A landlord has been taken to court and ordered to pay more than £11,000 over the horrendous state of a mould-ridden block of flats. Sohail Baig ignored his tenants’ pleas for repairs to the Cardiff property, including the broken window of a child’s ground-floor room.
The property at 41 Neville Street, Riverside, is a three-storey Victorian building which has been converted into three studio flats. It is one of 25 properties owned by Baig. Following a complaint about the Neville Street site, a Cardiff Council officer visited and noticed the front door was damaged and had been left open because the intercom was not working, Cardiff Magistrates’ Court heard.
There were gaps between the fire doors and frames which would allow a fire to spread easily through the building. A smoke detector head was missing from the hallway of one flat. Two flats had a damp problem because of defective quoins. A council spokesman added: “In two of the flats it was found that the cooking facilities were inadequate as one of the ovens would trip out the electrics in the flat when switched on, and the control knobs to the cooker in the other flat were missing.” For the latest Cardiff news, sign up to our newsletter here
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People were at risk of falling because of defective flooring and a lack of handrails on stairs. “The window to the ground-floor flat’s front room, which was occupied by a child, was found to be broken and there was a loose electrical socket to the wall of the first-floor flat’s middle room, which was occupied by children,” said the spokesman.
Mould in Sohail Baig’s block of flats in Neville Street, Cardiff -Credit:Cardiff Council
Damp in Sohail Baig’s block of flats in Neville Street, Cardiff -Credit:Cardiff Council
Pictures taken in December 2021 showed mould growth and water staining in several rooms. The council served Baig with an improvement notice but he had still not taken action by August 2022 so was charged with failing to comply with the notice. Baig, of Cyncoed Road in Cyncoed, pleaded not guilty but District Judge David Webster found him guilty.
Judge Webster said: “The work wasn’t undertaken in the prescribed timeframe but it is Mr Baig’s case that his efforts were frustrated by the wilful actions of his tenants who set out to frustrate those repairs. There may have been difficulties from time to time with accessing the premises, but in my judgement they were not of the degree or scope that Mr Baig claims. Significantly, in my judgement, Mr Baig was perhaps disarmingly frank when he said the reason he hadn’t gone about resolving the matter another way was cost. His assertion that he puts safety first does not sit well with his failure, for example, to repair smoke alarms. Neither does it explain his failure to ensure the premises were secure or to ensure timely repairs to a window or doorframe.
Cooker in Sohail Baig’s block of flats in Neville Street, Cardiff -Credit:Cardiff Council
“The primary reason for the default in this case was his reluctance to incur the necessary expenditure. The best example is the defendant’s response to the challenge of failing to repair a ground-floor window, in that he conceded it was his legal responsibility but he said he required payment or reimbursement from the tenant before he would carry out the work. There was no legal basis for such a demand. In fact the law was to the contrary. If he was not making his evidence up, he was at least adjusting his evidence as he went along, in light of the questions he was asked.”
Baig was fined £5,950 and ordered to pay the council’s prosecution costs of £3,180 and a victim services surcharge of £2,000.
UPDATE: The defendant appeared at Cardiff Crown Court on Thursday, January 9, 2025, for an appeal hearing. A panel headed by Judge Matthew Porter-Bryant found the appeal was successful in regards to three counts, namely: two counts of failing to comply with regulation five of the Licensing and Management of Houses in Multiple Occupational (Additional Provisions) Regulations 2007 and one count of failing to comply with regulation nine of the Licensing and Management of Houses in Multiple Occupational (Additional Provisions) Regulations 2007. The appeal in regards to the remaining counts was unsuccessful. Baig was refunded £300 of the initial fine he was ordered to pay. He was ordered to pay an additional £1,250 in prosecution costs. You can read our court report about another rogue Cardiff landlord here.