Landlord Licensing Schemes – Raising Standards or Raising Funds?

I am unhappy with the fact that letting agencies are unregulated.
If a letting agency refuses to join one of the landlord associations there is nothing you can do .
There are no rules and regulations that you can enforce .Therefore the good and bad coexist together and neither are responsible for their actions.

at the last census my wife went around working on this the number of immigrants who are jammed together are incredible. Even in that small area.

As far as councils needing more people to handle this I think not.Mark's comments on Vietnam were relevant.

In my experience councils spend too long at desks. As they say "you need to get out more"

So to sum up, we do not need more regulation. What we need is effective enforcement of current legislation.

All the necessary powers are in place. Unfortunately there is a lack of willingness on behalf of the authorities to carry out enforcement because it costs to much. What will the LA gain from a successful prosecution? A hefty legal bill.

Not really much point introducing more legislation which will not be enforced

Reply to the comment left by "Barry Danser" at "11/08/2013 - 08:28":

Barry please dont make presumptions about they way I and my colleagues work. The EHOs and I spend 70% of our time out in the field visiting the shittiest, most illegal properties you could imagine, dealing with people trafficking, assaults, criminal practices, fraud, you name it. All perpetrated by landlords and tenants in the PRS.

What always frustrates me when I post on P118 is the prevailing view of landlrods gathering together and saying "Well I'm not like that" and simply thinking that this explains the entire PRS. If you spend a few days travelling around these properties with people like me, the EHOs and planning enforcement you might get a an eye-opener.

Someone else here posted about council workers needing to do 12 hour days and to multi-task. We do all that and more, and whilst doing it we get spat at (last week), threatened (last month) and assaulted (2 weeks ago) on a daily basis by landlords and tenants alike

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "09/08/2013 - 14:20":

In answer to your question he disapeared off the radar for a time...he is now bankrupt!

Reply to the comment left by "Sharon Crossland" at "09/08/2013 - 12:25":

Dear Sharon, Thank you for your comments. I would be interested to when you say ‘run it to the same appalling standards’. Was the property a good standard before he let it out? If so is he to blame if the tenant has no respect for the property. If the property was an appalling standard before the tenant rented it he has a choice not to rent it. There are good and bad landlords just as there are good and bad tenants. Why stop at licensing landlords, why not license tenants? I have experiences that have made me want to cry where I have spent thousands of pounds on a property only to return to inspect sometimes only weeks later to find the property destroyed.

hi mark
newham were the first to introduce licensing to the whole area of their authority. you have answered the questions on accreditation/voluntary schemes in the same way, but it is such schemes that the NLA etc want to promote as an alternative to compulsory licensing. newham have said they have no intention to inspect, they will only inspect if they have cause to. the raison detre were easier convictions and recovery under proceeds of crime act. however, the former could be a soft target (as you alluded to) and there a court case last year involving newham held that proceeds of crime did not apply to not having a licence.

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "09/08/2013 - 16:22":

I am really enjoying the debate on here, particularly those comments left by Ben Reeves Lewis. I expected the same old response to landlord licencing as per the Rugg Review (although corrected by you as registration) but licencing, registration, who cares? The overwhelming thread in these posts seems to be 'joined up thinking' and I have seen by my own efforts how this works because I have deployed it over the years. I have my own contacts within the police, the council, (a number of differend departments) and the ear of my ward MP. Indeed my own Borough, that of Waltham Forest are at least looking at selective licencing.

I again emphasise that I am NOT a landlord. I do however see the merits of working from a solid platform, particularly when it impacts on my own sector, that of leasehold. This is why I have always been in favour of licencing/registration as going some way to providing that foundation. In terms of cost however, I don't know whether councils are costing it fairly but I continue to see the PRS functioning on ever shifting sands. The involvement of councils when it comes to housing the homeless under Private Sector Leasing (something else I am familiar with) continues to impact greatly on my sector. This is again primarily due to the lack of bodies that leave councils relying on the word of landlords and their agents and not carrying out the required checks!

I know this because again I have dealt with the fallout!!

I would also add as an aside to your question that the landlord I referred to earlier also had a number of arrest warrants out for him!

If I could have stopped him (and a number of others) from being a landlord on my block I would have done so. But I can't!

Reply to the comment left by "Ben Reeve-Lewis" at "11/08/2013 - 08:57":

That may be what it's like in your area Ben but that's not what most landlords see.

Let me give you some examples of issues affecting landlords.

In Newham, we hear of thousands of landlords not having received their licences despite applying nearly a year ago. We hear about landlords being refused licences on the basis they are not "fit and proper" because they choose to live elsewhere in Europe. We hear about ridiculous demands from EHO who come across as "jobsworths", e.g. a lady in Oxford who was taken to court for not adding a new sink to a brand new £40,000 kitchen in an HMO which was a brand new property, even though the tenants all said they preferred the extra cupboard space. A compromise was eventually reached for whereby the landlord would install a second dishwasher. When the EHO came back, the tenants had removed the racks and were storing breakfast cereals in the dishwasher! We have had several discussions here about landlords being asked to strip out period plaster coving and cornicing to add an extra fire retardant layer to ceiling on houses shared by 5 adults. The home-owners next door who have 4 grown up kids have no such demands, they don't have a Gas Safety Certificate either. For that matter, how many home-owners do bother to have an annual Gas Safety check?

My point is this. Authorities which have introduced licencing seem to justify it by picking on decent landlords to justify their existence. What they are not doing is cracking down on the criminal operators such as those you have described. The unlicensed criminals pretty much remain untouched and in many cases the authorities even continue to refer tenants to them! I appreciate that nobody wants to be spat at or assaulted but surely the money from licensing is intended to deal with these issues. I'm sure the Police get the same problems but they don't just hand out parking tickets and issues fines to Mum's doing 5 mph over the speed limit on the school run, although some would no doubt dispute that too.

Based on all the above comments, not just mine, is it any wonder that a PRS revolution is beginning?

I'm sure it's not just landlords who will be horrified when they read this thread, it also explains to tenants why their rents are shooting up and why we are getting more criminal landlords and not less.
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@Mark....but that is exactly my point Mark, it isnt what most landlords see. Just because you dont see it, doesnt mean it isnt going on.

This gives rise to different perspectives between council officer responsible for sorting out these messes and the PRS landlord community. Enforcement officers see this all day, everyday and we know the back stories of the criminals operating because we work in tandem with the police, so although our involvement might be in a property which is badly overcrowded, our colleagues in the police tell us that the landlord is also a people trafficker under investigation and we do joint raids with UKBA. And these arent isolated incidents, believe me.

Shelter are right in pointing out what a massive problem this is, I just dont agree with their analysis of how it should be solved. I dont want to throw all landlords into the ring, I just want the offenders.

Reply to the comment left by "Mary Latham" at "10/08/2013 - 12:28":

This is a fascinating comment. It shows there are answers out there if people are willing to work together to find them!