London borough obtains £190k confiscation order against landlord over flats converted without permission

Brent Council has secured a £190,000 confiscation order against a landlord over a property converted into two flats without planning permission and rented out over a nine-year period.

Harrow Crown Court heard how the property on Windsor Crescent, Wembley, had been converted by Olu Soyebo, 61, of Lagos, Nigeria, in 2009.

The council’s enforcement team served a notice on him. However, it later discovered that the flats had been reinstated by Soyebo and rented out separately.

As well as the confiscation order, the defendant was fined £12,000 and ordered to pay the council’s legal costs.

At Harrow Crown Court, sentencing, His Honour Judge Tregilgas-Davey told Soyebo that the breach had continued for a “not insignificant period of time’” and that financial investigators from Brent Council were able to prove how much money he had made.

He said: “You entirely ignored the foreseeable risk when you converted [the property] into two flats without planning permission.”

Soyebo has three months to pay the money back or else face prison.

The judge is reported to have criticised the defendant for failing to put measures in place to ensure that the council’s warning letters, which were sent to several known addresses in London, would reach him at his home in Nigeria.

Cllr Shama Tatler, Brent Council’s Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Property & Planning, said: “This is a great result, and puts rogue landlords on notice that Brent Council will take very strong action if they try to dodge the planning laws.”