A raid by Brent Council on a four-bedroom house in Napier Road in Wembley uncovered THIRTY-ONE people living in a four bedroom house.

They also uncovered a Slumdog Millionaire-esque shanty town shack made from wood offcuts, pallets and tarpaulins, which was being used to house the only woman at the property.

The shack was found to be unlit and and unheated and was infested by rats.

The property had been converted from its original state to have nine bedrooms, each stuffed with bunk beds to cram in as many people as possible by the landlord, who now faces prosecution, a criminal record and an unlimited fine.

Some tenants were squashed into a box room in the property
Some bedrooms had eight people sleeping in them

The tenants, who were all migrants who said they could not afford to live anywhere else, were paying roughly £60 a week each to live in the house, with the landlord making in the region of £80,000 a year from rent.

Cllr Harbi Farah, Brent Council’s lead member for housing, said: "We’ve seen pest-ridden slums and even beds in sheds before, but this is a new low.

"The shack looks like something you would expect to see in a Hollywood depiction of a shanty town, not Zone 4 of London. Criminal landlords cannot and will not get away with this.

"Our ground-breaking licensing scheme is helping us to tackle poor standards in the private rented sector and focus on the minority of unscrupulous landlords who refuse to comply with the law.

"The people who pay the heaviest price in the worst rogue landlord cases are their tenants, who pay over the odds for substandard accommodation and live in cramped, hazardous conditions.

One bedroom had beds next to stacks of rice

"We will prosecute any landlord or agent we find treating their tenants in such a despicable way."

This a number of enforcement activities that Brent Council has taken in recent months, with a previous raid at a home in Kinsgbury finding 17 people living in a three bedroom house .