A Lincolnshire landlord has been fined £8,000 and ordered to pay costs after a police discovered 13 people from five different countries living in one of his properties.
Boston Magistrates Court heard how Manuel Ridierp was illegally using a four-bedroom house in Queens Road Boston for the tenants.
In November last year he had been asked to supply details of his tenants and served with a notice restricting the number of people who could live in the property.
After receiving complaints from neighbours regarding noise and litter, council officers and police decided to raid the house in March.
In it they found an Italian family and two Brazilians using the garage and grounds floor as a living area. In the five rooms upstairs were two more Brazilians, a Polish couple, two Portuguese men and a Spanish man. All were living in poor conditions and there was no evidence of any fire safety regulations.
Ridierp was prosecuted under two sections of the Housing Act 2004 and fined £4,000 on both counts. He was ordered to pay £150 costs and a £15 surcharge.
• Fewer landlords are going to court to issue possession claims against their tenants according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Justice.
28,042 landlord possession orders were made during the second quarter of 2008 down, a one per cent drop from the first quarter of the year.
In 2002 the annual number of possession orders by landlords reached 195,473, but by 2007 this had fallen to 146,790.
Commenting on the newly-published statistics, the National Landlords Association welcomed the downward trend in landlord possessions
