Licensing Consultation in Southwark

Reply to the comment left by "John Daley" at "04/11/2014 - 14:00":

The experience of Newham is that the vast majority of Landlords licensed of their own free will. The rest have had to be found and after nearly two years they have had considerable success doing so.

Own free will?
They licensed from fear of a £20,000 fine, criminal record and loss of their livelihood.

Vast majority?
There are around 32,500 licenced landlords in Newham.
Leaving 10,000+ unlicenced landlords.

Other than creating council jobs for the boys and a data base of the good landlords, in what possible way has this been a considerable success?

Please, no PR speak, just some solid, quantifiable results to validate your statement and justify that it has been worth alienating the good Newham landlords and the wider landlord community .

Reply to the comment left by "Philipp Brunstrop" at "04/11/2014 - 15:19":

I 2nd your call Philipp - "Why do you and Southwark not give any consideration to alternative tools, schemes, collaboration?.......your document completely ignores consideration of alternatives."

I likewise cannot see in the consultation any references to alternative proposals Southwark Council has considered and rejected.

Reply to the comment left by "chris wright" at "30/10/2014 - 17:51":

Do these people still work for the council? Are they going to be involved in the Licensing? Once they've been retrained of course.

Don't know Steve and southwark won't say - they prefer to keep it confidential and on a need to know basis, open and accountable government eh? - Eric Pickles must be pulling his hair out (if he had any)!

The simple thing they could give is an undertaking that these 3 will never be granted a PRS license should the licensing scheme come in, they could say it right now and show LL's this means Southwark are into protecting tenants from rogues.

I won't hold my breath.....

Reply to the comment left by "Philipp Brunstrop" at "01/11/2014 - 14:35":

Hi Phillip,

Can we please ask simpler and shorter questions, I am genuinely stuggling to devote enough time to respond to this and long multi part questions really eat up the time I can afford to devote to this. I don't want other posters to invent the conclusion that I am reluctant to respond when I am simply unable to keep up with the traffic. I am engaged in a substantial number of consultation events and there isn't much time to spare.

I don't think it is ok to make comments about vested interests or to state that the consultation process is not being undertaken seriously. You are welcome to disagree with any part of our proposals and I expect that most of the landlord community would not welcome regulation.

I think if you were to review the posts I have made on this site over the last you could draw conclusions about my general position with relation to the PRS.. So I think it is possible to believe that someone could hold the view that a well drafted and managed licensing scheme could improve standards in the PRS. I also think there is sufficient evidence in the public domain to suggest that the PRS has problems that need to be addressed particularly at the lowest rentals and particularly where demand substantially outstrips supply.

I don't think there is a debate here about licensing as a tool of public policy. Simply because licensing already exists, mandatory licensing has been a fact for ten years. The queation is should this LA seek the powers to extend the existing power to other types of property. I want to keep the debate on whether Southwarks proposal is reasonable, appropriate, proportionate and compliant with the Housing Act.

We have not made up the problems in the PRS and again this prejudiced view of empire building and stealth taxing just does not wash in my opinion.

LA's are under incredible pressure to reduce costs and by implication their activity across the board.

Regardless of your core opionions we will all see the activity of LAs reducing for the forseeable future and services will be cut back. Some of these services including PRS regulation are needed because the market does not regulate itself well, particularly where the normal laws of supply and demand are breaking down.

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Reply to the comment left by "John Daley" at "06/11/2014 - 16:53":

given your comment "there is sufficient evidence in the public domain to suggest that the PRS has problems that need to be addressed"

Agreed so can you supply a written undertaking from Southwark that the 3 named pople won't ever be granted a license in your borough to operate in the PRS, clearly they are not fit & proper, lets see some action against these rogues early on.

found out from a contact the 3 people in question still work in Southwark housing dept handling rent recovery and evictions.

Reply to the comment left by "John Daley" at "06/11/2014 - 16:53":

Dear John

I don't think the consultation is fair or balanced. If it was a balanced consultation it would include contra arguments and would not indulge in blatant data mining. I appreciate you are busy, but please explain why the marked decline in regulatory notices and the significant increase in compliance with regulatory notices in the PRS is not a good sign that the PRS is seeing improving standards?

Also why did you decide to present the increase in landlord prosectution as being 500% rather than just stating that 2013/14 saw 12 prosecutions compared to just 2 in 2010/11?

Do you really consider your presentation of the data to be balanced and objective?

I also believe that Southwark Council has a vested interest is establishing revenue sources (such as licensing fees) in order to expand their activities, and protect and create jobs.

Why should I not say this? Is it verboten in Southwark to question the motivation of public servants?

Again John we ask you to give real data and solid evidence that the PRS has increasing problems and declining standards and that current powers are inadequate. Do you have any real evidence? Or do you think your repeated proclaimations are sufficient?

Facts and evidence would help move this debate towards being a valid consultation. But maybe I am missing the point.

Thanks Philipp

Ps with circa 70k PRS tenants and circa 30k rental houses I feel your questions on the online consultation questionaire asking if "all" landlords are good and if "all" tenants are well behaved is a tad ambitious. The next option given is a disappointing "some". Did you forget that between "all" and "some" there exist "most"?

Or was the most likely reality that "most" landlords and tenants are good and well behaved not an palative option for your consultation exercise?

Hi Phillip,

I would accept that you don't think the consultation is balanced, I have to observe however that as a landlord you are not are not likely to be positive about our proposals. I have seen a consultation response from the other end of the viewpoint spectrum that criticises us fairly clearly for not going far enough with our proposals and we should have licensed every property in the Borough.

Is it balanced ? I think that it was written to find a middle ground between very widely different views. When we talk to Shelter and other advocacy groups they want to take regulation and intervention far further than we have proposed. Is their position any more or less relevant and justified than yours.

This was drafted with the objective of being as reasonable and as fair as possible to everyone whilst we focus on our objectives.

In terms of the evidence, the statistical data is just what it is. We collect all sorts of data for all sorts of purposes mainly because we are required to do so by central government but also for reporting the things that are important locally. Every LA does this but the areas of interest will differ because of the themes and priorities oa particular LA.

So is there evidence to prove the PRS does not need to be regulated, well not really. We don't collect information on tenancies that are working OK. Its not about concealing some sort of smoking gun. The data we present is simply totals of events.

If we look at this another way there is evidence that between 70 and 80% of PRS Tenants are happy with the services they receive. I think London probably has a lower satisfaction than this but the data doesn't allow me to drill down and prove that because it is not regionalised.

If we say that 30 % of Southwark tenants are not happy, most of those are likely to be at the lower end of the rental scale, because we know that standards of management and condition tend to be worse at the bottom of the market.. So our plan to increase regulation to about 10 - 12 000 more properties is about 30 to 40% of the stock and probably covers most of the tenants who are dissatisfied.

I accept that this is very rough use of statistical evidence but in the absence of better data it illustrates a point. It is my experience that a lot of public policy is based on an analysis of imperfect data and a desire to take action to resolve a problems.

In terms of motivation for this project I think there is a clear strand in Southwarks communications and policy about improving standards in all housing. Some landlords I have met in the last few weeks would say that this is a sensible proposal and some won't. I can't in the end make everyone happy.

What I do want is for everyone with a view to submit it and get it recorded.

Reply to the comment left by "John Daley" at "12/11/2014 - 17:18":

Have you seen the latest news from Milton Keynes John?

Link below.
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