Landlord Licensing Schemes – Raising Standards or Raising Funds?

Reply to the comment left by "Sharon Crossland" at "11/08/2013 - 09:00":

If he is bankrupt, how can he still be causing you problems? Does the trustee in bankruptcy know about the property he owns which is causing you problems?
.

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

Ben, I really sympathise with you on this. Both my partner (as the resident freeholder) and myself as the resident manager) are the front line on our block due to our visibility and have been assaulted too many times to remember, by tenants and their visitors!

Black eyes, gouges, scratches, bruises, sprained ligaments, heads being slammed against brick walls, kicks in the head, we have suffered all these because landlords don't want to deal with their anti-social tenants! Landlords also don't want to be subjected to this and they won't because they often don't live on the same block as their tenants. We however do and if we didn't deal with them, no one would!

Reply to the comment left by "Ben Reeve-Lewis" at "11/08/2013 - 09:46":

That's what society as a whole wants Ben, as somebody else has said on this thread, society should pay for that, NOT good landlords.

If you could co-opt in some of the Council's clipboard crowd to help (the EHO's I've described in my last post) that would be good too. How those EHO's get away with persecuting and vilifying good landlords whilst there are still real criminals out there operating in the sector beggars belief.
.
.

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

Ben, having spent many many years at local government level I know only too well the pressure you are under, I also know the pressures that some housing officers, not you, are under when deciding what to have for dinner that evening!

Reading your input over the last few years I know you are a highly experienced and effective Housing Officer but I have many questions for the Local Authority round here regarding selective licensing. The most important one being...

When I am a licensed landlord, I am assuming that one of the conditions of my licence would be to deal with any ASB effectively. So lets say that becomes an issue, I issue the correct notice(s) which are correctly filled out to remove the problem tenant. They take the notice to the council as they are at risk of being made homeless. What are the council going to say?

PS - There is not danger of my properties being poorly managed or in a poor state of repair - You're welcome to come and inspect them any time 🙂

Yeah I'm with you on that Mark. And I'm not saying that council's arent free from blame or incompetence, as I mentioned somewhere back in this post, joined up working could achieve much of what needs to be done and probably without much of an increase in manpower.

But remember EHOs have to implement the laws passed down to them by government and senior council officials. Ask and enforcement officer about some of the things they have to do and what they think about it.

What often happens is a referral about a property is made by someone who is only marginally involved in the business, maybe in the voluntary sector, or following a complaint mad to councillors or MPs who dont go out and see what is going on. Then we get involved and raise our eyes, having often seen much worse. In fact my EHOs will often try to protect landlords from daft complaints. Most commonly I hear them say "Oh he isnt that bad" or "It's certainly not the worst property I've seen", and they give time and a bit of slack to let the landlord get it done. Its the ones who try to evade them or pull the wool over their eyes that they go for, as do I.

@Sharon, thanks for the support. What galls me is I get it from both ends, landlords and tenants. Makes me go home at the end of a week sometimes saying "F**k the lot of you". Although a landlady bought me a bottle of single malt whisky this week for helping me get her deposit back from an agent who had let her flat out as a cannabis farm and were holding onto the money. So I'm leaning slghtly landlord this weekend haha

Reply to the comment left by "Ben Reeve-Lewis" at "11/08/2013 - 10:24":

Thanks Ben

The question I asked above about managing the ASB within the property was one to all local authorities - Out of interest what would the view of your boroughs housing team be?

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Reynolds" at "11/08/2013 - 10:20":

Haha Your not wrong Mark. That drives me mad too. There is an element of council mindset that is about jobs for life regardless of what you do. That is changing though. The writing is on the wall but few have noticed that they arent safe anymore.

And it is difficult to get councils to take a coherent line on anything. A while back a landlrod came to me for advice, running an HMO full of women where one kept putting threatening notices up in the kitchen for the others and eventually pulled a gun on them. Cops were called etc but the landlord, being a responsible and decent guy wanted to know the fastest way to get this nutbag out of everyone's hair. He wanted to do it legally.

I advised that S21 would be guaranteed but would take longer and given the seriousness of the situation S8 (ground 14)would be faster. Of course that is a more complex route so I said I would help him fill in the forms and get it all in order.

The tenant found out and complained to the council about me advising a landlord how to evict her properly. I got carpetted over it, someone in complaints, who had no clue about the real life situation telling me I was out of order and backing up a woman who pulled a gun on her housemates.

My reply was.....well, lets say quite forthright haha

Reply to the comment left by "Ben Reeve-Lewis" at "11/08/2013 - 10:34":

Thanks Ben - It interesting though that the councils very often say stay put when tenants are faced with eviction - Which is against national guidelines surely? Or is it a case that the front desk officers providing the advice are not trained or updated sufficiently?

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Reynolds" at "11/08/2013 - 10:31":

Well Mark you arent legally responsible for the actions of your tenants unless you somehow encourage or support the actions. When complaints come to me from housemates about housemates I advise the same thing. Sometimes ASB teams try to tell landlords that they have to deal with a problem among their tenants. I advise this is wrong. It may be good practice but if a landlord doesnt act then we cant act against them.

Nuisance caused by bad properties is another matter though.

Comment on my colleagues?????? Are you mad?????

Reply to the comment left by "Ben Reeve-Lewis" at "11/08/2013 - 10:43":

Are you mad????? - Not anymore I have been discharged! haha!!

I may not be legally responsible but if they demand I get licensed surely this will be part of the license conditions, otherwise I may be subject to a fine or prosecution?

Question to everyone now, is selective/additional licensing likely to rub up against other regulations/laws where the two are pulling against each other? For example in Bens' example where landlords are not legally responsible for ASB which is what Selective Licensing is intended to curb?