A rogue landlord who turned her three-bedroom bungalow into a 15-room unlicensed HMO where tenants slept on camp beds in windowless rooms has been handed a £12,000 fine.

Staines Magistrates’ Court heard that Mona Jetwani, 53, of St Pauls Road, Egham, and her brother initially became aggressive and threatened to make complaints when Runnymede Council staff tried to visit the property.

They found shoddy construction methods had been used to create 15 spaces, including four in the loft space. None of the rooms - which were as small as 3.4 square metres - were big enough for legal occupation and there was just one small kitchen and only two bathrooms.

The property also had damp and mould and there weren’t enough smoke alarms in rooms, some of which had no windows or natural light, while plasterboard partitioning with large gaps had been used.

One room was created under the eaves in the converted loft and had a mattress that could only be used by crawling on to it. Vulnerable tenants were paying between £85 and £125 per week to live there.

Failure

Jetwani admitted 10 charges including failure to supply a gas safety report, failure to comply with fire safety regulations and a number of regulation requirements relating to room size. She was also ordered to pay a £2,000 victim surcharge.

Sentencing, District Judge Cooper said: “In my view the partitioning was put up in a hurry to allow [the defendant] to make the most gain from the small space.

"It was telling that in her PACE interview she didn’t refer to them as rooms but as ‘spaces’, which suggests she thought of them for the purposes of money-making.”

A council spokesman adds: “This bungalow was in an appalling state. Our environmental health staff cannot remember another incident where a landlord had tried to profit to this extent.

"People’s lives have been put at risk because of these living conditions and a family home was turned into a cash cow.”