Tory peer’s family used no-fault eviction against mould complaint tenant

theguardian.com:

The family of a billionaire Tory landlord used a no-fault eviction to throw out a tenant after he refused a £1,680 annual rent increase having reported mould, damp and cold, the Guardian can reveal.

The flat is part of a rental portfolio part-owned by Zameer Choudrey, who has donated £1.3m to the Conservatives through his wholesale company Bestway, which has a turnover of £4.5bn a year.

He shares ownership of a £15m mansion in Hampstead and sits on the government benches in the House of Lords, which will scrutinise the renters reform bill announced this week – which sets out to ban the very “section 21” no-fault eviction practice he used.

The evicted tenant Apolo Siskos, a data expert, was paying £1,400 a month for the one-bed flat in Golders Green, north-west London. He complained that the heating was faulty, meaning it was cold in winter, that he had to wait four months for a broken window to be fixed, and that his health was affected by damp and mould exacerbated by a roof leak – none of which was fixed for more than a year, he claimed.

When the Choudreys’ estate agent told Siskos in February that the landlord wanted to raise the rent by 10%, he replied saying he wanted a rent cut owing to the ongoing problems. Two weeks later, the agent said the landlord has decided to take the property back, fix the problems and remarket the property at a higher rent. Siskos was sent a section 21 eviction notice of possession.

The case will prove embarrassing for the Conservatives after Michael Gove, the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities, said on Wednesday that he would “make sure section 21 goes” and lambasted “unscrupulous landlords” who used it “to intimidate people into either accepting extortionate rent