not a big problem, I will have been 'living in Europe and have been staying with friends' ergo, no paper trail! Still the landlord is in the wrong for not declaring his illegally converted flats.

So far as I know, no one has received a bill from the council. I 'believe' the landlord is paying just one bill for the whole house, because the property has not had planning approval for all the bedsits, therefore, the bedsits are 'invisible' to the local council. There are four individual 'flats' within the house and I know from planning regs that this would never have been approved. So who is going to get the can? The landlord for not declaring the flats or the tenants?

I moved into my girlfriend's bedsit last year and immediately started wondering how the landlord got planning permission to sub-divide this small terrace house in W London, into four minute bedsits. I called up the Planning office and discovered, not surprisingly, that there has never been a planning application for this property, to convert to flats. So it's an illegal conversion, first off. Then it occurred to me that the landlord could not have declared to the Council that there were four separate units at this address for Council tax purposes. My gf's tenancy states that CT is payable by the tenant, where applicable. So who is the most villainous here? Is the landlord committing serious fraud on the Council by forgetting to declare his illegal conversion to four flats? Are the tenants really liable for CT, if the landlord never declared the bedsits in the first place. I hear the landlord is not the nicest character around and I have a strong inclination to shop him when we leave this place. He doesn't look after the property, it has cockroaches and vermin. Thanks for reading.