New enforcement rules covering living conditions in private rented housing in Hull look set to be introduced after Humber Landlords Association lost a High Court battle to stop the regulations coming into play.
Humber Landlords Association insists that standards in the private rented housing in Hull have got better as buy-to-let landlords respond to a flurry of legislation aimed at improving living conditions for renters, but Hull Council believes that there is still room for improvement when it comes to improving living conditions.
Cllr John Black, Hull Council’s portfolio holder neighbourhoods and housing, said: “We see the misery caused on a daily basis by bad landlords. Inadequate housing conditions have a huge impact on the health of families and children living in this city.
“Whilst the vast majority of private landlords provide good quality properties that are safe, legal and decent we have a duty to protect residents from those that do not and welcome that the High Court has today ruled in our favour to enable us to do this.”
Humber Landlords Association, which was supported in the dispute by the Residential Landlords Association and the National Landlords Association, fears that the council’s policy to adopt a more stringent position on the issue could lead to landlords facing “unfair” additional charges in order to comply with formal enforcement notices requiring property owners to make improvements, as opposed to the council’s existing informal notice process.
Speaking ahead of the court case, Humber Landlords Association’s chairman, Danny Gough, said: “The reasons given by the council for this change, which ignores national guidance applicable to all types of enforcement action by councils, is to protect tenants from eviction in retaliation for them requesting repairs.
“The council produced no evidence to justify their claim that this is a problem in Hull. They do not even keep records of cases where this happens.”
He added: “Penalising responsible landlords is bad practice on the part of the council. Trying to generate a fee income hurts the tenants of responsible landlords.
“Inevitably the cost is passed on as part of the rent or money that will now have to go to the council, could be spent on improving properties in the city.”
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hull blew £200 million
Good LL would just like to see proper enforcement of existing regulations!!!
Just invest in enforcement.
Adding additional costs to LL achieves nothing apart from causing rent increases for tenants.
All good LL would welcome enforcement as it is rogue LL that depress rents as they are unfair competition to LL who do comply with regulations.
If I come across a rogue LL I would have NO compunction in shopping them to the authorities.
Rogue LL have depressed rents for decades.
Rents should be substantially increased which can only occur if rogue LL are eradicated
I agree Paul.
there should be a minimum rent that a landlord can charge . that way the accomadation would be 1st class.and on top of that when a dss tenant gets a ccj we should be able to deduct from what they claim. that way the great unwashed may start to look after the property .
As regards Civil Recovery it is very difficult to achieve such recovery when the DSS tenant has a CCJ as they allegedly never have any money.
So even though deductions might be allowed it could take decades to achieve recovery
I bothered obtaining CCJ and went further.
Complete and utter waste of my time and money.
So the way I deal with tenants that DON'T have a pot to p### in is NOT to take them on as tenants in the first place!
Which is why my tenant selection process involves stating
NO DSS!!!!
It looks like I will need to come up with some other sort of phraseology which makes it clear that I will not accept DSS tenants.
I would if they had a guarantor that had a RGI policy on them for the duration of the tenancy.
You would have to be some sort of mug to stand as a guarantor for a DSS tenant.
To date I haven't found anyone stupid enough to do this for a DSS tenant!!!!!!!!!!!
I certainly consider there should be a minimum standard of property fit for letting purposes.
If this removes numbers of properties from the market then so be it.
Of course such determination of what is a minimum level is very subjective.
Who would inspect to determine the property status!!?
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