Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Warham Road illegal conversion: rogue landlord fined
From the Haringey Council Website:
While I applaud the council for taking this bloke to court, getting the news out that a landlord has been pursued and fined through the courts for flouting the law so blatantly and naming and shaming him,I have to say £3000 is not a hefty fine. He probably made that in a week of rent from the illegal flats. The law is still on the side of the landlords.
"A landlord who illegally converted a Haringey house into four flats and rented them out has been fined £3,000.
Costas Charalambous, of Maida Vale, London, W9, was also ordered to pay £1,780 in costs by Haringey magistrates.
He purchased the property in Warham Road, N4, in 2007 for £400,000 and spent a great deal of money converting it into flats.
He pleaded guilty to failing to comply with an enforcement notice under Section 179 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.
He did not have planning permission to convert the property into flats. He unsuccessfully appealed against that decision, but still put
tenants in the property. He rented flats out for 10 weeks from May to
August last year.
When making its decision, the court is entitled to take into account the money the landlord made in renting the property out."
While I applaud the council for taking this bloke to court, getting the news out that a landlord has been pursued and fined through the courts for flouting the law so blatantly and naming and shaming him,I have to say £3000 is not a hefty fine. He probably made that in a week of rent from the illegal flats. The law is still on the side of the landlords.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by maggie on
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I agree £3000 is nothing when you do the maths and work out how much he has pocketed, certainly not enough to deter him, or anyone else, from doing it again. None the less, well done to the council, to the person who reported it and who ever took up the case. One down and hopefully many more to go.
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Permalink Reply by Stuart on
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Anyone know which number Warham this refers to?
Agreed - absurd to describe this as "hefty". That was probably no more than a couple of months rent (though bear in mind he will still have to reconvert the property back to a single unit).
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Permalink Reply by Protheroe O'Shea on
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I am beginning to think it may be 119 wraham but could be wrong. Pathetic fine. Surely Haringey could have and should have made an example of this parasite.
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Does this mean haringey can sue him for fraud, considering he appealed he must have come up with some sort of proof?
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The maximum under the legislation is £20,000 and in previous discusisons with Haringey, they have said that it's very very rare to get that much. I think the legislation may be at fault because it seems like there's a sliding scale depending on how long the landlord rented the flats out for. What's clear is that it it is not intended to be a like-for-like fine (i.e to fine him all the rent he's received). Also, they're usually dealt with at the magistrates court - if the case was sent to the Crown Court, the fines become unlimited. But they never do get sent to the CC.
Haringey can't sue him for fraud, they can only hand over the file to the police to consider prosecution. From my discussions with Haringey about this (and encouraging them to do so), their sense is that this is so low down the police priorities that it would be only the most heinous of offences that they might refer. There is nothing here to suggest that this is anything other than just another dodgy developer who got caught out.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Isn't it more important to know more about "Mr Costas Charalambous of Maida Vale"? Rather than putting a spotlight on the people - families with kids perhaps - who are living in the illegally converted house?
For example, a picture of Mr C.C. would be helpful. (It's a common surname and I wouldn't want to shame the wrong man.) This may of course, be a one-off offence. But if not, I'd to know about other similar conversions.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Alan - don't suppose you know what is happening at 12 Warham. The owner illegally converted it to flats in 2007, an enforcement notice was issued, he didn't comply and was taken to court and ordered to put it back to a single dwelling in a certain amount of time. It must be over a year since the court case but no sign of it being put back to a single dwelling.
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Sorry, Michael, I'm not up-to-date on this specific property. Does someone else on HoL already have up-to-date details? If not, I'm happy to send in a "Member Inquiry" asking.
I also wonder if there's a way to make all this information publicly available through a simple online search showing the stage things have reached with enforcement on each property. In the past, I've come across cases where Haringey's enforcement action was apparently 'lost' in the system. Although as I'm sure you know, delay is often due to a determined developer or owner exploiting the system to prolong things for months if not years.
As people have pointed out in this thread, the most effective remedy would be financial penalties which stopped law-breaking being profitable. Some naming and shaming could be effective as well.
Perhaps giving Planning Enforcement a far higher public profile could also help to attract more planners to this part of the job. I've been told that across the country, Enforcement is seen as very much the ugly sister to the more glamorous functions like planning policy and "regeneration". I doubt that Enforcement gets awards at black-tie dinners; or important lunches with corporate and Government head honchos, and £800-a-day consultants.
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Alan
A lot of councils actually put their planning enforcement processes online. and constantly update so members of the public can keep track of progress. Unfortunately, Haringey only puts its planning applications and processes online, not its enforcement. Maybe something you could help try to change?
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Thanks Bushy. This is currently within the brief of Cllr Nilgun Canver. [It used to be some other bloke whose name escapes me.] I'll point out your comment to Nilgun and ask her if we could follow best practice elsewhere. Any suggestions for which councils do this best?
Though one sticking point may be the extra work needed to post this info online and make sure it's up-to-date. We don't want inaccurate data. Nor to increase the workload of enforcement staff, so they've less time for actual enforcement.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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I assume you have the info stored somewhere. I hope it's in a database. In that case there are plenty of automated tools for turning a database into a webpage with no extra human effort. Ruby-on-Rails is a famous one but we use this one in my office. The key is normalisation of data, i.e. just one copy of it that gets updated and perhaps many different views of this data.
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