The landlord of a warehouse on an industrial estate in Haringey, north London has been ordered by the First Tier Tribunal to pay £31,000 in rent repayment to a number of tenants who lived in the warehouse. The landlord stated in evidence that she had bought the warehouse in 2009 for £650K but the land registry record showed that she had bought the property in 2011 for £360K - the landlord "could not explain this discrepancy.".

The landlord, who ran her fashion studio business from a unit in the warehouse, converted 4 of the other units into living spaces for creatives to live in and run their own businesses from. However, the occupancy agreements signed were ASTs which the landlord had downloaded from the internet but the tribunal noted that the final page of these "standard" ASTs was missing and that this would be the page where, normally, there would be a clause stating that the tenants "should not ... use the property as anything other than a home.".

Although Haringey council had a policy of accepting the existence of "warehouse living" the tribunal stated that how Haringey council "envisaged" such an arrangement to differ from other live/work developments was not apparent and that the case must, therefore, be looked at on it's own facts and the starting point must be that the occupants all had AST contracts which created residential tenancies and the occupants had "covenanted" that they would not use the space as anything other than a home. The tribunal was thus satisfied that the "only use" (as a home) requirement under HMO rules was satisfied; the property should have been licensed as an HMO and there was no reasonable excuse for the landlord having failed to have had the property licensed as an HMO. The case can be accessed and read in full here.