Landlords with properties in Newham, London, are invited to attend a meeting organised by the National Landlords Association on Monday to learn about controversial plans for compulsory licensing right across the borough.
Newham council is planning to introduce compulsory licensing for all landlords and charge a fee per property.
The NLA’s free meeting will give landlords an opportunity to hear from Sir Robin Wales, Mayor of Newham, who will describe the proposals and brief landlords on the impact the changes could have.
In turn, Richard Lambert, the NLA’s new chief executive, will outline the effect the changes could have on landlords and describe more effective strategies for dealing with rogue landlords.
He will join David Salusbury, NLA chairman, on a panel to answer questions from landlords on the proposal.
The council is holding a consultation period inviting submissions until December 4.
Salusbury said: “The NLA is concerned that compulsory licensing in Newham is the wrong answer to the issues the council hopes to address.
“In this time of housing shortage, local authorities should be supporting landlords to provide good-quality accommodation, not imposing unnecessary extra regulation on those who already comply with the rules.
“We believe that it will only add to the red tape and costs that landlords already face. Local authorities have adequate powers to tackle rogue operators. Licensing will only make the business of letting more difficult.
“I encourage landlords to attend this meeting to help the NLA put our case to the mayor and to make their objections clear to the council during the consultation period.”
The meeting is being held on Monday at Stratford Circus, Theatre Square, Stratford, London E15 1BX from 6.30pm. It is open to all landlords, not just NLA members.
.png)
Comments
Whilst in theory this does sound like a good idea. On the positive side it will force some landlords to offer better quality accommodation.
However it will also mean some landlords will sell their properties, therefore reducing supply of rental property in the area, therefore in the medium term will mean higher rents. If the expensive charges of £500 are to be believed, these will in turn be passed onto the tenants again increasing rents, in the short term.
In reality many rogue landlords will just continue to ignore the law anyway, whilst the majority of law abiding landlords (who are not the issue) will become licensed. This does not solve the problem but just increases costs.
A Better solution
There is already a landlord deposit system in place for new tenancy agreements from around 2009. this is government legislation Why not have a scheme that co-ordinate this together by forcing all landlords to provide the deposit scheme certificates per property to Newham council or better still if Newham where to have some better form of transparency into looking at this data, this would be a step in the right direction of creating less bureaucracy rather than more and at the same time protection tenants from rent rises in the area.