12th
Feb 2016
Swansea Council has taken just one of the 450 complaints made by tenants about their ‘rogue landlords’ to court over the last twelve months last year, however just one resulted in court action.
It was discovered by Craig Lawton, who is hoping to win the Swansea West seat in the May Welsh Assembly’s election, between November 2014 and October 2015 that 477 constituents had sent in complaints to the council about their landlords. As only one complaint actually reached court he says that it is not down to the council operating a laissez-faire policy and not following up by taking enforcement action.
Mark Child, the Cabinet member for wellbeing and healthy city, clarified that after carrying out 155 property surveys, 39 cases where the situations were resolved between the landlord and tenant. In the other cases 66 enforcement actions were handed to the offending landlords and the rest were found to have no complaint.
Child said: ‘In fact, higher numbers of court action would suggest that landlords have failed to respond to improvement notices issued by the council. Fortunately we have a very good record of working with landlords in the city. This has resulted in a high level of compliance with improvement notices where landlords have carried out improvements and maintained their properties to an acceptable standard.’
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