19th
Jul 2024
Durham County Council introduced its Selective Licensing Scheme in April 2022 and is now considering stricter measures as there has only been a 43% take-up from landlords in over two years.
The council has been given a report from its officers that suggests one of its option for enforcement could be for the council to ‘take-over’ unlicensed properties as well as receiving the rent direct from the tenant to cover the cost of any necessary repairs and improvements, and then giving the landlord any of the rent that was not spent ‘on his behalf’.
The officers’ report highlights how councils operate such schemes and the minutes of the meeting when discussing the findings it had details of 16,500 landlords who were not complying with the licensing scheme, with a loss of projected revenue of £8m in fees which were not collected. It was also considered that perhaps other landlords were going to sign up to the five year license at a later date when it best suited them.
The report also mentioned that of the inspected licensed properties just 15% failed their inspection but some had failed because of the most severe Category 1 issues.
The minutes also included the instant when the officer points out that “were there was no realistic prospect of a property becoming licensed, then the Council could take over, receive rent, carry out repairs using the rental income with the remainder of the rent going to the landlord.”
A councillor then asked for an idea of costs for such an approach could be and the officer replied “noted there would be some initial setup costs, with the in-house service managing any properties, reiterating costs incurred would be charged to the property via that offset rent.”
Throughout the debate councillors’ expressed their disappointment with the low number of landlords signing up to the licensing scheme and it was agreed to send out an additional 1,000 letters as soon as possible as well as other actions and measures that include:
- “Continuing identification of properties without a licence using various sources of data including Council Tax, Housing Benefit, and Tenancy Deposit data, with recent Fire Service data assisting”;
- “Intensive analysis of the areas with the least applications against modelling”;
- “Landlords written to advise that they need to apply for a licence to avoid enforcement action”;
- “Enforcement and Compliance teams working through all Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in first 3 years of the scheme – targeted and intelligence driven”; and
- “Review data in years 4 and 5 to consider areas that may be included in extension of the scheme.”
Local landlord Brian Fish provided these details of the minutes of the meeting for the media.
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