£16,000 fine for Landlord because tenant played dance music for 36 hours straight!

47 year old Jason Duffield a Landlord from Birmingham has been convicted of 5 breaches of the Noise Abatement Notice and was ordered to pay a fine of £10,000 plus £6,000 in costs to the council, because his tenant tortured the neighbours with 36 hours of loud dance music.

The tenant then disappeared from the property in Tamworth with no forwarding address.

Jason has now sold the property, but was last year handed a restraining order by police for excessive noise coming from the house and North Warwickshire Borough also gave him an abatement notice.

Jason told reporters “I honestly can’t put into words how I feel about it. It’s made me sick with worry and I have no idea how I will pay the fine.

“I will fight it all the way but it’s just so much extra stress. To get blamed for something I have not done is completely crazy. Even in court, the solicitors and the people next door said they had not seen me at the house.
“I warned the tenant, who said he does play music but not very loudly. The next thing I knew the police had come in and seized goods from the property.”

Assistant chief executive and solicitor to the council, Steve Maxey, said “Jason Duffield repeatedly ignored the warnings from the police and from the council, which not only constituted a flagrant breach of the law, but also caused undue distress and upset to his neighbours in Dordon.”

This then leaves open the question of proportional punishment and responsibility of the Landlord to be debated.