Tribunal says struggle faced by landlord in managing tenants no answer to breach of smoke alarm regulations, but halves penalty imposed

Cherwell District Council should not have imposed the full £5,000 penalty on a landlord whose property lacked smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, the First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber Professional Regulation) has ruled.

Judge Anthony Snelson halved the penalty having found landlord Craig Redmond had been treated unreasonably by the council as it failed to consider mitigating factors.

Mr Redmond is a professional landlord with five properties and was issued with a  penalty notice for one of them under the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015.

He was also held to be in breach of a remedial notice by failing to install two smoke alarms and one carbon monoxide alarm at the property.

The judge said the nub of Mr Redmond’s appeal was that he is a responsible and fair landlord and the victim of “intolerable tenants at the property”, who had neglected and damaged it including stripping out the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.

He said it was unfair of Cherwell to penalise him when any non-compliance was entirely the fault of the tenants.

Cherwell submitted the evidence of a regulatory breach was overwhelming and it was required to serve a remedial notice.

Whether or not the tenants had misconducted themselves, the landlord’s obligation under the 2015 Regulations was clear and unambiguous, the council argued.

Judge Snelson said Cherwell acted properly in serving the penalty notice on Mr Redmond and “the fact that he was struggling to manage his tenants was no answer to his continuing obligations under the 2015 Regulations.

“Those Regulations do not exist only to protect well-behaved tenants, and it is not for a landlord to decide whether or not to comply with what Parliament, through important safety-driven legislation, has enacted.”

But the judge said the maximum £5,000 penalty was unreasonable. He explained: “My difficulty with the council’s case is that it seems to me that it has not applied [its] policy, or at least has not done so in a fair way.”

It had not been shown that Mr Redmond was a repeat offender and there was evidence of  a carbon monoxide alarm having recently been at the property.

Judge Snelson accepted the absence of alarms was due to wrongful acts of the tenants whom Mr Redmond intended to evict and that he would install alarms before successors were in residence.

He said: “I consider that the imposition of a penalty set at 100% of the available sum was unreasonable and impermissibly harsh in disregarding factors which, under the council’s own protocol, needed to be taken into account, in relation to both culpability and harm (including the period of risk and likely future period of risk).”

Taking these factors into account the judge said: “The justice of the case is met by substituting a penalty of £2,500.”

Mark Smulian