen units and an electric meter in ‘a poor state of repair’; and loose staircase handrails. Despite officers telling the couple how to apply for a licence and sending them a form, ‘the couple did not do so’. Housing officers undertook


‘numerous attempts’ to speak to tenants, but only managed to talk to some ‘once, when they were told six people lived there’,


Mr Kala then telling the council he collected £720 a month altogether, including £120 from a ground floor room and £150 from four upper floor rooms. The housing benefit claimed for one of the more expensive rooms stated that the rent was £340. At court, Mr and Mrs Kala pleaded guilty to not having an HMO licence, and were fined £1,200 each plus a £120 statutory charge. In addition, the couple were ordered to pay £2,351 towards the council’s prosecution costs, with Mr Kala disputing in court that tenants ‘had been there for longer than three months and that there had been six tenants’, with none now living there


Prosecution after recycling centre fires


THE FORMER owner of a plastics recycling centre appeared in court charged with three environmental protection offences, pleading guilty. Lancashire Telegraph reported on the case corresponding to Rockliffe Works in Blackburn, which had seen four fires since August last year after former owner David Holt ‘had been evicted from the site’. Mr Holt pleaded guilty to three charges relating to ‘activity on the site between 2014 and 2016’, though in the 49 years where Mr Holt and his father had controlled the site, ‘there had never been a fire’. Instead, the court charged Mr Holt with environmental protection offences relating to the ‘fire risk posed at the site’, with the four fires since his eviction seeing ‘thousands of tonnes of waste plastic’ go up in flames, resulting in road closures and resident evacuations. The investigations by the Environment Agency began after a formal statutory notice was issued in December 2015, revoking the permit for operations on site and requiring clearance of all waste. However, on visiting in March, it


was ‘immediately obvious the site was in the same condition and recycling was still going on’. Prosecutor David Bradley stated that the fires ‘came after the defendant had withdrawn from


was a sense of him burying his head in the sand’, noting that ‘from time to time storage did improve but at no stage did it come anywhere near meeting the requirements. He was always working on it and there was assurance that something was going to happen but it never did’. Once Mr Holt relinquished control


the site, but what you are dealing with [is] a situation brought about by the way the site was managed’. Mr Holt had worked ‘closely’ with Environment Agency officers after a permit was issued to ‘try and improve the situation’. Stacks of waste plastic on site,


which should have had ‘restricted dimensions and have six metre fire breaks between each stack’ to help prevent fire spread and allow fire service access, instead ‘ran into each other and presented a major fire risk’. The Environment Agency had


followed ‘correct procedures’ by ‘serving the appropriate notices and warnings’, and although inspectors had seen ‘limited areas of compliance’, they were ‘aware more waste material’ was being stored. Mr Bradley added that Mr Holt ‘had always cooperated but there


of the site, the Environment Agency had spent £21,000 to clear fire breaks across the site, with the cost of clearing the entire location estimated at between £800,000 and £1m. Defending Mr Holt, Lisa Judge


stated that he had ‘an otherwise unblemished character’, and had ‘battled hard to keep the family business afloat’, noting that ‘he is not a fly-by-night operator’, but an ‘extremely hard working family man who has done his best but has to accept he has failed. ‘He tried to comply [but] he


just never quite got there, but that was not for want of trying. This man was fighting a battle he had no chance of winning but he kept on fighting’. Mr Holt was committed on bail to Preston Crown Court for sentencing, as the magistrates court his case was heard at ‘ruled their powers of punishment were insufficient’


www.frmjournal.com FEBRUARY 2018 13


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