A Hounslow landlord has been hit with a record £35,000 fine after he flouted planning permission to rent out his home.

Neighbours complained to Hounslow Council that Jaswant Singh Bharj of Walnut Tree Road had converted his home into four flats and rented them to tenants.

Although Mr Bharj denied the allegations council's officers found he was indeed renting out the flats.

He had been given permission in 2004 to extend his house but only on the condition the extension was not used as a separate residential unit.

Later that year the council received complaints the property had been converted into flats.

The council's planning and fraud teams discovered Mr Bharj was renting out the flats within the property and he had added a canopy and a side door without the necessary planning permission.

He was ordered in 2005 to stop renting out the flats and to remove the canopy and door.

But even after an unsuccessful appeal to the Planning Inspectorate in 2006 Mr Bharj still refused to comply with the council's removal order.

He was eventually successfully charged under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and ordered to pay £20,000 for converting the property into four flats and £15,000 for the unauthorised addition of the canopy and side door.

In addition he was ordered to pay the council's costs of £2,500 making a total of £37,500.

It is the biggest fine of its kind in the borough beating the pervious record of £20,000 plus £3,500 handed to Din Dayal Verma and his son Ashok Kumar Verma earlier this year who built and-rented out a row of breeze-block bedsits in Hanworth Road.

Mr Bharj will now have to remove the canopy, the side door a number of kitchen units and restore the property to a single family home or face further prosecution.

Councillor Barbara Reid, the council's executive member for planning and environment, said: "Taking a tough line with people who flout the planning and building regulations is part of our drive to make the borough of Hounslow a better place to live.

"The fact that this is another record fine demonstrates that the courts take this issue very seriously.

"The regulations are there to protect all of us from unnecessary and unsafe developments.

"People need to understand that they can no longer ignore these regulations and expect to get away with it."