The BBC reports that Jas Athwal, the newly-elected Labour MP for Ilford South, rents out flats with black mould and ant infestations. Athwal owns 15 rental flats, making him the biggest landlord in the House of Commons. The report adds:
“In one block of seven flats owned by Mr Athwal nearly half the tenants said they had to regularly clean their bathroom ceilings to remove mould.
“Mr Athwal has now also admitted his flats do not have the correct property licences required under a scheme he introduced as Redbridge Council leader. He had earlier claimed to the BBC that he had complied with the rules.”
“Mr Athwal said he was “shocked” and “profoundly sorry” to hear of residents’ issues, which he had not been aware of due to the properties being managed by an agency, and promised repairs and maintenance will be completed “swiftly”.
The BBC’s Joe Pike visited the flats. His account continues:
“Fire alarms were hanging loose from the ceiling, and a washing machine had been dumped next to a set of stairs.
“One resident showed me black mould growing on their bathroom ceiling, adding that a family member is a “clean freak” who keeps scrubbing the area with bleach to keep the mould at bay. Another said they had googled black mould and realised it could be toxic.
“The whole ceiling would be black if we didn’t clean it every few weeks,” they said.
“I knocked on every door and spoke to most of the tenants. None wanted their name to be used. Some specifically said this was due to a fear of being evicted.
“Please don’t use my name,” said a resident. “Finding a new flat is very difficult.”
“Most of the people I spoke to said Mr Athwal and his property manager were slow to respond to complaints or were completely unresponsive.
“While I was at the block, the property manager was tipped off about my visit and tenants started to get calls from him. After receiving these calls they became hesitant about talking to me. This appeared to me to be intimidation.”
Back in 2018, Athwal tweeted:
“Rogue landlords, we are coming for you.”
Pretty epic hypocrisy, even by the standards of the modern Labour Party. But to focus on Athwal as a pantomime villain misses the broader cause of the woes faced by so many tenants in this country.
Athwal claims that he rents out flats at “below the market rate.” The rents may well be lower than for other flats in Ilford. But they are probably at the “market rate” for flats with mould and ants.
Of course, the fundamental problem is the lack of competition due to the housing shortage. Thus we have Athwal’s tenants afraid to speak to Pike for fear of eviction. West Indian immigrants who arrived in the 1950s and came to live in Notting Hill would put up with Peter Rachman as their landlord because they had little choice. Widespread racism at that time meant that few other landlords were willing to have black tenants.
Imposing ever more costs and regulations on landlords means an extra burden for the reputable ones. They either pass on the costs to their tenants by putting up rents. Or they give up and leave the market, accentuating the shortage in rental properties. Redbridge Council charges £860 per household per year for its Selective Licensing scheme. This doesn’t bother the rogue landlords who stay off the radar.
As the landlords depart, homelessness gets worse. If a Council can’t find landlords in the borough willing to take the homeless, how does it fulfil it statutory obligations? In the last financial year, 2023/24, a Freedom of Information request revealed that Redbridge Council spent £12.9 million putting the homeless up in hotels. That was up from £8.14 million in 2022/23. The Council would also send people to live outside the borough – often disruptive for those with jobs, or children in local schools. Sometimes they would be outside London. Last year Redbridge Council sent 80 households to live in Slough, 37 to Southend, 41 to Thurrock, eight to Sandwell…
Some of the cost of this is picked up by central Government in welfare payments and the Homelessness Prevention Grant. But the Council Taxpayers of Redbridge are also stung for a hefty amount.
How is Redbridge getting on with increasing the housing supply? Even by London standards it is woeful. The latest year for which figures are available, 2022/23, saw just 223 “net additional dwellings” in the Borough. The average per London borough was over a thousand.
The Council tells me that in the financial year 2023/24 it received 1,172 complaints against private landlords. As a result of that a mere 27 Improvement Notices were issued.
Bureaucracy is not an effective way to deal with rogue landlords. Athwal has demonstrated that by imposing new regulations on himself and then disregarding them. He is the embodiment of the futility of this approach. A proper housing market would offer escape for his tenants with an abundance of alternative places to live without mould or ants and at a lower rent. There is nothing inevitable about the miserable restriction in supply – other countries have shown that. A liberalised approach to housing development is the way forward – both in Redbridge and elsewhere.