Glasgow City Council to seize homes owned by slum landlords who put lives at risk

Glasgow council is cracking down on slum landlords by seizing their properties after they were found to be putting the lives of tenants at risk.

The majority of the properties – worth a total of £5m – are in the Holyrood constituency of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

Landlords in Glasgow’s Govanhill district have been charging as much as £500 a month for rooms with no hot water, dangerous wiring, poor sanitation and faulty windows.

Many of the desperate tenants are reported to be recent immigrants from Eastern Europe, with offending landlords identified as Akhtar Ali and Johar Mirza in an investigation by the Scottish Sunday Mail.

A special task force has been set up by the SNP-run council to tackle the problem of slum housing in the private rented sector, resulting in 22 landlords in the area being banned from renting out properties in the past nine months.

The offending landlords will be forced to offload the properties under compulsory purchase laws if they do not agree to sell to the local authority.

They will also be barred from acting as landlords in the future and could face criminal prosecution and a fine of £50,000 if they do so.

Using devolved powers, the council will become the first in Scotland to use the law to set up an Enhanced Enforcement Area (EEA) and has set aside £48m to buy up 500 properties from slum landlords.

The team, which is part of the council’s housing department, has the power to enter properties without the owner’s permission.

Ms Sturgeon said: “I welcome the fact that as a result of community, Government and Glasgow Council efforts, rogue landlords are being identified and action is being taken to improve properties in the area.

“Govanhill is a vibrant community and working alongside the new administration in Glasgow and the local community, I will continue to champion improvements in the area.”

One rogue landlord, Johar Mirza, 36, has had his property forcibly bought by the council after he defaulted on his mortgage repayments. He was removed from the Landlord Register after it was discovered he was a convicted sex offender.

A council investigation found he ran five substandard flats – with a value close to half a million - which have been taken off the market due to their appalling condition.

Photographs provided by EEA investigators revealed dangerous electrical wiring running throughout the flats.

Akhtar Ali is appealing the council’s decision after he was banned from being a landlord following a fire at one of his flats.

Two people needed hospital treatment and a subsequent inspection of his seven properties revealed a potentially lethal catalogue of failings.

Officials discovered the gas and electricity had been rigged and the flats had no smoke or carbon monoxide detectors.

The council plans to buy up substandard properties through the Govanhill Acquisition and Repairs Programme, which will then be managed by Govanhill Housing Association.

Development and regeneration manager at Govanhill Housing Association Ken MacDougall said: “We’ve campaigned long and hard to ensure there is more regulation of the private rental sector.”

Councillor Mhairi Hunter, of Glasgow City’s Govanhill Taskforce, said a serious drive is being made to purge the area of the problem of greedy slum landlords taking advantage of the many people dependent on the private rental market.

She said: “The council have the right to demand high standards from landlords, otherwise they will ultimately be taken to task.

“The Enhanced Enforcement Area is going to be rolled out across a further 14 blocks and I fully anticipate its initial success will be repeated.”

The Independent recently reported on new figures highlighting the growing problem of substandard accommodation in the growing private rented sector, with almost a third of homes (29 per cent) failing to meet the national Decent Homes Standard.

This means they either contain safety hazards or do not have acceptable kitchen and bathroom facilities or adequate heating.

Campaigners have repeatedly criticised the UK Government for an apparent reluctance to intervene in the private rented market.

There was an outcry last year when Conservative MPs voted to reject a proposed law that would have required private landlords to make their homes “fit for human habitation”. It emerged that 72 of the MPs who had voted against the measure were themselves landlords.

While the law currently differs in Scotland to England and Wales, there have been rare examples of local authorities taking action to temporarily take control of slum housing.

Last October, a rogue landlord in east London was locked out of a home he owned after 16 people were found living in it, paying a total of £4,000 a month in rent.

Waltham Forest Council seized control of the property after the landlord persistently refused to make it safe for human habitation.

The cost of the work done to bring the property up to scratch was deducted from the rent received by the authority while it acted as landlord.

Ahead of the last general election, the Labour Party vowed to crack down on slum landlords.

The Conservatives pledged to fix the "broken" housing market, but made no specific promises on how they would force landlords to bring substandard properties up to scratch.

Campaign group Generation Rent told The Independent more meaningful intervention in the growing private rented sector was needed and welcomed the move by Glasgow Council.

"Where slum landlords are refusing to comply with any orders, then I think it's justified. There should be moves to force them out of the market because they are putting people's lives at risk," said a spokesperson.

"We need a range of measures in place that are best for tenants. Interim management orders are a positive step forward for England and Wales because local authorites can then use rental incomes to actually improve the property. But it's a prolonged and difficult process to bring forward, which is why they're rarely used.

"What we need to change more widely is the culture around what the private sector is and who it works for.

"These homes are not just investments that owners can do what they want with - they are people's homes, and they have an extreme effect on people's health and well-being, and it should be a criminal matter when you are negatively effecting that - so you could certainly make the case for (councils seizing homes) across the rest of the UK."