Nottingham has seen the highest percentage rise in rent compared to anywhere else in the country – with a controversial licensing scheme being blamed for the hike.
Highest year on year rise
A research team at Zoopla has created a detailed insight into the UK's housing market and found that Nottingham has experienced the highest year on year rise.
Rental growth in Nottingham has risen from 4.3 percent to 5.4 percent over the space of a year with the average rent being £661.
But there’s more developments regarding the controversial scheme which Nottingham City Council launched back in August 2018 to crack down on bad landlords who leave properties in poor or unsafe conditions.
Fees increased by a considerable amount
The City Council has made the decision to hike up the selective licensing fee by a considerable amount.
As it stands, to obtain a licence, accredited landlords must pay £480 per property while non-accredited landlords will pay £780.
A decision to hike up the price for landlords was made on November 19 by the council's executive board. This is now set to rise to £670 for accredited landlords and £890 for non-accredited landlords. These changes are expected to come into play in March 2020. Major concerns have been raised that good landlords are being penalised, and already meet the criteria set out by the council.
Lloyd Rumbold Comments
Director of Belvoir Nottingham Central and Belvoir Nottingham West, Lloyd Rumbold, has commented:
“My perspective is that I believe the increase is born out of the level of administration and staff required within the council to facilitate the licence applications.
The council are already working up to and in some cases over a year to process initial applications that were submitted back in July 2018 and this is something that we also underestimated ourselves when we offered to apply for licenses on behalf of landlords.
It isn’t so much the application that creates the delay, but the associated requirements for consents between interested parties such as mortgage lenders and joint ownerships that are necessary to complete the license applications.
The upside is that those who asked and acted proactively will benefit from avoiding the increase. Although, clearly when the license runs out after 5 years, the increased costs will again likely rise and the cost of rents in the city will follow. It will be the tenants again (as predicted from the outset and subsequently proven) who will be the ones to bear the overall costs.”
A spokeswoman for Nottingham City Council has said; "The scheme is self-funding and the council has reviewed the licensing process and found it wasn’t recovering all of the costs, so fees have to increase to reflect that – but it remains the case that we are not allowed to make a profit from licence fees.
"Over 18,000 landlords have already applied at the lower rate and we will work to engage with landlords who are not registered for the scheme – we would urge any of them to apply before the price rise at the end of March.
"We are also changing the way licences are applied to blocks of flats in the city, so that instead of applying for each individual apartment, there is the option for an applicant to apply to licence the whole block – subject to certain criteria being met within the new policy."
Staying on top of the latest regulations
At Belvoir, we always stay on top of, and inform our landlords of changes in laws, regulations and other information that is useful for them to know.
If you are a Landlord or a tenant, feel free to get in touch or nip into our office in Nottingham City Centre if you have any questions about the scheme, we will be more than happy to talk things through with you.
