London council carries out door-to-door inspections to find criminal landlords

It would be great if these inspections checked both the landlord and the tenants were compliant.

More emphasis is needed on targeting criminal landlords rather than persecuting good ones. Perversely well intentioned but deeply flawed government policy will probably create an increase in criminal landlords that cater to people that cannot pay higher rents and/or do not pass the more stringent affordability, and reference checks that will be required post the Renters Reform Bill and EPC C requirements. Will frightened tenants jeopardise their accommodation by cooperating with the authorities which could leave them homeless? I doubt it.

A metric that the council will never release (assuming they even record it) is the proportion of properties they inspect in an area with “criminal landlords”. Not the number of landlords they subsequently take action against; just the actual percentage of properties they gain access to to inspect. I’ll stake that it will be vanishingly small !

It is essential the Councils publish the results of their searches in all categories as % of total searches. Let’s get the full picture, not media spin.

The purpose of licencing and these council driven dragnets is not to protect tenants or find rogue landlords it is to generate money for a bloated and badly run council.
Where rogue landlords are found then additional income from punitive fines can be generated.
The council should be trying to encourage incremental activity to create jobs but sadly it is beyond the economic competence of most councils to deliver public services efficiently and to expand the size of the cake.
Instead their mission is creating wokery,looking for reasons to fine people and create trouble for landlords.

All well and good but given this housing crisis perhaps resources better directed to do a door to door on their own housing stock to better find those rogue council tenants subletting at a profit. I am hearing of folk on the waiting lists planning to sublet as soon as they finally get the keys to a council property. I am feeling that it is not considered “woke” to do this fundamental of all initiatives

It’s clear that the term “Selective Licensing” is an unsubstantiated lie since no metric is collected, published and reviewed independently to justify the selection.
The fact that DPR Brent choses to Select most of the Borough shows that it’s just a council housing services delegation of tax raising powers because central government doesn’t want to pay for housing legislation both current and imminent.
Of course tenants will pay for that, regardless of any justification or not.