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BBC News
5 hours ago
- BBC News
Rats, mould and dangerous overcrowding - inside illegal house-shares
In the middle of the night, says Maria, groups of people can sometimes be seen moving into houses in her neighbourhood, far more than would seem to fit comfortably in the Victorian terraced of these houses has 10 to 15 people living inside, she estimates. Maria, an architect, suspects they are being illegally rented. "They're everywhere," she contacted Your Voice, Your BBC News after spending years complaining about these homes to her local authority in east London, Newham Council. We began investigating - and found a widespread black-market rental sector where people are forced to live in unsafe videos and testimony from the people living in several properties like these showed unsanitary and overcrowded homes, with adults sleeping on bare mattresses in bunk beds, contending with black mould, rats and, in some cases, conditions that proved to be deadly. Laws across the UK say large house-shares - officially known as houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) - must have a licence, so local councils can ensure each property is suitable for the number of occupants and meets gas, electrical and fire safety evidence in three London house-share hotspots we examined suggests that in some places there are more unlicensed, black-market HMOs than there are legal ones. One London borough told us it has 3,000 licensed HMOs, but estimates there are two or three times that number in shop windows in east London, we noticed many ads for properties that did not appear to conform to licensing laws, often offering a "bedspace" in shared rooms. We also found adverts online that appeared to show mould or dirt in the shared investigate, BBC reporter Gopal Virdee responded to some of these adverts and viewed the rooms, filming with a hidden camera. In one property in Waltham Forest, where there was a shared bedroom advertised at £330 a month, he was met by about 10 young men who all appeared to live there. The room on offer was shared between three people, another was shared between four - and on some of the beds, there was no bedding or even of the men told us they were subletting and admitted there was no HMO licence - as the local authority register confirmed.A company representing the property owner later told us that the tenancy agreement "expressly forbids" subletting and multiple occupancy and that the property had never been let or advertised for those purposes. It said it had taken prompt action when it learned of the contract man who showed our reporter around later told us he had "no involvement whatsoever in the management, ownership or letting of this property". Waltham Forest Council said it would take conditions such as these can be fatal. Nazmush Shahadat escaped a deadly fire in 2023 at an HMO in Shadwell, east London. He had moved in as a last resort, after coming to the UK to study law and finding that the housing he had been promised had fallen "stench" hit him when he first arrived, Nazmush says, "like an old gym with the men's sweat". He says he was bitten by bedbugs and could see mould across the ceiling from his top the night of the fire, there were 18 people crammed into the two-bedroom flat. Many of Nazmush's flatmates worked as food-delivery riders, and the fire started because of a faulty e-bike battery charging under a the tenants' attempts to put the blaze out failed, they fled the smoke-filled flat. Nazmush says they thought everyone had got out - until the emergency services carried out a man on a stretcher. "That's when it hit us straight away, that body - it could be any one of us," he Rahman had only lived in the flat a few days. He died later in hospital aged 41, leaving behind a wife and two children in Bangladesh. Earlier this year, the landlords - husband and wife Aminur Rahman and Sofina Begum - were fined £90,000 for multiple housing offences, including cramming more people into the property than three people the licence permitted. Because such overcrowded properties are undeclared, the true number of unlicensed HMOs across the country is unknown. But an experimental data project to try to detect them has been developed by Ben Yarrow, who runs the landlord and letting agency review website, Marks Out Of flags potential unlicensed HMOs by searching through a range of financial data sources to identify properties associated with large numbers of people who have different has some limitations - it cannot find people relying on cash with no formal paperwork, and in some cases households with big families can be wrongly asked Mr Yarrow to scan specific postcodes in three boroughs which we knew were HMO hotspots. In part of Newham, where there are only 75 licensed properties, he found more than 700 possible part of Tower Hamlets, he found nearly 500 suspected HMOs. The council has publicly listed only 50 HMO licences here, although it said more properties were around Southwark's Old Kent Road, Mr Yarrow found more than 300 possible HMOs, although only 232 were licensed. Southwark Council told us it actively works to identify suspect properties and protect tenants. Tower Hamlets Council said it thought the data was incorrect and that it actively investigates reports of unlicensed Council said it uses advanced systems to identify unlicensed HMOs and follows up all resident complaints, but it said enforcement is time-consuming because tenants are often "among the most vulnerable members of society". It said it had investigated 2,307 alleged failures to licence properties between January 2023 and March this year. Many council enforcement teams appear to be overstretched. According to responses to Freedom of Information requests, only about a third of complaints raised by renters in England between 2021 and 2023 were followed by a local authority government's Renters' Rights Bill, currently passing through Parliament, is due to create a national database of private rented properties in England, which will help councils "clamp down on unlicensed properties", London's deputy mayor for housing Tom Copley told the growth of unlicensed HMOs means it is not only single renters caught up in them - sometimes entire families are crammed into single rooms in shared Judzinskas, who is originally from Lithuania, moved into a shared house in Greenwich, south-east London. Shortly afterwards, his wife joined him. A council officer later said in a report that the property should have been licensed as an HMO. The couple spent nine years there, and went on to have a family in their small room, squeezing in two cots and all their possessions. "People like me, we don't have a choice," he family had to wait to use the bathroom or the cooker, and conditions were unhygienic, he says. They captured video of rats in the with the landlord and other tenants broke down and Marius was asked to leave, he says. The family returned home one day and found the locks had been changed, he says. They tried to climb in through an open window so they could put their nine-month old baby in the room to sleep, but the police were called. They were evicted. Marius is now taking legal action against the people who managed his former home, through a rent repayment order, to try to claw back some of what he paid. Renters in homes where landlords have broken the law, including by failing to register an HMO, can claim up to a year's rent is a particular risk with unlicensed HMOs, says Roz Spencer from Safer Renting, which helps tenants in disputes with issue of unlicensed HMOs is growing, she says. "We are being referred more people and I believe the problem is spreading and the non-compliance issue is endemic." Chris Norris, chief policy officer for the National Residential Landlords Association, says most landlords operate within the law and only have one or two properties that are well looked after. But he says: "There is this view or perception that landlords can get away with it because, frankly, some landlords do."Local authorities do not have the capacity to enforce the licensing regime, he says, but it is only a "tiny minority" of landlords responsible for these bad government says the Renters' Rights Bill will address the situation, "empowering" tenants to act without the threat of retaliation. It says it expects local authorities to "clamp down on rogue landlords" and "HMOs must be safe, well-maintained, and properly managed".But in the meantime, many thousands of people are likely to be stuck in potentially dangerous homes. Additional reporting by Mary O'Reilly
The Sun
20-07-2025
- Health
- The Sun
My toilet EXPLODED with poo & sewage flooded my home leaving me in a ‘coma' in hospital – I'm lucky to be alive
A MUM says she was left in a "coma" after her toilet erupted, leaving her home flooded in sewage and poo. Amoin Brou, 59, says the harrowing ordeal saw her entire home covered in faeces, and she was hospitalised with a serious chest infection and pneumonia caused by the filthy living conditions. 6 6 6 The catastrophic plumbing disaster earlier this summer led to Amoin's toilet and bathtub flooding with sewage and human waste - which she says continued for four days. She awoke at her home in North Woolwich, London, on May 18 to find the initial flooding, and despite the efforts of emergency council workers to quell the water, all her possessions were destroyed. The next day she says she fainted and was rushed to hospital, where she was put on a drip in intensive care. Amoin and her two-year-old daughter Niatomie were moved to the Manor Park Hotel by Newham Council as temporary accommodation while the ongoing issue was tackled. On briefly returning to the property to collect her clothes, she discovered the sewage was still finding its way in and everything was ruined. She says she has had problems with the flat for years, having reported damp as far back as 2010 and two years ago even saw steam rising from the floorboards. The desperate mum told The Sun: "Any human being cannot live like this. This is a sick person with a two-year-old daughter. " They dried the sewage and they dried the flat. The firefighters said this lady cannot stay in this flat. "So they put me in a hotel for two days then sent me back, they couldn't pay for the hotel for me anymore. "The water flooded my flat for four days, water past my knee." I scrub my council house walls but they're COVERED in mould & crumbling away - I have two disabled kids, it's disgusting Amoin added: "It made me sick, I was in hospital. There was a stink coming out of the floor, the floor was wet everywhere." She and her daughter are now back in the same hotel again. She claims that the property was left in a filthy and humid condition following the toilet flood, saying: "The house has a high level of humidity, damp and mould." She added: "I got pneumonia and was in the hospital in a coma." During the flood, Amoin had to take desperate measures to protect herself and her daughter from the unhygienic conditions in the flat. She can be seen in footage wandering around her ruined flat with plastic bags on her feet to protect them from the sewage. Disgusting video and pictures show the floor of the property covered in toilet water as Amoin desperately tries to block the doorway of the bathroom with clothes to prevent the flood from spreading. Amoin said: "In the building, people's s*** was coming to me, I put my daughter on my back and stood in the hall." She eventually called the fire brigade, not knowing what to do, and they contacted the council for her. Amoin said that sandbags were placed in her flat to protect her neighbours from the wave of sewage that was spreading from her bathroom throughout the property. 6 6 6 The floor of her home was left sodden with water and sewage as the mum struggled to control the flow of water from her damaged toilet. She was hospitalised twice, once in April and once in May, which she claims is a result of the damp conditions in her flat. The pair currently live in a hotel room while she waits for her flat to be returned to a liveable condition. Amoin said she had problems with the plumbing in the property for years, especially around the toilet and the bath. A Newham Council spokesperson said: 'Within an hour of Ms Brou contacting Newham Council's out-of-hours emergency line about her blocked toilet, we had a plumber on the way to her. "On inspection it was found that a blocked drain outside the housing association property was causing sewage to back up. 'A specialist contractor was called who carried out remedial work. This was checked two days later and discovered further work was needed, at which point Ms Brou was rehoused in a local hotel. "The following week a housing officer visited the property and more work was done to clear the drain. 'While we understand and sympathise with the tenant, blocked drains are a common problem. "Council tenants are advised to take out household contents insurance to provide protection in the event of damage to personal property. 'The property was cleaned twice by contractors who have video footage of their work on both occasions.'
BBC News
23-06-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Consultation launched on Thamesmead DLR extension
Transport for London (TfL) has opened a public consultation on plans to extend the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) across the River Thames from east to south-east proposals would see the service extend from Gallions Reach to Thamesmead via the Beckton would include two new stations - one at Beckton Riverside and another at Thamesmead Waterfront with a tunnel built under the River Thames to connect the claims journey times from Thamesmead could be cut to about 25 minutes to Stratford and 35 minutes to Tottenham Court Road. It says the scheme could unlock up to 30,000 new homes and 10,000 new jobs, and estimates an economic impact of £15.6bnAlex Williams, TfL's chief customer and strategy officer, said the case for the extension "is clear as it provides a crucial opportunity to create new homes, jobs and economic growth".He urged the public to give their feedback on the plans. The consultation follows a previous exercise in 2023, when 75% of respondents supported the proposals, according to polling showed 85% of residents in the area backed the plans. The scheme is being developed with the Greater London Authority, Greenwich Council, Newham Council and several major landowners.A spokesperson for Greenwich Council said: "Thamesmead is the only London postcode without a direct train link, and our residents deserve the same connectivity as the rest of the capital."As we've seen with the Elizabeth Line in Woolwich, a new station could reimagine Thamesmead."TfL plans to submit a Transport and Works Act Order in 2026. Subject to approval and funding, construction could begin in the late 2020s, with services running by the early consultation runs until 17 August.
The Independent
20-05-2025
- The Independent
When will BA take London City airport more seriously?
Q I love using London City airport. But when will British Airways start taking it seriously, rather than closing early on Saturdays? Kristen C A London City airport is a favourite for many people who live in the eastern half of the capital. Unlike the vast airports of Heathrow and Gatwick, and the high-density hustle of Luton and Stansted, London City remains an orderly location and a joy to use. But that's partly because it is still well short of its pre-Covid passenger numbers. Business travel to the destinations served by London City has not returned to 2019 levels, and the transatlantic link to New York (outbound via Shannon) is history. British Airways has a subsidiary, BA CityFlyer, which now offers a wide range of leisure routes from London City. These include niche destinations such as Florence and San Sebastian rather than the much larger airports of Pisa and Bilbao, respectively. The Balearic Islands are also well served, along with Malaga and Faro in the deep south of Europe. However, 'LCY', as it is coded, has a most unusual noise curfew: not just familiar restrictions on early morning and late evening flights, but an entire spell of 24 hours. The last departure on a Saturday takes off at 12.30pm, and the airport remains silent until the first arrival on a Sunday at the same time. A ban on flights in the middle of the weekend was enshrined in law when the Docklands airport opened in 1987. Faced with the post-Covid commercial reality, London City applied two years ago for permission to extend Saturday hours to 6.30pm. This would typically allow each aircraft to fly one more return trip, and would increase the appeal of the airport to both airlines and airports. However, the local authority, Newham Council, rejected the application – a decision endorsed by the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, in order not to reduce the respite for local residents. British Airways would love to fly for longer to and from London City but that is not likely to happen until aircraft are much quieter. Q My flight home was 21 hours late. The initial reason was a bird strike. The airline sent a replacement plane from the UK but then the homeward flight was delayed due to crewing hours. Can I claim compensation? Richard E A The presumption of air passengers' rights rules is that compensation is due to heavily delayed passengers. But airlines need not pay out if the cause of a delay or cancellation is an 'extraordinary circumstance'. In 2013 an aircraft flying from Bourgas in Bulgaria to Brno in the Czech Republic hit a bird. A thorough check needed to be made on landing. While no damage was found, the subsequent couple of flights by the same aircraft were delayed by over five hours. Two passengers on a later flight claimed €250 each from the airline. But four years and many legal steps later, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) concluded that 'a collision between an aircraft and a bird is an extraordinary circumstance'. Because the UK follows EU law, this means British airlines can rebuff claims arising from bird strikes. In your incident, however, the long delay had more than one cause – as is often the case. That same 2017 ECJ judgment also says: 'Any delay caused by an extraordinary circumstance needs to be deducted from an overall delay in arrival in order to assess whether compensation must be paid.' In other words, the airline is obliged to demonstrate what part of the 21-hour delay was down to the bird strike. Sending a fresh plane out is a commendable course of action in order to bring passengers home. But unless other 'extraordinary circumstances' such as bad weather or air-traffic control problems intervened to delay the operation and push the crew 'out of hours', the airline's management of the situation may be responsible. It is down to the airline to show why it should not pay out. So put in a claim and, if the bird strike is cited as a reason to withhold compensation, ask for a breakdown of the delay. If necessary, go to Alternative Dispute Resolution (each UK airline must use this service) and file a claim; you can do this free of charge. Finally, I hope the airline provided accommodation and meals during your protracted wait, as it is required to do regardless of the cause of a delay. Q I've seen some concerning reports online about passengers being forced to pay extra to take carry-on luggage on budget airlines. I'm flying to France in the summer on easyJet. What exactly am I allowed to take on board for free, and are children allowed the same amount? Paul B A Airline baggage allowances have progressively shrunk over the past two decades. As a result, many passengers have found themselves penalised for breaching the rules on carry-on luggage. In February I was correctly charged A$75 (£37) by Virgin Australia ground staff in Melbourne for bringing along too big a bag for a domestic flight to Hobart. And on virtually every budget flight I take in Europe, at least one fellow passenger is challenged at the boarding gate over the size and/or quantity of their cabin baggage. They have little choice but to pay a substantial sum for the offending item to be placed in the hold. I think you may be referring in particular to a social media post involving a passenger who filmed a bag seemingly fitting successfully into the gauge at the boarding gate, with a heated commentary about apparently having to pay for a compliant piece of luggage. I have not been able to establish the full context; for example, might there have been a second bag that gave rise to a problem? Suffice it to say, if you have a single bag meeting the easyJet maximum dimensions of 45 x 36 x 20cm, you should be able to carry it on board for free. This represents a limit of 32 litres, which I find quite enough for a short break. Children aged two or over get the same allowance. Each airline makes its own rules on the length, breadth and width of cabin baggage. After surveying 10 European carriers, I found that a bag cannot be larger than 33 x 25 x 15cm to comply with the restrictions for every single airline. The European Union believes this inconsistency is unfair on consumers. I am expecting standardisation across EU and UK airlines soon – they will probably settle on something close to the easyJet limits.
BBC News
17-03-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Council tax to rise across London as costs mount
All but three of London's local authorities are to increase council tax bills next financial year by just under 5%, the maximum allowed without a local Council will increase its council tax by 4.98%, while 28 other London boroughs and the City of London have levied maximum council tax increases of 4.99% from 1 in Wandsworth will see their bills rise by 2%, while council tax in Kensington and Chelsea will go up by 4%.Newham Council, which applied for extra support last year due to housing pressures from temporary accommodation, was allowed by central government to raise its bills by 8.99% in 2025-26. Cap on rises The 4.99% cap on council tax rises in England, which includes a 2% rise for adult social care, has been in place for the last three years. Usually a borough that wants to raise tax more than the cap has to hold a local referendum to approve the rise, but central government can authorise a higher increase. Seven London boroughs will also receive Exceptional Financial Support loans from the government of more than £418m for the next financial Councils, an umbrella body for the capital's local authorities, said boroughs in the capital received about 28% less in funding per Londoner compared to is calling for overall council funding to be restored to 2010 levels by 2028-29, requiring real-terms increases of 4% every Councils said emergency borrowing measures like Exceptional Financial Support put a burden on boroughs of further debts and would not be enough to return them to a stable financial added a combination of fast-rising demand for statutory services - where boroughs have a legal duty to provide support - and the increasing cost of delivering these services had led to substantial overspends in London council budgets in recent years. 'Consider impact' A spokesperson for the Local Government Association, which represents councils across England, said councils continued to face "severe funding shortages and soaring cost and demand pressures on local services".They added that councils had to make a "tough choice" about increasing bills to bring in "desperately-needed" funds."However, while council tax is an important funding stream, the significant financial pressures facing local services cannot be met by council tax income alone. "The Spending Review needs to ensure councils have adequate funding to deliver the services local people want to see." A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said councils should "put taxpayers first and carefully consider the impact of their decisions"."That's why we are maintaining a referendum threshold on council tax rises, so taxpayers can have the final say and be protected from excessive increases," they reporting by the Press Association
