The next Goliath in the additional HMO licensing battle?

The next Goliath in the additional HMO licensing battle?

11:13 AM, 21st April 2020, About 4 years ago 9

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Coventry City Council continues to implement a new HMO Additional Licensing Scheme on 4th May 2020 – even though it has a backlog of more than 700 applications to process for normal HMO licences. Yet still it intends soliciting for thousands more applications.

The  council’s head of licensing must really be behind on budget, having already received fees for the 700 outstanding applications, 341 of them outstanding for over a year!  Yet it is taking on more work and administration and putting pressure on good landlords to prepare properties to higher standards for compliance at a time when labour, materials and availability of resources are in extremely short supply.

Also most of the properties that need to be licensed under this new scheme are occupied and therefore, the works that need to be done are not essential – yet they become essential and tenants must be disturbed or re-housed in order for landlords to undertake the works if the Council continues to insist in implementing the scheme on 4th May 2020 – or the landlords will face prosecution and massive fines. But maybe that’s their plan?

Central Government has advised a pragmatic approach, and a number of councils have heeded this.  But not Coventry City Council, well known for its predatory and heavy-handed enforcement plus its stated intention to run the harshest penalties possible under the law. With no regard for landlords (and one suspects little for tenants either), Coventry City Council continues to create enforcement opportunities for itself and to abuse its dominant market position.  They have no competition, they are unregulated, therefore they continue with consideration for absolutely no one but themselves.

It would be well advised to get its current applications processed before introducing a new scheme.

Given this backlog, why would they introduce a new scheme you ask?  That is an interesting question and to answer it, one has to look at where the money is.

The money for the applications pending is already in the Council’s bank account and this can only be used for the application process.  By implementing a new scheme, it opens up another area of income: ‘Enforcement’ which is punishable by fines called Financial Civil Penalties the money they receive can be used to carry out more enforcement. (Well that’s the legal position – but who can tell what they’ve actually used this £700,000 or so for).

New applications, for a new scheme, will give them funds to process the backlog and the new applications. (although they’ve already had the funds to process the backlog. Strange they now need more… )

But the covert reason for implementing a new scheme, is that it opens up a much larger source of income called Financial Civil Penalties (landlord fines) from which the money they received can be used to carry out more enforcement.

Applications and licence fees produce income of £640-£1250 or so per property.

Financial Civil Penalties from enforcement, on the other hand, produce fees (which generally are issued with little or no substantial evidence) and range generally from £1,000 to £30,000 per ‘breach of regulations’,  And strangely most councils manage to find at least five or six such ‘breaches’ per property before sending out financial penalty invoices for £25,000 to £60,000.

Therefore, you understand where they will keep working, that will be one of the most likely reasons why the backlog of applications, they are more likely to be spending their time chasing the big money, and the ‘heroic recognition’ of being a revenue-target-meeting enforcer.  Why do you think crime thriller TV Series get such big audiences?

Certain housing officers chose to target specific types of landlord for revenue creation. For example they can easily identify landlord companies with healthy balance sheets on companies house and ‘out of area landlords’ whose only crime is that they don’t live in the city (only a crime in the enforcing council’s mind of course – it is in fact perfectly legal to live where you choose). It is easy to go after them and get massive enforcement moneys for small misdemeanours.

They don’t have to enforce these soft-targets as hard as they would if they were doing their job and weeding out rogue-landlords – but that’s hard work and there’s no money in it.  Instead they are proud to  leave decent landlords fearing for the future of their business, the decent homes they provide for their tenants, financial ruin and mental illness from the stress, some even contemplating suicide.  And over simple things which any fair and reasonable enforcer would work with them to resolve.

The council is very keen for landlords to contact them – especially those who do not know what to do, or may have inadvertently made an error, got their licensing dates confused, missed something simple and need the help.  In reality, they take the information and then use it against the landlord in order to enforce and fine, rather than help the landlord.

They appear to be helpful, whilst using the alert to send enforcers to check what they could put into the coffers by way of enforcement action and massive Financial Civil Penalties.

This is not going to encourage the behaviour of compliance that councils are supposed to be looking for.  It is going to force landlords to go underground, sell off their properties, remove them from the rental market make tenants homeless, reduce the private rental stock and create a shortage of perfectly suitable homes, because the Council is alienating landlords, rather than encouraging them. Because they think it is somehow big and clever (as well as highly profitable) to milk and destroy decent honest landlords.

It just shows how dangerous it is to allow as single entity to be ‘enforcer, prosecutor, judge and jury’ with no accountability to anyone except the Chief Finance Officer who just wants money whatever the human cost.

Heather Wheeler, when she was a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government Enforcement, was clear on the role the Councils should take in relation to landlords, She said,  “It is essential that there is clear communication, and engagement with landlords, tenants and other stakeholders so rights and responsibilities are properly understood as that is often not the case.  This also means that for effective enforcement and prosecutions to take place, policies and procedures must be transparent and clearly available.

The fact that landlords who have licences and are not being made aware shows that Coventry City Council as many councils must be delinquent in its duties here.  And not just Coventry: Landlords and letting agents report to us daily their astonishment at the attitude of councils across the country and their ‘Vogon’ approach to enforcement.

Most landlords don’t know where to turn for help and turn to other landlords who are equally in the dark.  The Council has so many ways, methods, regulations and opportunities to enforce against even the best landlords with a crippling financial civil penalty, that the landlord has no chance. Everything is stacked against the landlord.

LANDLORDS let us be very clear:  The last person you should contact is the council. Do NOT contact them, it is NOT advisable.  They are the rule setter, the enforcer, the police, the judge and the jury.  Call them at your peril.

If you are running a property in the West Midlands you should know that the councils at Coventry City, Birmingham City, Dudley, Herefordshire, Sandwell, Sandwell,  Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton form the West Midland Housing Forum.  Therefore, you can expect the same treatment from them all now, or soon.

Coventry City Council has HMO Applications not processed for  362 submitted from 1st April 2019 to 31st March 2020 and 341 backlogged from the period 1st April 2018 to 31st March 2019.

That is 703 in total that they haven’t managed to process even though they’ve had the funds. Why do they need any more when they have a backlog of two years?

You may well ask what is the motivation?

If it’s not about the money, then why did the Coventry Telegraph find in 2017/2018 (using a freedom of information request) to report about 675 landlord complaints and 210 HHSRS inspections yet no financial civil penalties issued?   Well it’s because the real powers came after that time and then Coventry went to the other extreme.

At the time, Housing and Planning minister Gavin Barwell said: “These measures will give councils the additional powers they need to tackle poor-quality rental homes in their area. “By driving out of business those rogue-landlords that continue to flout the rules, we can raise standards, improve affordability and give tenants the protections they need.”   I don’t see it saying, “this legislation is introduced to give councils the powers they need to raise revenue from landlords with no regard to improving housing.”

Where is the evidence of housing improvement from their actions?  To date, no council has come up with convincing research that these licensing schemes have improved housing. None of the hundreds of landlords we have spoken to had a property that was in such a bad state as to warrant the excessive level of enforcement and civil penalties Coventry and other councils are inflicting in their out-and-out quest for revenue at all costs.

The truth is so self-evident: Until 2018, councils did not receive money from fines.  Any landlord fines went to central government.  As a result, council housing departments rarely took landlords to court and when they did, they knew they had to provide evidence ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ to convince a judge of the landlord’s crime. It cost them so much to pursue and for little or no return into their budgets.

In 2018, councils were enabled to not only keep the fines – but also to increase them ten or twenty-fold above the level of court fines!  What’s more, they were given the power to hand out these fines with little or no oversight.  Not surprising then that they do so with little or no substantial evidence of danger.

Once the legislation was in place for them to receive the funds into council coffers, they needed a little time to perfect their approach: the rules, the fines, the cookie cutter paperwork, the invoicing and operational process. Once ‘the system’ was all in place, then could they enforce, receive fines, do it again.  “Rinse and repeat,” and in this context the emphasis in on ‘rinse!’   Most councils in England are doing exactly the same.

If you think about it it’s no different to their operations with parking tickets and traffic cameras. As we all know to our cost, these have become little more than revenue generating machines.

It is on public record that Coventry City Council began working in conjunction with Warwick University on a project to improve the quality of the off-campus housing in the area around Canley and Cannon Park.  The project focused primarily on proactively inspecting houses in multiple occupation (HMOs).  It appears to have been such good business that the Additional HMO Licensing Scheme will help with more enforcement and create yet more revenue.

Furthermore, most Councils’ housing officers appear to believe (or is that wilfully misunderstand) that being a Landlord is a very profitable business – when, in fact in recent years, any landlord’s net income has been reduced substantially by the Central Government action of increased taxation, the increased costs of compliance and regulations together with many councils introducing expensive licensing schemes for housing where the need appears unwarranted.

Liverpool City Council, for example, had their proposed licensing scheme overturned recently by government as being unjustified.

In truth, the 80% or more of landlords who own just 1 – 4 properties are left with cashflow at nigh-on minimum-wage level when calculated against all the hours they work operating and managing properties to provide decent homes to their tenants.

Coventry Council last year revealed at a First-Tier Tribunal hearing that the methodology by which a civil penalty amount was calculated was by the Council’s Civil Penalties Policy which includes a matrix which had been set in partnership with other Local Authorities in the UK to establish a consistent framework

Could this be considered price-fixing or abuse of a dominant market position?  Remember the Council is the operator of the scheme, the enforcer and the judge, unless they get overturned by the First-Tier Tribunal or Central Government – or by us the landlords taking action against them.

They must not be allowed to continue with this unwarranted and immoral approach to revenue generation at the expense of decent landlords.

But few landlords would have a clue how to take a case to the First-Tier Tribunal, nor indeed where to turn for professional advice.

One may look at this all quite dimly and wonder how this has happened.

You may consider that Councils have conspired together in setting high level priced Financial Civil Penalties at levels 10 to 20 times higher than the courts would award. Surely this is tantamount to cartels price fixing to the lay person.  Oh, but they are a public body!

Investigate your Councils – you will see their true form in Civil Penalties!

There appears to be no reason for implementing the Additional Licensing Scheme in Coventry by the City Council especially during this Covid-19 Crisis, other than possibly the money.  The scheme is likely to impact a number of student homes, which the Council may hope to reduce through the introduction of more purpose-built student blocks one is seeing developed by large international and national property investment funds in conjunction with local councils and universities.  Is this more insider-dealing against the interests of private sector landlords, one is forced to wonder?

Most landlords don’t know where to turn and Landlord Licensing & Defence is happy to take a call on 0208 088 0788 or help@lldl.co.uk and give initial independent advice to landlords on the position they are in and to cover some basic options available to them.

As we said, calling the council for advice is nonsense and is like calling the police and asking if they caught you speeding.  They then come around and run a programme on your car and find that indeed you were indeed speeding.  If you had never called them, they would never have come around.

It is the same with your council.  Be afraid.  Get professional advice.  But above all, make sure your properties are compliant, it is the only true defence.   In the meantime, seek help.

As Malcom Gladwell said in his book David and Goliath:  “This final lesson about the limits of power is not easy to learn. It requires that those in positions of authority to accept that their greatest advantage has real constraints.  The excessive use of force creates legitimacy problems, and force without legitimacy leads to defiance, not submission.”

So, one hopes that Coventry City Council will review its decisions firstly to NOT implement the Additional Licensing Scheme,  to be pragmatic as required by Government advice and delay this implementation following the example set to them by Luton and Newcastle councils.

Secondly, they must process the applications they have in backlog before taking on more.

And thirdly, they must stop this vilification and persecution of decent landlords  and instead work with landlords who want to do a good job and are indeed doing their best in the face of a bewildering amount of legislation and regulation.

Every council’s job is to improve housing stock, and anyone with an ounce of fair play and human decency can see that the way to do this is to work with landlords and not just treat them as cash producing machines.

Councils should assist those who make mistakes, rather than just hit them with Financial Civil Penalties, because this approach will seriously damage the private rented sector, remove the rental housing stock that only the private sector provides because councils have failed to provide any for two decades now, possibly more.

In a classic case of “be careful what you wish for”, this greed and power-trip by council housing departments will in time have exactly the opposite effect and create another issue for another

We are not condoning breaking the law, what we are saying is: Get professional help before turning yourself in and confessing to something that you didn’t realise you had done.

area of the Council to deal with at far greater cost than they have extracted whilst systematically destroying landlords and the private rental sector.

We live in hope, but frankly, not very much hope.

About the author:

Phil Turtle is a Casework Consultant at Landlord Licensing & Defence. He is a Certified HHSRS Practitioner – similarly qualified as many Council Enforcement Officers.

Landlord Licencing & Defence is helping landlords get out of trouble when they get into it. We are fighting against councils that have become power-crazed and which are persecuting decent landlords for immoral financial gain.

Councils have become ruthless and unforgiving and will destroy a Landlord, his health and his/her business in one inspection.

Everyone makes mistakes, Landlord Licensing & Defence reduces the chances of an incident breaking you, psychologically, financially and physically.   There are some vicious people within councils near to your portfolio enforcing the Housing Act 2004 Parts 1, 2, 3 and 7 with angst.

Some landlords just don’t give a damn and break all the rules – they deserve the punishment. Decent landlords do not.

Landlord Licensing & Defence fights a Landlord’s corner like no other. We cut to the chase and gets things sorted. We understand, because we are landlords ourselves.

Civil Penalties are severe and business-breaking for most. See https://www.landlordsdefence.co.uk/fines-penalties/ for proof.


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Comments

TheMaluka

10:57 AM, 22nd April 2020, About 4 years ago

Now we know the true meaning of "Sent to Coventry"

Carol

12:22 PM, 22nd April 2020, About 4 years ago

I am one of the LL's who is still awaiting my HMO licence, paid for in 2018. I have from a reliable source that Coventry council only carry out inspections if they receive a complaint. The one inspection that I had on another house only took 10 minutes.

The whole thing makes me feel sick. I have done my utmost to meet regulations and provide a good home for those in need. The government and Councils are treating LL's very badly and unfairly.

Tenants choose to rent. LL's do not determine the circumstances only provide a solution. Tenants only rent what they like or is within their budget. Housing allowance levels do not make letting to those receiving it viable for most LL's.

We are expected to have enough funds to cover voids and maintenance costs. Mortgage holidays from providers are taken into consideration when applying for new mortgages, so beware.

After 15 years as a LL, I will sell at the first opportunity. 11 of my tenants work for the NHS on 3 month to a year contracts. Where will they live? No forward thinking, just milking good LL's dry.

Going ahead with the additional licence scheme during the pandemic just shows how callous the Council are. They are going to be inundated with homeless tenants. LL's and tenants will be the victims.

Earlsdon

20:34 PM, 22nd April 2020, About 4 years ago

I am also a LL in Coventry and have a number of mandatory HMOs that have all taken in excess of 12 months for the Council to process. It is evident from the ever growing list of properties where the licence decision has yet to be determined, that the CCC do not have the ability to process these applications within a "reasonable time". I will likely have a further three properties that will be subject to the AL scheme come May. The CCC will probably be sat on my application fees of around £2000 for a year or more without actually doing anything.

The above should come as no surprise to anyone who attended any of the "Consultations" ran by the City Council and chaired by Adrian Chowns (Property Licencing Manager). I say "consultation", but really what transpired was Mr Chowns delivering his assessment of the proposed scheme, dissenters were limited to one question each! Furthermore, Mr Chowns has a very negative view of Landlords as a whole, at one point he said the following "10% of landlords are compliant, 80% (LL) don't know what they're doing and the remaining 10% were criminal". I was so astonished at this unfounded statement I wrote it down verbatim on my notes! I don't know where his data came from but it does go someway to indicate what Coventry Landlords are up against.

Paul Essex

10:35 AM, 23rd April 2020, About 4 years ago

I think he made a mistake- those numbers refer to council officials he just mis read his notes!

TheMaluka

10:48 AM, 23rd April 2020, About 4 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Paul Essex at 23/04/2020 - 10:35Could not understand your comment until I realised you were using my favourite speech idiom, Irony. Well stated.

raj beri

9:32 AM, 25th April 2020, About 4 years ago

HMO licensing should be a central government policy not piecemeal and at the discretion of the council. Ultimately, If all HMOs are to be licensed, indeed if all rental properties are to be licensed and it is to become mandatory as a policy like Gas Certs, lets just get on with it.

Licensing amounts to little more than a revenue generation exercise for the council

Nottingham City Council have had Addn Licensing since 2014, so I am now into my second 5y period. Pointless cost

Jessie Jones

9:42 AM, 25th April 2020, About 4 years ago

They introduced Selective Licensing in Nottingham over 18 months ago and I applied for a license on day 1. Despite having paid for it and despite there being no issues with my application, it still hasn't been issued.
The license schemes stipulate electrical / fire / gas / HHSRS / management standards that far exceed standards we would adopt in our own homes or that housing associations use.
What has happened is that in the same period, Nottingham saw the greatest increase in the cost of renting across the UK
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50056177
The only effective measure that Landlords can take to protect themselves is to ensure that they do everything that the license stipulates. And that comes at a cost, driving an increase in rents like we have seen in other areas that have introduced selective licensing.

Carol

9:51 AM, 25th April 2020, About 4 years ago

I too would be happy for all rental properties to be licensed provided that the landlord was treated fairly. Any fines would be based on consistent rules with evidence of a failure to comply after a reasonable notice period. Most landlords want to provide good safe homes but these landlords should not have to foot the bill for the bad ones.

With the current system both the tenants and landlords loose with no real improvement in the housing situation. My tenants will loose as I will be selling asap

Des Taylor Landlords Defence Ltd

11:51 AM, 25th April 2020, About 4 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Carol at 25/04/2020 - 09:51Carol,
Yes it is what it is and as you have said in other posts, the really bad seem to never to be brought to task.
The better landlords need education, assistance and ongoing guidance to be better. Not outrageous punishment.
It is proven in anything that correction is best with good education and accountability. The fines only go towards more enforcement, not to improving anything. The application fees again do not get applied to improving anything, except the process.
One day, they will look back at this 70's type policing. The results will be proven then. The characters and their names will never be forgotten and how they treated good people.

Des Taylor
Landlord Licensing and Defence

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