A Hyde Park Gate landlord and his property management company have been left with a combined £62,176.68 bill after a retrial over an unsafe 22-room HMO in Kensington and Chelsea. The court fined Blackstone Properties Management Limited £30,000, added full prosecution costs of £12,176.68, and fined Mohammed Rasool £20,000 following convictions on eight charges.
The new penalty is far below the roughly £500,000 sanction imposed in the original 2023 case at the same address, after the defendants challenged that earlier prosecution and the matter returned to court. What is newly clear now is that the retrial did not undo the core findings: the court again found the Hyde Park Gate property had been run without the required HMO licence and with serious fire and safety failings.
For landlords, that matters now because the case shows how licensing and safety breaches can keep generating risk years after the first investigation begins. Even where an earlier penalty is overturned or reduced, councils can still return to court and secure convictions that leave operators facing large bills, reputational damage and a fresh compliance warning to the wider sector.
Retrial kept the convictions in place
Kensington and Chelsea said the case related to 36 Hyde Park Gate, a former four-bedroom property that had been converted into 22 rooms and used as an HMO. Council officers first visited in August 2021 after a tenant complaint, and the court heard the house was operating without a licence when inspectors found multiple hazards.
According to the council, officers found damaged fire doors, inadequate fire separation between bedrooms, covered fire alarms, poor electrical safety and wider damp and disrepair problems. Tenants were also said to be cooking in their rooms with camping-style equipment rather than proper kitchen facilities.
This follows Landlord Knowledge’s recent report on London licensing fines and post-RRA compliance pressure. The latest retrial outcome suggests councils are still prepared to pursue older HMO cases hard, especially where safety defects and ignored warnings sit alongside licensing breaches.
Prime London location did not soften the enforcement response
The Hyde Park Gate address sits in one of the capital’s most expensive residential areas, but that did not protect the operator from enforcement. The council said both defendants were convicted of all eight charges, covering unlicensed HMO management, failure to comply with an improvement notice and six breaches of HMO management rules.
For compliant landlords, the practical lesson is not just about rogue operators. It is that councils are willing to build long-running cases where paperwork, fire precautions and property condition all fail together. Landlords can compare that with Landlord Knowledge’s recent Lincoln dangerous HMO case, which showed the same enforcement direction outside London: if hazards are visible and licensing is missing, the financial exposure builds quickly.
The underlying prosecution details were published by Kensington and Chelsea Council, which said repeated chances had been given to put the property right before the matter reached sentencing at the end of June.
What this means for landlords
- If you run an HMO: treat licence renewals, fire doors, alarms and electrical checks as one compliance job, not separate admin tasks.
- If a council raises defects: deal with them early – a long-running case can outlast an appeal and still end in major costs.
- Watch for: councils using older inspection histories and tenant complaints to support fresh enforcement action.
- Bottom line: a reduced penalty is still expensive, and retrials do not remove the core risk of poor HMO management.
Editor’s view
The headline drop from the old fine to the new bill will catch attention, but landlords should focus on the part that did not change: the convictions held and the compliance failings stayed serious. In HMO enforcement, bad records and bad safety practice can keep costing money long after the first inspection.
Author: Editorial Team – UK landlord & buy-to-let news, policy, and finance
Published: 14 July 2026
Sources: Kensington and Chelsea Council
Related reading: London licensing fines highlight post-RRA landlord risk
