Salon boss: Farrah Naz is the landlord of a filthy flat above a shop which was crammed with 28 Romanian migrants in north London
The landlord of a filthy flat which was crammed with 28 Romanian migrants is a wealthy beauty salon owner, MailOnline can reveal.
Farrah Naz, 43, has a lifestyle which is in stark contrast to the ‘slum conditions’ endured by tenants who were packed into her rental property.
She and her husband Mohammad Chaudhry, 49, live in a five bedroom house worth £630,000 with a three-year-old black Range Rover on the driveway in Ilford, East London.
Mrs Naz runs her business Farrah’s Hair and Beauty offering a range of treatments for women from a salon around a mile from her home.
But MailOnline can reveal that she also holds the lease of a flat where 28 people including a two-month-old baby were found in desperate conditions.
Mrs Naz and her husband insisted that the four bedroom apartment above a hairdressing salon in Edgware, north London, was being sub-let without their knowledge and they had no idea so many people were living there.
Fly tipping: Council inspectors who raided the four bedroom property owned by Mrs Naz and her husband Mohammad Chaudhry found rubbish piled up outside the property
Crammed: People were found to be living in overcrowded, squalid conditions at the property which was found to have no working smoke detector
Cramped: The flat above a beauty salon in Edgware, north London, is where 28 people including a two-month-old baby were found in desperate conditions
Rubbish: The yard outside which was overgrown with stinging nettles was still littered with old mattresses, a bed, an old washing machine, a large gas bottle and other debris
The flat was raided by police and Harrow Council officials after neighbours complained that it was overcrowded and rubbish was building up outside it.
The council’s environmental health officers found a family-of-five including the two-month-old baby ‘squashed in a small room’. They were officially paying rent of £1,080 per month. But the early morning raid found another 23 people, all Romanian, crammed into ‘numerous beds and bunk beds’ in every room and sharing one bathroom.
The spokeswoman, who confirmed that the landlord had now applied to register it as a House of Multiple Occupation, said: ‘The family sharing the small room appeared to be taking money from other occupants… the amount was not disclosed.’
She added that the occupiers were living in ‘dreadful’ and ‘appalling conditions’ with ‘damp and dirt everywhere’. The property had no working smoke alarms and had a ‘fly-tipped and rat infested backyard’, she added.
Owner: Mrs Naz, 43, who owns the flat, has a lifestyle which is in stark contrast to the ‘slum conditions’ endured by tenants who were packed into her rental property
Businesswoman: Mrs Naz and her husband Mohammad Chaudhry, 49, live in a five bedroom house worth £630,000 with a smart black Range Rover on the drive in Ilford, East London
Beauty salon: Mrs Naz runs her business Farrah’s Hair and Beauty (pictured) offering a range of treatments for women from a salon around a mile from her home. Her husband has told the council that he had been renting it out to the family-of-five who then sub-let it behind his back
All the occupants including the official tenants who appeared to have broken their tenancy agreement by sub-letting it were now being evicted, added the spokeswoman.
A Romanian woman who was at the flat claimed she could not speak English and was unable to answer questions.
The yard outside, which was overgrown with stinging nettles was still littered with around four old mattresses, the wreckage of a bed, an old washing machine, a large gas bottle and other debris. Piles of rubbish were also spilling out of bags next to over-flowing wheelie bins in the lane behind the property.
Harrow Council’s cabinet member for environment Graham Henson, said: ‘Can you imagine being crammed into a house with more than twenty people? What a horrible way to live. And how the landlord did not know about this is shocking. It’s unsafe, unsanitary and exploits people who really want a decent place to live.
‘As it’s the landlord’s responsibility to check on their property, we will be forcing him to make repairs, deal with the overcrowding and get it licenced or face a big fine.
‘Our licensing scheme is there to ensure incidents like this don’t happen. We’ll continue to carry out raids and seek to prosecute anyone found flouting the rules and operating illegally.’
Speaking from her salon in Ilford, Mrs Naz said that she and her husband only found out about the overcrowding in the flat after the council raid.
Probe: The council spokeswoman confirmed that the family who were the official tenants were paying £1,080 month in rent and charges to the landlord’s agents
Eviction: The tenants who appear to have broken their tenancy agreement by sub-letting it are now being evicted by the landlords Mrs Naz and her husband
Health hazard: Piles of rubbish were also spilling out of bags next to over-flowing wheelie bins in the lane behind the property
‘It was a shock. I did not know anything about it. I thought it was being rented out normally,’ she said.
Mrs Naz and her husband are joint directors and owners of her company Farrah’s Hair and Beauty, Companies House records show. Accounts for the business which was incorporated in 2011 should have been filed by September 30 and are currently overdue. The most recently filed accounts said that the firm had net assets of £171,776 in December 2015.
A website for her salon boas that it is a ‘stylish, accommodating venue… for superior yet affordable treatments and unsurpassable customer service.’
The property website Zoopla estimates that her family home, which she bought for £400,000 in 2007 is worth around £630,000.
Mrs Naz’s husband who works in construction said they had been renting out the flat for about 15 years to different tenants without any previous problems.
Mr Choudhry, who has an Audi-driving son, said they had started rented it out to a family of four with a newborn baby on August 15 and assumed they were the only people living there.
He added: ‘We rented it out through an estate agent. We saw the documents for the four people and there was also a baby. There was a proper financial agreement. I live a long way away and I did try and go there once, but I could not get access, I thought nobody was at home.
The flat was raided by police and Harrow Council officials after neighbours complained that it was overcrowded and rubbish was building up outside it
A spokeswoman for the council said the property also did not have any working smoke detector alarms and had a ‘fly-tipped and rat infested backyard’
The Harrow Council spokewoman added that the occupiers were living in ‘dreadful’ and ‘appalling conditions’ with ‘damp and dirt everywhere’
The flat owner Mrs Naz said from her salon in Ilford that she and her husband only found out about the overcrowding in the flat (pictured) after the council raid
‘The first I knew about anything being wrong was when the council sad they had raided the property as they had some complaints about it. I was shocked and gobsmacked. We did not know it was going on. Sometimes you can be tricked. It is not our fault.
‘Apparently when the police and the council went round, they all said that they were just friends and living there for free. We were renting it to a family of five and they were sub-letting illegally. We are now having to apply for an order to get possession of the property.
‘We cannot just simply go there and chuck them out. I think it is wrong for this councillor to suggest that we should have known about it.’
The sub-let flat is just 400 yards from a house in Queensbury where 35 Eastern Europeans were found living in squalor in a Brent Council raid last month.