A trade association is convinced that councils should work hand in hand with, landlords, agents, public services and other professional bodies to kick out 'rogues' from the sector.

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The association is very concerned by the lack of immediate resources within local authorities to ensure proper enforcement of existing licensing schemes. Apparently councils are saying it costs more to run the schemes than the incoming licensing revenues.

Councils have also reported that licensing schemes are administrative heavy, taking up 15 minutes to one hour for each application to be processed, which hugely affects their teams' time being able to spend on enforcement actions.

The association feels that such schemes penalise good landlords and agents as they pay the licence cost and ensure their actions are ethical, whilst many rogues seem to get away with not paying anything and supplying properties that are substandard.

There is a considerable lack of Civil Penalties Fines being issued which was highlighted in the research carried out by the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee in April 2018; where it stated that overall councils very rarely dished out penalties to agents and landlords.

Chief Executive of the trade association David Cox, said: “Licensing does not work. Licensing has never worked and never will work. Newham have done 1,200 prosecutions, or 240 a year, out of 47,000 properties. That is 0.5% of properties in their area that they have done anything about and have done prosecutions. I would note that that is with 140 officers. They have 40 police officers; 100 enforcement officers and they have done 240 prosecutions a year. That is less than two prosecutions an officer.

“If that is what is classed as success—and it is classed across the industry as the most successful licensing scheme in the country—really what does that say? It is pitiful.

“What we need is education. Landlords need to be trained in what they need to do. Agents need to be trained in what they need to do. Filling in a piece of paper and giving it to the council and paying £500 is not going to teach them the 150 laws that they need to understand.”