A senior Enfield councillor insists that discarding Enfield’s private landlord licensing scheme is not seen as a failure.

In December 2014 a local landlord took Enfield council to the High Court and the judgment decreed that the council had not carried through the correct legal consultation procedures, therefore the scheme was null and void, until the council acted accordingly.

The council intended to implement the scheme in April this year, whereby all privately rented properties had to attain a licence costing £500 each for a five period. Failure to comply would have meant that landlords and letting agents would have been fined £20,000 plus the threat of a criminal record, any breaches to the scheme would have cost £5,000.

Councillor Ahmet Oykener, cabinet member for housing, refuses to admit that the scheme had been a “waste of money” and delegated the blame onto the Government for "moving the goalposts".

 

He told a local newspaper that: “I do not believe it has been a failure - we have learnt from it. If the Government left the policy alone instead of changing the goalposts, I believe we would have reached a point where landlords would have appreciated our scheme.

“I do not believe it has been a waste of money, we would not be discussing it if there was not an issue. All around us, local authorities are implementing them, it shows there is a problem in that sector.”

He is adamant that he will review the new regulations to follow through the correct procedure to, introduce the licensing scheme.

Oykener said: “We will do the best to protect our residents and this means approaching the new Government regulations with an open mind.

“However, I remain extremely concerned about increasing areas of privately rented properties in the borough, which may not be of adequate standards, and in the light of the new regulations will look closely at means of dealing with areas experiencing for example poor property conditions or high levels of crime.”

The leader of the Enfield Conservative group, Councillor Terry Neville, is highly critical of the council’s scheme and actions calling them an “utter humiliation”.

Neville said: “They have wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to introduce a scheme that we have consistently told them was completely unnecessary as a borough-wide scheme, but also unworkable, and only enforceable at huge further cost.

“They were never going to win the appeal case in court and this decision not to go ahead with the scheme is recognition of that.

“This failed attempt to implement a landlords licensing scheme has been nothing but a costly shambles and could have been avoided. The way this Labour council wastes our money and then claims it can't manage on what it has is disgraceful, and Councillor Oykener should be considering his position.”