Help me avoid an £80k landlord database fine!

By the 14th April ’27, I have to register my rental properties on the new landlord database. This should be very simple, and I hope it will be, but one property is giving me cause for concern.

It is a house with two tenants, both SMI (Severely Mentally Impaired) and each tenant has their own tenancy agreement. It is not subject to HMO Licensing by the Council. The tenant both moved in on the same day in July 2017, and have lived in the same rooms ever since.

The house was extended before our purchase and the extension is over two floors; two en-suite bathrooms were added upstairs, and a bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette area was added downstairs, plus a second front door opening onto the kitchenette area. The kitchenette has two internal doors, one which opens onto one of two living room’s in the original part of the house, the other opens onto the bathroom, and from the bathroom to the bedroom.

The SMI tenant downstairs is wheelchair bound, and has exclusive use of the downstairs bedroom and bathroom and kitchenette in the extension and exclusive use of the living room in the original part of the house (that is also accessed from the hall in the original house). Put simply; this downstairs tenant has exclusive use of rooms in the original house and in the extension. Access to all of upstairs is via the staircase in the original part of the house. The other tenant has a bedroom upstairs. in the original part of the house, with an en-suite that is in the extension part of the house. So he also lives partly in the original house and partly in the extension.

In 2019, the Council attended the property to confirm the living arrangements under a Housing Benefit audit, and shortly after this visit, the Valuations office in Hull wrote to me to say that the council had requested a re-valuation of the property because it has a kitchen area in the extension. The property was subsequently re-banded to create two council tax entries, one for the main house and one for what they called “the Annex”, at Band A. I did not make any changes to the Tenancy Agreements as neither tenant changed their living arrangement, and the rent didn’t change as a result of the CT change.

We then received a Band A CT bill for the Annex for £1,650, which the tenant could not afford, so we removed the kitchenette and asked for the house to be re-banded again, back into one property. Within a week of requesting the re-valuation, we received a second bill for the Annex, this time for £0. I asked why they had sent the original CT bill for £1,650, and they said, “Oh, just ignore it, it was an error. Because the tenant is SMI he gets a 100% Disregard, as he is the sole occupant of the downstairs part of the Annex.”….!

I then cancelled the re-valuation, and re-instated the kitchenette. We still get a separate CT bill for the main part of the house, which is occupied by the other SMI tenant and partly occupied by the Annex SMI tenant (as stated above, he has sole use of one of two living rooms in the original part of the house), but this bill is Disregarded only by 50%, not 100% like the Annex is, for reasons I do not fully understand.

So that’s the background; my concern now is whether I have to register two properties, because there are two council tax entries against the property? I do not have a separate gas safety or electrical safety certificate for each Council Tax entity, since there is only one electricity meter and one gas meter, and there are no gas appliances in the Annex. The electrical certificate is for the whole house, extension included, as the power and lighting circuits run through both parts of the property – they are not distinct circuits, so it is technically impossible to do an electrical test solely on the extension or solely on the original house. I do have two EPC’s though, one for the main part of the house, and one for the Annex.

I am very concerned that if I get the registration wrong, I will end up with a £40k fine for each wrong entry, which is an £80k fine in total!!

I know that is extremely unlikely, but all my interactions with the authorities such as the Council have been extremely negative (I took them to a Housing Tribunal in 2019 over refusal to grant the correct rate of Housing benefit for one of the tenants, and won, and, bizarrely, they then accused me of building the extension without planning permission because they had lost the planning permission sign off during a move of Council offices. They are largely incompetent at best, and vindictive at worst, in my experience). Hence I am very wary of approaching them about anything.

So, I would appreciate any suggestions as to how I might proceed so as to avoid a hefty fine.

And if anyone knows why a house that has only SMI tenants still has to pay an element (50%) of Council Tax, I would appreciate it.

Steve