Luton Borough Council

Civil penalties and rent repayment orders

We've adopted the provisions of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 to introduce civil penalties, which will be used as an alternative to prosecution and rent repayment orders for certain offences relating to:

Civil penalties

The Housing & Planning Act 2016 introduced a range of measures to crack down on rogue landlords including the introduction of civil penalties which we will consider for the following offences:

failure to comply with an improvement notice (section 30)
offences in relation to licensing of houses in multiple occupation (HMO) (section 72)
offences in relation to licensing of houses under part 3 of the act (section 95)
offences of contravention of an overcrowding notice (section 139)
failure to comply with management regulations in respect of HMO (section 234).

The maximum penalty which can be imposed is £30,000. The use of the civil penalty does not prevent us from undertaking the works in default of the landlord.

Rent repayment orders

The Housing Act 2004 introduced rent repayment orders to cover situations where the landlord of a property had failed to obtain a licence for a property that was required to be licensed.

These orders specifically relate to offences in relation to:

licensing of HMO (section 72(1))
licensing of houses under part 3 of the act (section 95(1))

The Housing & Planning Act extends rent repayment orders (introduced in the Housing Act 2004) to cover the following situations:

failure to comply with an improvement notice under section 30 of the Housing Act 2004
failure to comply with a prohibition order under section 32 of the Housing Act 2004
breach of a banning order made under section 21 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016
using violence to secure entry to a property under section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977
illegal eviction or harassment of the occupiers of a property under section 1 of the Protection from Eviction Act 1977

More information can be found in the civil penalties and rent repayment orders policy below.

Download the policy