A landlord has been ordered to pay over £200,000 within six months or go to jail.

Most of the sum will be in the form of rent ordered to be repaid under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Michael Aslam, of Reading, had kept illegal rental premises in the London borough of Islington.

He was sentenced at Isleworth Crown Court after pleading guilty to two offences of breaching planning enforcement notices.

Aslam had been ordered to demolish an outbuilding at the rear of a property which had been used as a ‘beds in shed’.

He had also been illegally using the house and neighbouring property as a hotel without permission and had been ordered to stop. He complied with neither order and continued to get rental income.

At the sentencing and confiscation hearing, Aslam was fined £7,500 for each of the two offences of breaching planning enforcement notices – a total of £15,000 to be paid within six months, or to serve 12 months in prison in default.

He was also ordered to repay £170,000 in full within six months or serve 30 months.

The money is to be divided between the council, HM Treasury and the Courts and Tribunals Service.

Aslam was further ordered to pay Hillingdon Council’s legal costs of £17,676 within six months.

Meanwhile, Lewisham Council has announced its latest raid on rental premises which found four new criminal landlords, all evading tax and with at least 50 properties between them, plus several illegally used properties and five unlicensed HMOs.

It also found one boarded-up restaurant turned into six sub-standard ‘flats’ plus two cannabis factories. Police have already closed down the latter.

Lewisham Council will now take legal action to deal with the other properties and has said it will recoup money and tenants’ deposits that have been fraudulently obtained.

* The Local Government Association has called on magistrates to use what will be new powers to impose much bigger fines on criminal landlords. It says that punishments are currently ‘paltry’. Last week the Government said it will legislate for increases in the maximum fines magistrates can impose on landlords, including allowing them to impose unlimited fines.

Mike Jones, of the LGA, said that criminal landlords are currently fined so little that they treat them as “operating costs”.