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17/12/25 3:30 pm
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A landlord who blamed the council’s poor website for his failure to make a licence application has been ordered to pay a £10,019 Rent Repayment Order.
Three former tenants brought the claim against Lawrence Geung at a First Tier Property Tribunal hearing. He admitted he had failed to licence the three-bedroom HMO in Stanlake Road, London, under Hammersmith & Fulham’s additional licensing scheme from September 2023 to September 2024.
One of the tenants, Imraj Singh, said the premises were in a potentially unsafe condition. He added the landlord had made a false statement that the previous tenants – who lived there until September 2023 - were related.
Geung, who owns five properties, said he thought that two of the previous occupiers were cousins. He added that once Singh's tenancy had been signed, he had tried to pay for the licence, but the website kept crashing. The council acknowledged there were sometimes problems with payments going through.
The tribunal heard that Geung responded to complaints of disrepair quickly and had replaced a defective boiler and washing machine to the council’s satisfaction.
The judge said there was no bad conduct on either side and labelled Geung an “essentially decent landlord” who sought to address repairs when notified of them.
However, the judge added: “The respondent…started the application process but did not complete it with a payment until some months later. We don’t consider that he was pursuing the matter proactively. He left it even though he knew the process was not complete. In some respects, this is worse than a landlord acting without any knowledge at all of the need for a licence. It was clearly a low priority for him, and it should not have been.”
His tenants had claimed £27,517 but the judge awarded them 55% of the rent claimed.
More tenants are bringing similar tribunal cases; the number - including Rent Repayment Orders - increased from 280 in 2024 to 299 this year.
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