Enforcement not legislation – PRS Hit Squads

Enforcement not legislation – PRS Hit Squads

14:14 PM, 2nd October 2013, About 11 years ago 64

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There is already more than enough funding and legislation to police the Private Rented Sector.

The last thing we need is more legislation, what everybody wants is enforcement and word on the street is that we could begin to see it before the end of 2013. Ben-Reeve-Lewis

PRS Hit Squads

The authorities all know who the real criminals are and the only reason the criminals are still in business is because those holding power don’t combine resources, in fact they rarely talk to each other. Until now they have all run scared of “data sharing protocols” but when that’s put to one side expect to see some very big cases of criminal landlords being taken to task.

I have heard that PRS Hit Squads will target known criminal landlords between now and Christmas and are supported “in principle” by the likes of Mark Prisk, Boris Johnson and others who openly admit to not being fans of the licensing model being operated in Newham. I’ve also heard that six figure funding for a trial has been agreed at ministerial level.

These “PRS Hit Squads” as I’ve labelled them will comprise of:-

  • Environmental heath
  • HMO licensing
  • Planning
  • Anti social behaviour teams
  • EDF revenue
  • Building contol
  • UKBA
  • Police

The plan is that they will share intelligence and converge on criminal landlords in a military style operation, focussing on the worst operators first of course. With their combined resources the criminals will not stand a chance. It will be like a man with a pea shooter trying to fend off the SAS 🙂

Beware the Spin Doctors!

My hope is that the PR outcome of the PRS Hit Squad successes will be positive and support the need for the model to be extended nationally. It is a very low cost model and the results should save the tax payer money as well as improving peoples lives (unless you are one of the targeted criminals of course!). The last thing the PRS needs is for the successes to be used as justification for more regulation. The spin doctors will see this as an opportunity to justify schemes such as Newham but this must not be allowed to happen.

Landlords can be victims too

Landlords are also the victims of criminals and I have seen some very sad examples of that. A recent case in the Fens involved a landlord who let his former home to a Gang-master. Unbeknown to him the unregulated Gang-master then allowed 20 immigrant farm workers to live in the property, all sleeping on mattresses on the floor. When the landlord found out he obviously wanted them out ASAP, as did the neighbours of pretty culdesac in which the landlords 4 bad detached property was located but the law stood in the way. Had the landlord been able to go to the authorities, secure in the knowledge they would fight for him, it would have been a Godsend to him. Instead, the authorities are threatening the landlord and not the Gangmaster! Clearly common sense isn’t that common.

Let’s hope the PRS Hit Squads are successful in taking down criminals and then lend a much needed helping hand to landlords who are also targeted by criminals. If common sense prevails we might just see more action and less talk. When all is said and done, more is said than done, but fingers crossed let’s hope that not the case here.

The Highland Fling

Earlier this year the Scottish Association of Landlords reported that landlord registration in Scotland has cost landlords £11.2 million in fees while the start-up Scottish Government grant for the scheme was £5.2 million. According to the results, since 2006 there have only been 40 rogue landlords identified as operating in Scotland, that’s the number of rejected applications. The cost equates to £400,000 per rogue identified!

Summary

The schemes in Newham and its copycats also show signs of being similar “White Elephants”, therefore I’m pinning my hopes on the PRS Hit Squads taking down as many criminals as possible, proving once and for all that it’s more enforcement not legislation we need. Enforcement not legislation - PRS Hit Squads


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Comments

19:26 PM, 4th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Ben if you ever leave the LA, let me know & I'm giving you a job working for us!

19:37 PM, 4th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Cheers Ben! Fascinating stuff as usual.

Why don't you just ....

Nah! Only joking I'm sure you've thought through it all a thousand times.

Something is obviously wrong in the state of Denmark.

Ben Reeve-Lewis

20:17 PM, 4th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "HB Welcome" at "04/10/2013 - 19:37":

I genuinely thank you for that HBW. I cant tell you the number of times I have offloaded about cases to freinds who say “But why don’t you just….”. It really annoys me, as if, as you suggest we haven’t considered all angles, given that this is what we deal with day in day out.

Some of us leave it at the door at 5pm but I just cant find it whithin myself to do that. Those who do, have an easier life.

I am sitting on the bog at 4am still thinking how I can solve the problem.

Dealing with criminal landlords is a legal business and what I have come to understand after a lifetime of being involved in this is that the law has little to do with justice or fairness. It’s just a convoluted game, like Monopoly and the law allows more people to walk than it regulates.

My missus and other people not directly involved use common sense thinking, but that isn’t what the law is about

I once trained a group of 40 coppers on landlord/tenant law and I spoke of my annoyance in trying to get sufficient evidence to prosecute a case given the conditions I set out earlier. I said “It’s so frustrating trying to get sufficient evidence when you personally KNOW what people are up to that it’s no wonder that you lot fit people up from time to time”

There was a horrible minute’s frozen silence, when I thought I’d made a joke too far and then a roar of recognition.

Ben Reeve-Lewis

20:37 PM, 4th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Anthony Altman" at "04/10/2013 - 17:13":

“The simple fact is that putting 50 landlords in court on technicalities earns them more kudos than 1 landlord in court on life threatening offences”.

Anthony today my Landlord law Newsround mentioned this very thing http://www.landlordlawblog.co.uk/2013/10/04/ben-reeve-lewis-friday-newsround-114/?doing_wp_cron=1380915259.1216070652008056640625

I wrote:-
Last Friday I attended a conference for council enforcement officers and housing advice types.

One of the workshops was on the vexed subject of landlord licensing and methods for tackling the well known ‘Rogue landlords’.

Or ‘Rouge’ landlords as they are becoming increasingly known as, what with spell-checkers failing to pick up the frequent misspelling.

We were given outlines of 4 different schemes.
• Southend’s self regulation idea,
• Enfield’s kick them in the nuts approach (my preferred favourite),
• Richmond’s additional licensing and predictably
• Newham’s hair-trigger blunderbuss that blasts anyone unfortunate enough to walk through the door scheme.

Stand by your wife
Having been appraised of the different working methods and discussed the pros and cons of each we were invited to stand in a designated place representing the scheme we preferred. A bit like ‘Runaround’ the old kids TV show hosted by Mike “Frank Butcher” Reid.
Out of the 50 souls in our room only 1 stood on the Newham spot. He was from Newham. I asked him afterwards if he had freely chosen it and he said “Well…….its like having 3 supermodels and your wife in a line. You have to stand by your wife don’t you?”. Ha-ha.

It occurred to me that the result of the exercise was pretty much predictable given the jobs of the people doing it, people working the frontline dealing with ‘rouged’ landlords on a daily basis. Had the exercise been done with elected councillors the result would probably have been different.

And if it had been elected councillors at election time, different again.

To my mind the Newham model has more to do with political capital than coalface practicalities, which is why you have to monitor the politicians on this, not the enforcement officers who are trying to get the job done.

As Lester Freemon in "The Wire" says in trying to deconstruct what is actually going on, "Follow the money".

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

0:07 AM, 5th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Ben Reeve-Lewis" at "04/10/2013 - 19:06":

Promotion to where you deserve to be Ben, CONGRATULATIONS, it's been too long coming but I know you will use your new position to kick arse, take out the crooks and show the likes of Sir Robin Wales of Newham how it should be done and for a fraction of the cost. Good on you my friend 🙂
.
.

Ben Reeve-Lewis

7:02 AM, 5th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "05/10/2013 - 00:07":

Thanks Mark. It's money-where-mouth-is time haha I've banged on about this for years and managed to persuade my bosses to trust me on this.

99% of the others in the multi agency team have said "At last, we might get somewhere!!!!!" while the remaining 1% seem to view it like a turkey at christmas, having to shake off the cynicism and do some work.

I'll keep P118 readers up to date as things develop.

9:35 AM, 5th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Ben Reeve-Lewis" at "04/10/2013 - 19:06":

Well done Ben!

Does this mean more money for you??

Sharon

Anthony Altman

9:49 AM, 5th October 2013, About 11 years ago

LOL Ben spot on you understand the politics i will be cheering you on as you do what has to be done hopefully without interference

Ben Reeve-Lewis

9:51 AM, 5th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Sharon Crossland" at "05/10/2013 - 09:35":

It should do later on Sharon yeah. But in typical council red tape styleee my duties would have to be reassessed and re-graded using a formula and as the post has never existed before nobody quite knows what my duties will entail, I'm sort of making it up as I go along. Once I can that the post involves XY and Z the process can begin.

If I worked in the private sector I would just get bunged for it. Hell, if it works out I might even take it off the councils hands and privatise myself. We can do that these days, in fact even the council encourages it, better to have 2,000 self employed people than loads of staff with sick pay and holidays

Ben Reeve-Lewis

10:04 AM, 5th October 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Anthony Altman" at "05/10/2013 - 09:49":

Without interference? Chance would be a fine thing.

Having worked for councils the majority of my working life my prediction is this:-
stage one: I'll be watched like a hawk for the first few weeks and have all my most exciting and radical ideas sat on by senior managers.
stage 2: I'll start telling them less and less of what I am up to and they will leave me alone.
Stage 3: start doing the things they dont want me to do
Stage 4: get the succeses and THEN tell them what youve been doing
Stage 5: those same managers and councillors step forward and claim all the credit for the project

Haha Twas ever thus Anthony, you just need to understand how it worls and build this into your mental game plan

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