7th
Dec 2023
Around £2m of government funding is being used by Liverpool City Council to form a new Taskforce which focussing on identifying and bringing down criminal landlords.
The council says the new team the Private Sector Housing Intelligence and Enforcement Task Force will share information between the cities children’s services, police and other departments.
The team will focus upon the council’s ‘most complex types of cases’ where tenants are too afraid to let the police know about crimes in case there are serious reprisals. The team will also contact other nearby local authorities as criminal landlords tend to have properties in more than one area.
The taskforce is not involved with Liverpool City’s landlord licensing scheme for around 70 per cent of the PRS properties in the city.
Sarah Doyle, Liverpool council’s cabinet member for housing, says: “[Criminal landlords] could be using a property to store drugs, to keep people there that they are trafficking or using a property where there's illegal work happening. We know from the police that these things are happening but it hasn't been linking back with council services. So where the police are doing a raid, we want to know if it's a landlord."
She continues: “Tenants might be too scared to speak up and needed support to blow the whistle. People can feel scared to go out of their homes. Streets where once kids used to go out and play, businesses might want to move out because they feel the area is being run down. One property can change the dynamic of a place."
News Archive »