Two more landlords have been fined over the state of their properties.
In one case emergency powers were used by a local council to shut down a landlord’s house so stop his tenants coming to harm.
Later at Abergavenny Magistrates Court Mohammed Sallem Ullah, of High Cross Lane, Newport, pleaded guilty to two offences under the Housing Act 2004. He was fined £2,500 and ordered to pay £2,000 towards the council's costs plus a £15 victim surcharge.
Improvement notices were served by Newport council's public protection service served improvement notices in June 2007. But when environmental health visited the property on two further occasions they found it was still in a state of disrepair and had deteriorated further.
It was then they used their emergency powers to protect the tenants although Ullah claimed in court that the tenants wouldn’t let him in to do the work.
In another case, a landlord was fined £3,000 and ordered to pay £350 costs for letting out a poorly maintained five-bedroom house in Cowley.
Kenneth Herring pleaded guilty to three offences at Oxford Magistrates' Court.
After being contacted by one of the tenants, environmental health officers visited the premises and found various problems.
Oxford council is launching a register of approved homes to let to encourage landlords to keep their properties well maintained.
• The first trading results since Northern Rock became a nationalised bank have shown losses of £500 million, but it has paid off £5 billion of the £24 billion loan from the Bank of England.
Further redundancy costs are expected in the near future as the bank plans to shed up to 2,000 jobs by 2011 in a long term bid to cut its wage bill.
