For those of you that read our last article, we now have a follow up to the story, as Director of Belvoir Lettings for Nottingham Central and Nottingham West, Lloyd Rumbold attended a meeting to discuss the matter on Thursday.
What happened at the meeting?
The objectives set out by Nottingham City Council’s Private Rental Sector Licencing was discussed at length on Thursday evening and was met with plenty of objection from the majority of its attendees.
The Councils objective appears simple and forms only part of Nottingham City Council’s commitment since 2015 to raise the standards of housing and rental accommodation in the city. This is part of their 4 year scheme to improve the standard of housing and reduce anti-social behaviour which also features high on their agenda and they believe the private rental sector to be the main contributor.
Which areas drew the most attention?
Interestingly, the area which drew most attention and continued to be referred to during the evening was the Lenton area of the city, which most of you will already know does consist of a large volume of student occupied property.
The predominant aspect of the anti-social behaviour they refer to is the excess noise and litter that they have associated with the area.
Rogue Landlord Register
The third less publicised but arguably most advantageous element to NCC’s PRS licencing plans is to create a ‘Rogue Landlord register’ (their words, not mine!). I anticipate this is an effort to focus future resources on a known group of concerns. In a world of budget cuts and limited resources it seems entirely reasonable and even prudent for the City Council to manage a minority of underperforming entities to achieve the greatest impact with the greatest efficiency. I’m all for it, but I remain unconvinced that the mass majority of Good landlords should pay a blanket licence to police the few and it appears I was not alone in this view.
The first thing we need to understand about selective licencing is that this is nothing new. In fact it’s a power that has been made available to local authorities since 2004. It enables a council to designate an area where it believes additional support is required and provide funding through a proposed licencing scheme where applicable.
Evidence and public consultation is required prior to sanctioning and below is a link for you to have your say before 31st March, when it will be presented to the Secretary of State in early summer.
Have your say
If you object to the prospect of this licencing it is really important for you to voice your concerns and you can do so on the link below; I will of course be voicing my perspective from both an agent and private landlord point of view but I am just one voice and it will take many more to overturn the current licencing proposal.
Have your say on the N.C.C Consultation page link here.
DASH
I have discovered there is one way of reducing the potential cost of this license and this is to become a DASH registered Landlord.
In brief the accreditation consists of a three stages, the first is generic address registration, (5 mins) the second is a Landlord Development Course which I understand consists of 6 Modules that will take circa (30 mins) in total. The third is an on-site property inspection of one of your own properties to gauge standards.
DASH is an organisation that is recognised and partnered with NCC as well as other city/district councils that seeks to train and accredit landlords that are registered on their scheme. As a matter of interest I have personally submitted an application as a test bed yesterday morning.
The initial registration is free and apparently this will entitle you to qualify for a reduced charge of Nottingham City Council’s proposed licence by £140. The process does seem quite automated on first impression and leads me to question whether this is just another box ticking exercise, however concerns over DASH’s ability to also handle a large influx of registrations is doubtful and this is somewhat substantiated by the fact that I am yet to receive my login details and the current league time for booking a property inspection is unknown as no date was available to book me in at the time of my application. I will keep you updated as to this outcome.
If you’re interested in becoming a DASH accredited landlord please click here.
There are currently 100 laws and 400 regulations that govern the Private rental sector. For me this additional licensing proposal is a bridge too far and that the resolution to the problem should not be funded by the mass majority of landlords in the city that are already maintaining standards that exceed that of the scheme. Make sure you have your say.
Lloyd Rumbold
