A commercial landlord has been fined £48,000 after nine people were found sleeping inside his empty office building during a fire safety check.

Tarlochan Singh, 48, from Cryfield Grange Road, Coventry, was the director of 5th Capital Limited, and owner of Ridgemount House on Bede Way, Peterlee, when concerns were raised that people were sleeping inside the building.

Fire safety officers made a late-night visit to the premises and discovered nine people sleeping on the third floor along with several other serious fire safety issues which put people at risk of death or serious injury in the case of a fire.

Breaches included a failure to make a fire risk assessment or ensure the premises had appropriate fire detectors, alarms and clear emergency exits, along with a failure to provide adequate emergency lighting and a lack of sufficient fire doors.

Serious

Durham Crown Court heard that in the wake of the serious breaches, fire officers contacted Singh and learned that the nine people found in the building were workers who had been working on another building in the Peterlee area, also owned by Singh.

The landlord admitted eight charges and was told to pay a £48,000 fine within 12 months or face being jailed, along with £45,711 costs.

Judge Joanne Kidd said: “These premises were fundamentally derelict, and nobody could have thought they were suitable for anyone to spend any period of time in them.

Obvious

“It would have been obvious to you and to anyone that they were in a state of dilapidation. If there had been a fire inside the building these nine men would have been very much at risk of not being able to get out of the building.”

Ben Cairns, director at County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Service, says the breaches of fire safety legislation were so serious that there was an immediate risk to life and officers had immediately prohibited the building’s use.

“In this case there was a serious disregard for fire safety and the risk to life was so serious that it was in the public interest to pursue prosecution,” he adds.

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