Council warns it must rely on fines due to lack of enforcement funding
1 month ago | 4 comments
Landlord penalty quashed after council fails to meet six-month rule
10:09 AM, 25th June 2026, 3 weeks ago
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A firm has warned that minor licensing mistakes can cost landlords thousands of pounds after successfully overturning a £19,500 financial penalty.
London Property Licensing reveals it advised on a case in which a housing officer from Waltham Forest Council inspected a flat and found it was being rented to three friends without the correct licence, in breach of the council’s additional HMO licensing scheme.
The firm is now warning landlords and letting agents that, under the Renters’ Rights Act, financial penalties could be even higher.
Council took 17 months to process the application
London Property Licensing explains that the case was not as straightforward as first imagined.
London Property Licensing said the flat on Lea Bridge Road in east London had previously been occupied by a single household before being re-let to three sharers in July 2023.
The firm said the landlord had submitted an additional HMO licence application in 2021 and appointed a managing agent to oversee compliance.
However, the council took 17 months to process the application and, during that time, the property changed from being occupied by three sharers to a single family. As a result, the application was refused because it was no longer the correct type of licence.
After the family moved out and the property underwent refurbishment, it was re-let to three sharers. At that point, a new licence application was required, but this was missed due to an administrative oversight by the managing agent.
A council inspection two months later identified the licensing breach, but neither the landlord nor the managing agent was informed at the time.
Six months later, Waltham Forest Council issued a notice of intent to impose a £19,500 penalty. According to the firm, the notice was not received by the landlord, and a final penalty of £15,600 was issued six months later.
Issued notice outside six-month limit
London Property Licensing points out that, while the appeal raised concerns about both the decision to impose a penalty and the level of the fine, it also questioned whether the notice of intent had been issued within the required timeframe.
The legislation says: “The notice of intent must be given before the end of the period of six months beginning with the first day on which the authority has sufficient evidence of the conduct to which the financial penalty relates.”
On appeal, the First-tier Tribunal found that Waltham Forest Council had issued the notice outside this statutory six-month limit and therefore cancelled the penalty.
The council attempted to challenge the decision, but its appeal was unsuccessful. The Upper Tribunal upheld the ruling, confirming that the statutory time limit had been misapplied.
High penalties are often imposed for minor indiscretions
Richard Tacagni, managing director at, London Property Licensing, warns small administrative oversights can cost landlords and letting agents thousands of pounds.
He said: “This case demonstrates how the civil financial penalty regime is becoming ever more complex and litigious. High penalties are often imposed for minor indiscretions without any prior warning.
“With new statutory guidance supporting even higher financial penalties under the Renters Rights Act, I’m concerned the regulatory model is out of balance. We need better and more proportionate regulation of the private rented sector.”
The news comes as landlords and letting agents in London now face a greater financial risk from licensing breaches, with council fines moving close to £25 million.
Tags:
financial penalty, HMO licence application, HMO Licensing, London Property Licensing, Waltham Forest
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Member Since January 2025 - Comments: 120
3:00 PM, 25th June 2026, About 3 weeks ago
Reply to the comment left by Rod at 25/06/2026 – 13:33
The last thing landlords need is a membership discount. They need effective action.
A discount epitomises where many representative organisations appear to see themselves: as service providers offering minor benefits, rather than serious bodies representing an asset-owning sector under sustained political and regulatory attack.
Landlords are not short of money for value — at least not yet. What they are short of is effective representation, strategic leadership and a willingness to challenge policy before the damage becomes irreversible.
Does the Law Society, RICS or any other serious professional body define its relevance by offering discounts? No. Members pay for authority, influence, expertise and representation.
You pay peanuts, and you know what you get.
Member Since August 2021 - Comments: 314 - Articles: 1
3:27 PM, 25th June 2026, About 3 weeks ago
Reply to the comment left by Property One at 25/06/2026 – 14:08
Why not head over to our new website to see what we have been up to for over 50 years.
https://ihowz.uk/
Is this is too hard for those questioning what landlord associations do?
Member Since August 2021 - Comments: 314 - Articles: 1
4:11 PM, 25th June 2026, About 3 weeks ago
Reply to the comment left by Person Of The People at 25/06/2026 – 14:11
Many of the points you raise are valid, most good.
Taking your union analogy, AI tells me:
The union movement achieved success by leveraging collective bargaining, launching coordinated strikes, building unified national networks, and exerting crucial political pressure to pass historic labour laws. By combining the financial and physical power of many workers . . .
The key points are that a significant number of people came together and when required act together to pursue their collective causes.
Being charitable, less than 200,000 landlords in England (out of around 2.3m) belong to a landlord association. LESS THAN 1 IN 10 – not catchy enough for those able to remember UB40 was for benefit claimants.
Like the unions, a successful band needs a large following.
We have to start somewhere and stop sniping at those who would be able to get ready access to the corridors of power if they were able to say “We represent 20%+ of landlords” or a coalition of PRS representatives could say “We represent over 60% of homes in the PRS”
Instead, the four largest BTR operators currently represent the same number of PRS homes as ALL the Landlord Associations.
I close by saying that no two landlord associations are the same. After all, I like a good curry on a Friday night, but a vegi korma just isn’t my thing.
Hopefully you can find a landlord association to match your taste.
My invite stands.
Maybe you fancy joining our campaigns team, or would penning a regular thought piece be more your thing?
Member Since January 2025 - Comments: 120
6:11 PM, 26th June 2026, About 2 weeks ago
Reply to the comment left by Rod at 25/06/2026 – 16:11
It was interesting engaging with you, and let us hope our paths cross again for another discussion.
The problem, as I see it, is that there are many well-meaning people in the property industry, but very few who have been effective in protecting the industry’s position.
Look at house builders and developers. How did they end up in a position where, through the Section 106 and affordable housing framework, viability review mechanisms can claw away profit above a politically acceptable benchmark, often around 20% on cost, when the Competition and Markets Authority’s own housebuilding study confirmed that the average time from first view of a virgin site to last sale is around 6.3 to 6.7 years, after all the regulatory hoops have been jumped through?
If the local planning authority thinks a developer has not disclosed all profit, or has padded costs, it can require — at the developer’s expense — an audit going right back to day one. That is when the bean counters arrive and start counting the coffee beans.
It would take me some time to find a deposit account, even with a £120,000 government guarantee, paying a total of just 20% for my money for 6.3 to 6.7 years. If the Government thinks major house builders can survive indefinitely on those margins, while being told daily that they are failing the country, what chance does the private rented sector have?
The country is now in an economic doom loop. Government can only survive by harvesting capital from wherever it can get away with it politically. It is all a bookkeeping exercise. The money may not roll in today, but Rachel Reeves can still book the future taxes that will be paid when people are forced to liquidate assets. Capital gains tax, stamp duty, inheritance tax, VAT, corporation tax, enforcement penalties, council tax premiums — it all feeds the machine.
Even the trade bodies have been loud in their silence. I think nobody quite believed it could happen. But do not take my word for it. Just look around you.
I recently left a south coast station for a four-day trip, stopping off at various places on the way to London and back. Journeys that should have taken 1 hour 36 minutes stretched deep into the night. Tube lines were cancelled en masse because of the wrong type of heat. The modern administrative class running these systems seems to take every opportunity to turn a drama into a crisis, and then present the crisis as proof of its own importance.
Now look at the property training schools. It was not long ago that they were plying their trade teaching people what to buy, where to buy, how to gear up, how to refurbish, and how to manage. Now they are spending money on AI tools to identify desperate and distressed sellers, complete with scripts and reports to justify low bids.
Their latest fee-paying cohort is being trained to become a modern version of the vulture funds of the 1980s and 1990s — behaviour that the regulatory system curbed. The current buzz phrase is “BMV” — below market value. It is an oxymoron, because if a willing seller sells to a willing buyer in the open market, that is the market value. But the phrase sounds clever, so it is sold as a strategy.
In truth, it simply adds to the doom loop economy. Today’s buyer has a good chance of becoming tomorrow’s desperate seller, because the fundamentals of the market are broken.
Once government intervenes to this extent, there is no free market. And without a free market, there is no reliable foundation for value. Values become whatever the political masters need them to be in order to capture the votes they require in 2029. So far, they have put most of the levers in place to achieve that goal.
You cannot buy without paying stamp duty, which may eat up years of income before you have even started. You cannot leave a property empty without facing penal council tax. You cannot fail to repair, upgrade, license, register, certify or comply without facing penalties. You cannot freely choose who you rent to. You cannot freely recover possession. You cannot freely set the rent at the level you consider fair for your property. That last point immediately removes the incentive to provide something better than the competition, so decline is built into the system.
And if you do somehow manage to sell, do not forget the exit taxes, professional costs, redemption charges and transaction costs waiting at the door.
You can now buy an option to purchase a Manchester sky-rise apartment for less than £20,000. I wonder how many people will eventually have to take the hit and simply let those options lapse.
There will always be winners and losers. But the meek will never, ever, inherit the earth. History should tell you that, even if property history and property politics do not.
Until we speak again.
P.S. still on one of those delayed trains so time for the above…