Landlord fined over missing fire alarms at Solihull Heights flats

A property company that failed to install a fire alarm system required after the Grenfell Tower fire in a Birmingham block of flats has been hit with a bill of more than £250,000.

Avamore Ltd, based in Middlesex, was fined £240,000 at Birmingham Magistrates' Court on Friday, and ordered to pay a £2,000 surcharge and £9,153.30 in prosecution costs.

What went wrong

About 160 people live across the three blocks of Solihull Heights on the Coventry Road. In May 2025 the council's housing officers served an improvement notice requiring a particular standard of fire alarm system, known as an L5 system, to be installed in one of the blocks by November 2025.

The company completed the work in the other two blocks in time, but the third was not done for another six months. The court heard that Avamore had stopped communicating with council officers before the deadline. It pleaded guilty in May to failing to comply with the notice.

"This was a serious offence"

Joseph Millington, prosecuting, said: "By the end of the compliance period, communications dried up and then stopped. No explanation was given for failing to comply with the notice. This is not a short period for such a huge number of people to be at risk."

"This was a serious offence. An explanation for non-compliance was non-existent."

The defence

Mohammed Khan, defending, said the block did have fire protection, but not the L5 system required. He said the company had acted quickly in the other two blocks, and that problems getting into two or three flats had held up the work. "The delay was not deliberate because they did not want to fund it," he said. "There have been no issues in the building but we accept there was a risk."

District Judge David Wain said: "The company had the assets to undertake the work and had the time to do so. They have not notified the council with any issues. There is no explanation for the company's failure to complete the work in a timely manner."

The court also heard that other structural issues, not part of this case, had been found at Solihull Heights, and that the company was putting them right.

Why it matters

Fire alarm systems are graded by how much of a building they cover. More extensive systems detect a fire earlier and give residents more time to escape, which matters most in blocks where many people live above and below each other.

Since the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, councils have stepped up enforcement of fire safety in privately owned blocks. Improvement notices are legally binding, and failing to comply is a criminal offence with no upper limit on the fine.

Tenants who are worried about fire safety in their building can contact the council's private rented sector team or the fire service for advice.