Agenda item
Impact of Landlord Licensing
This report sets out the private housing services experience of the impact of private rented property licensing on tenants since the introduction of the Brent Selective and Additional HMO licensing schemes in January 2015. The report aims to provide the committee with an update against the objectives of landlord licensing, an update on the new 2018 Selective designation scheme and prospects for further extension of the schemes
Minutes:
Spencer Randolph (Head of Private Housing Services, Brent Council) presented the item and outlined the main points in the report. He stated that the report set out the private housing services experience of the impact of property licensing on private rented sector tenants since the introduction of the Brent Selective and Additional Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMO) licensing scheme in January 2015.
Overall, members felt that suitable performance indicators for licensing was challenging and that the current fees charged by Brent were quite low and out of step with those in other boroughs, providing little compliance incentive and often being passed on to tenants as additional charges. Whilst acknowledging members concerns, officers explained that charges were reasonable with the option to be spread over a 5 year period. License maintenance was carried out through a compliance schedule with landlords first being given an opportunity to bring properties up to standard. The committee heard that should a property be deemed to be in an inadequate state that tenants could be given alternative accommodation and landlord required to make improvements.
Responding to members’ concerns about the impact of licensing on fly-tipping, particularly where properties were suspected to be Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMOs), officers explained that while the Council had acted on a number of reported cases this remained an issue for Brent. Whilst there had been some successes including several enforcement conditions on licensing and issuing of penalty notices no significant improvement had been made. Officers expressed confidence that the situation would change following legislation changes due in October 2018 when specific mandatory licensing requirements for any property would be covered. Whilst a lot of efforts had gone to resolve fly-tipping and arrangements were in place to alleviate the issue such as use of a reporting app, installing bigger bins and easier collection, some issues mostly due to tenants still persisted. Members were encouraged to raise any concerns about illegal rubbish dumping with environmental services as first point of contact or if suspected that a property is a HMO – with the housing management team.
As part of the discussion members enquired about the impact of the licensing scheme on landlords, in particular in cases where a landlord was suspected to be irresponsible or “rogue”. In response, Mr Randolph explained that the term should not be seen as representative of all landlords and its use depended on the circumstances (for instance landlords charged with an offence were often referred to as “criminal landlords”). Members heard that the Council maintained a landlord database where full details were recorded and there was active borough wide engagement with landlords through forums and newsletters. However, the committee noted that given there was no requirement for property owners to be the landlords which could provide difficulties in establishing the person responsible for managing the property. In welcoming the Council’s efforts, members agreed that the existing database was not intuitive and needed regular updating. Officers explained that this was largely due to technical issues but assured members that the current system – ACOLAID - was in the process of being re-procured and changed. In addition, to ensure that license guidelines were adhered to, Council would carry out regular spot checks in the form of unannounced visits, without having to pre-warn landlord or tenants. Impact on tenants had been carefully considered, with Brent Council being the only local authority to date which had done research on alternative ways to soften the approach.
RESOLVED that:
i. the contents of the report be noted
ii. proposal to Cabinet to have a performance indicator showing if licensing has impacted on illegal dumping following the introduction of landlord licensing.
Supporting documents:
- 09. Licensing Impact Report, item 9. PDF 398 KB
- 09a. Appendix 1: Licensing Impact, item 9. PDF 133 KB