A Bristol landlord has been ordered to pay £37,000 and after admitting that he had unlawfully attempted to hide his identity from tenants.

Thomas Flight, pleaded guilty at Bristol Crown Court to committing consumer protection offences against his Portland Square in tenants. This was after agreement had been reached between Flight and Bristol City Council for him to admit four of the six charges against him.

He was fined £12,000 and ordered to pay costs of £25,000. The charges arose from a ‘lengthy’ council investigation after ‘numerous complaints’ about a property management business operating from Portland Square. The business went by a number of different trading names.

The council’s private housing team uncovered evidence of multiple consumer protection offences. And it identified Flight as the person behind and profiting from various companies and business names.

‘Flight’s identity was hidden from his tenants, allowing him to keep security deposit money instead of returning it, and to avoid responsibility for a number of unfair commercial practices including charging banned and hidden fees to tenants’, said the council..

‘Tenants would receive made-up landlord and letting agent information, including false names and addresses. Mr Flight even went so far as to have a fictitious person registered as a director of one of his companies.

‘Tenants who complained were then harassed with demands to withdraw their valid enquiries, until the local authority took up these complaints as part of their investigation’.

In February 2021, Flight was interviewed by Bristol City Council in relation to alleged criminal offences. He failed to cooperate and blamed the situation on an alleged letting agent who couldn’t be traced and is believed to be another of his inventions.

Following this interview, he voluntarily repaid those tenants who had been charged banned fees or whose security deposits had not been returned to them when they should have been.

At one of Flight’s Court hearings in relation to this case, he supplied further documents to Bristol City Council containing more landlord details that also proved to be false.

‘Flight took advantage of tenants and that is simply not acceptable. We will continue to do all we can to pursue unscrupulous landlords where evidence of criminal exploitation is found’, said Tom Renhard, Bristol City Council’s cabinet member for housing delivery and homes.