Student accomodation owner put hundreds 'at risk' through unlicensed flats

A student accommodation provider has been hit with a severe warning after letting out unlicensed flats for over 200 people.

Glasgow licensing chief Alex Wilson, SNP, told property owners St James Glasgow Investment Ltd and management firm Abodus Student Living that their error put “students’ lives at risk”.

Renting out 32 seven-bedroom flats on St James Road in Townhead without a house in multiple occupation (HMO) licence would have invalidated their insurance, he said.

The licences for the accommodation, which costs start at £216 per week, had not been updated after the ownership changed hands.

Bosses from Abodus Student Living, which manages the accommodation, apologised to Glasgow’s licensing committee for a “considerable oversight on our part”.

They were granted licences for a restricted period of one year but warned about the future management of the flats. The case comes just weeks after another firm was rebuked for running unlicensed flats.

Phoenix Centenary Court Ltd, which leases 39 properties at St Luke’s Place and St Luke’s Terrace to City of Glasgow College, had operated without licences, after they weren’t kept up to date following a company restructure.

St James Glasgow Investment Ltd, registered in Jersey, purchased the Townhead flats from the previous licence owner in October 2023. However, new licence applications were not submitted in time.

They were submitted in February last year and went before councillors. This meant the properties had been used while unlicensed.

Cllr Wilson, who chairs the committee, said the companies should have taken steps to empty the building. Speaking to representatives from Abodus, he added: “You are the management company of this, so you should have made sure it was licensed first of all and, if it wasn’t licensed, it shouldn’t have any students in it, because they are not insured.

“Basically any problems, any fires, anything that happened in the property up to today, you would have been liable for. You could have found yourself in a lot of bother.

“It’s only the fact that none of these things have happened in that period, that has probably saved you thousands.”

One of Abodus’ representatives said: “I’d like to apologise. We were unaware of this, it has just been brought to my attention.”

He added: As far as we as a business are concerned, we operate over 5,000 lets across the UK. We are registered with ANUK, the national association of large PBSA (purpose-built student accommodation operators).

“Under that code, we operate to the letter of the law across the UK.”

The representative said his firm continued to “maintain standards”. “We actually hold ourselves to a higher standard in terms of ourselves and across the benchmark of the UK national code.”

Council officials did report that an inspection in March had found the standard of management was “satisfactory”.

Cllr Wilson said: “I cannot stress the importance of this, because to run such a large number of places for students to speak that is unlicensed is a major, major fault. You and the applicant company have put students’ lives at risk.”

HMO licences are needed by landlords who allow their property to be occupied by three or more people who are not related.

The Abodus representative said it had been the company’s “first time going through the application process to licence in Scotland”, after properties had been bought in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

It had been hoped a senior manager with “fundamental expertise in Scotland” would transfer over to the company from the previous operators when the buildings were acquired, but that hadn’t happened “at the last minute”.