Council extends and introduces Selective Licensing schemes

Council extends and introduces Selective Licensing schemes

0:05 AM, 14th December 2023, About 10 months ago 2

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Wirral council has announced plans to extend and introduce selective licensing schemes for private sector landlords in four areas of the borough, targeting parts of Birkenhead and Wallasey.

The schemes, which will run from 2024 to 2029, affect four areas – Birkenhead West, Seacombe St Pauls, Bidston and St James West, and Egremont North.

The latter two are new proposals, while the first two have been subject to selective licensing since 2019.

The council consulted with residents, tenants and landlords earlier this year and received the highest ever number of completed questionnaires of any consultation held on proposals to introduce selective licensing in Wirral.

‘Majority of landlords take their responsibilities seriously’

Cllr Tony Jones, the chair of Wirral Council’s economy, regeneration and housing committee, said: “We know the majority of landlords take their responsibilities seriously and this is about ensuring that all of them do so.

“Selective licensing is about making sure people live in decent homes and making sure others don’t profit from renting out homes which are unacceptable and not fit for purpose.”

He added: “The use of selective licensing in these targeted areas will enable us to continue to work in partnership with landlords to ensure minimum standards are met.

“It will also help us tackle those rogue landlords and ensure tenants in Wirral live in decent homes – as they should.”

85% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed with the proposals

The majority of those who responded to the consultation, 84.9% of the 544 respondents either strongly agreed or agreed with the proposals, which were mostly submitted through the council’s ‘Have your say’ portal.

Landlords who let a privately rented property without a licence or breach any of the conditions of the scheme in areas where there is selective licensing, could now face prosecution and an unlimited fine, or a civil penalty of up to £30,000.

Wirral first introduced selective licensing in 2015, covering four small parts of the borough.

That initial programme resulted in 57 individual prosecutions for landlords who failed to get a licence or other Housing Act 2004 offences and ran until 2020.

So far under the second scheme (2019-24), there have been 18 successful prosecutions and one Landlord Banning Order confirmed after an appeal.

However, those numbers – and those for the start of the third scheme (2020-25) – were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which meant no inspections could be carried out between March 2020 and September 2021.


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Paul Essex

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11:19 AM, 14th December 2023, About 10 months ago

I wonder what percentage of those in favour were actually tenants or landlords?

Andrew McCausland

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13:12 PM, 14th December 2023, About 10 months ago

Many years ago I was the PRS representative on Wirral Council's committee that put together the first selective licensing scheme. It was well thought through and well supported by LL as a useful tool to target specific areas of housing market failure. It worked well in 4 of the 5 areas targeted (Seacomb unfortunately was a harder nut to crack).
The second scheme was wider and the benefits less pronounced, possibly as the areas selected did not really need the interventions allowed for under SL. But still, it was beneficial in helping to target dodgy LL and help deliver interventions for tenants in specific need. In short, it worked less well and at a high cost to many LL who saw little or no benefit.
I am not in support of this 3rd scheme - for 3 reasons:
1. I am not convinced by the data showing housing market failure in the areas selected.
2. There are now a number of additional laws that were not available to enforcement agencies back in 2013 that make selective licensing less necessary. These include a revamp of the Housing Act, the HHSRS, Homes fit for Human Habitation Act and now the Renters (Reform) Bill. The existing legislation just needs to be properly enforced.
3. Wirral Council is in meltdown and cannot enforce the existing legislation, never mind enforcing yet more regulations. More on this below.
Wirral Council closed all their offices to the public before the pandemic struck back in 2019. The idea was for all personnel to work from home until a new centralised office was built - in 2024! In the intervening years, and totally unsurprisingly, the service levels across all Council departments has plummeted.
Direct dial phones have been disconnected and you have to go through the Council switchboard. Not ideal but workable, except that they don't have the contact numbers for staff at home. Calls go unanswered, get put through to the wrong people or you get a promise of a call back that never appears.
Emails go unanswered, meetings are virtually impossible to arrange and queries around the things important to LL; planning applications, building control questions, housing benefit entitlement queries, licensing queries, all go unanswered for weeks or months on end.
I bumped into a senior housing officer in Birkenhead a few weeks ago. This is someone I have known for 20 years and who I respect as being one of the "good guys" in the housing standards team. After some banter I explained that I was no longer investing in Wirral due to the disfunction in the Council. His response was that it was not surprising as he was only doing about 20% of the work he used to do when they were all office based - and he was one of the harder workers. Why should he pull his finger out, he said, if no-one else was?
I have a number of friends who work for the Council, and I know most of the Director-level people after working closely with them for almost 30 years. It is my view that despite what the senior managers say, Wirral Council are simply not able to manage an increase in workload at this time.
A widening of the selective licensing scheme at this time will not help tenants, in my view. What is most needed is a complete shake up the standards and delivery of existing services by Wirral Council and enforcement of current legislation.
Any additional selective licensing now is simply a tax on landlords that will inevitably bring higher rents as LL pass on the costs.

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