Liverpool Landlord Licensing is deeper in the mire

Liverpool Landlord Licensing is deeper in the mire

10:15 AM, 15th August 2016, About 8 years ago 20

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I in conjunction with Property 118 have been instrumental in exposing the flaws in this rotten licensing scheme. The RLA have stated that Liverpool made amendments because of their representations. The reality is that the Data breaches and non conformity with the de regulation act were first flagged up by myself in conjunction with Property118.Farce

Every Liverpool landlord now needs to confront the Authority with respect to this sham scheme and to that end I will now outline the form of the latest representations made by me to Liverpool council today. They must respond within 21 days or the complaint will be passed to the ICO. The drafting of these conditions cannot be described as a serious legal procedure.

The defects are as follows:

1/Liverpool condition 2.2.
The authority are demanding copies of written terms ie the tenancy. The tenancy agreement with rent payable is a confidential document creating a contract between landlord and tenant. The tenant quite rightly may object to the interfering council having these details. Furthermore the tenants name etc will already be known to the council through Council Tax records. This demand is both an infringement of ECHR article 8 and a breach of the DPA third principle.

2/Anti Social condition (a).
It is not in the landlords gift to provide copies of letters received re anti social behaviour to the council. Such letters may well have been sent by neighbours who do not wish their details to be disclosed to anybody for obvious reasons. Is a landlord to join in the Councils Data breaching scheme by releasing this information without the permission of the author of such correspondence.

3/General conditions (c).
The Council are demanding that landlords in effect spy on tenants by supplying names of new occupiers and rooms they occupy. The landlord may not be aware that the tenant has a visitor from Australia visiting and sleeping in the spare room. Furthermore the visitor and indeed the tenant may refuse permission for the landlord to pass on the visitors name. This condition is a flagrant breach of the DPA AND ECHR and for the council to demand that a landlord supplies this within 7 days or face criminal prosecution is madness personified.

Taken together with the previous data breaches ,this scheme is unfair, unworkable, illegal and a perfect illustration of how not to implement a licensing scheme.

Meanwhile almost one and a half years after registering thousands of us still have not received licenses.

SCRAP THIS FARCE NOW.


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Comments

Tony McVey

12:31 PM, 22nd August 2016, About 8 years ago

I was abroad when the meeting to which you refer took place and I am well aware of what went on. You therefore did not meet me there. I am, of course, referring to the many meetings which preceded that and which were all attended by the NWPOA and the NLA.
I reiterate: the NWPOA is in the business of giving advice and guidance to landlords so that they act in accordance with current legal requirements.

Larry Sweeney

12:45 PM, 22nd August 2016, About 8 years ago

Tony,
No landlord is going to appreciate or thank either of us for being petty, or splitting hairs.
Let us stick to the substantive issues.
I say the process is flawed.

Do you agree that the process is flawed?
Do you agree that the forms fail to comply with the DPA.?
Will you list any further flaws here on this forum.?
Are you saying the process as it stands is fully legal and compliant?
Finally Tony Your £150 savings figure is wrong because to avail of this deal ,firstly one must join the RLA which is a facilitator of the scheme and secondly pay £20 per property to get the discount.
It is not helpful to make points which are factually incorrect.

The bigger picture however is the continued flaws in the scheme. My question to you is as follows.
Have you identified any further flaws and will you share them with Landlords here?
If not, I will as I have previously done expose further ourseserious irregularities in due course, but It would be heartening if a co regulation body stood up now and said "enough is enough" and alerted landlords to the illegality which I see staring out at me everytime I review this nonsense.I fully intend to expose this but You have the opportunity to prove to landlords that you are in their corner.

Tony McVey

12:56 PM, 22nd August 2016, About 8 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Larry Sweeney" at "22/08/2016 - 12:45":

The RLA is not a facilitator of the scheme. It opposed licensing along with the NWPOA and the NLA. The RLA is,if anything, a facilitator of licence fees, in other words it makes the payment easier. The figure payable by the way is £10 and not £20 as you state. Also the discount is £200 off the first property so that my original figures were correct unless you wish to split hairs.
Obviously the scheme is flawed as we have been pointing out for the last three years but until it is declared illegal by the courts, we shall continue to give our members responsible advice

Larry Sweeney

13:02 PM, 22nd August 2016, About 8 years ago

Thanks Tony,
It is good you acknowledge that the scheme is flawed.

Could you for the benefit of readers list any new flaws which have not yet been raised on this forum.?
Would you accept that not all the flaws have yet been exposed
When will co regulators halt this sham and alert Liverpool to the new flaws, or is it the position that Co Regulators are unable to identify these flaws./

M P

13:11 PM, 22nd August 2016, About 8 years ago

The co regulators have been hapless, proving to be intellectually inept. To fail to appreciate the difference between legality deemed by one statute and failing to see how the LCC version of the scheme is not based upon statute derived requirements. LCC ineptly made it up as they went along. No landlord body challenged the nature of "city wide". The mere assertion the whole city suffers ASB is a nonsense. A simple JR would have thrown it out. Tony, with all due respect most LLs are intelligent enough to smell the rat. Many have had equally poor experiences with the CT department. I will be reviewing the documentation in full and assist Larry where I can. To advise LL to comply is rational but for us to question it is
appropriate due diligence.

20:18 PM, 22nd August 2016, About 8 years ago

Just catching up on this new thread.

Overall I believe the RLA do a very good job of lobbying on a number of issues, but really fighting the LL's corner is not their forte - did their legal people really go through Liverpool's licensing T's & C's before they jumped on board? Clearly, they did not. I still believe the reason the LL associations didn't fight this harder was that they thought there may be a role for them in the process and therefore an income stream. It is to the credit of the NLA that they did not get involved.
My disappointment in the RLA was compounded on the 13th July when they published the following press release

http://news.rla.org.uk/rla-victory-on-licensing-scheme/

claiming that it was their intervention that caused Liverpool to review & modify some of the T's & C's!!!! Anyone who had followed the previous threads on this subject will know it was Mr. Sweeney who raised this matter very vocally and should be horrified that an organisation like the RLA would publish such a claim. The RLA should retract this claim and give credit where it is due.

On the co-regulation fee both Mr. McVey and Mr. Sweeney are right and therefore both wrong 🙂 the fee WAS £20, but was reduced in February 2016.

Tony McVey

11:57 AM, 23rd August 2016, About 8 years ago

The fee in question is £10 so I am correct.
The legal basis for the introduction of Selective Licensing was not ASB, it is therefore
irrelevant to talk about a challenge to it not being city-wide.
Finally, I am not now acknowledging that the Liverpool scheme is flawed. I have spent
the past three years doing so via meetings which I have chaired, written submissions,
letters to the Liverpool Echo, attendance at numerous consultation sessions etc etc.

11:00 AM, 25th August 2016, About 8 years ago

..............but it wasn't £10 for all those who paid £20 per property prior to February 2016, or are they getting a refund?

Larry Sweeney

9:31 AM, 27th August 2016, About 8 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Tony McVey" at "22/08/2016 - 12:56":

Tony
Why have the co regulators failed to point out further flaws
Are the co regulators assisting the useless council conceal these flaws.
Why must i or other landlords do the job of the coregulators.
There is a competition currently running and only Paul Brady has come up with a flaw. RLA where are you.
Come out from Liverpool council HQ and inform us of the further flaws in the scheme.
Tony send me your email and I will explain the fault to you before we alert the Rubbish council

Mick Roberts

10:56 AM, 4th July 2018, About 6 years ago

Can you Landlords please sign this & forward to all your contacts.
A small hope, we have to try anything & everything.
I'm sure we not get 10k signatures, but the more Licensing & Govt start to see these things, who knows.
“Petition calling for a review of Nottingham City Councils Selective Licensing."
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/223039

http://www.selectivelicensingtruth.co.uk/

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