A leading officer in a Labour council which has in the past taken landlords to court says this process is so complex it actually gets in the way of improving housing standards.

A report written by Bristol city council officers looks at the web of national laws governing HMPs in particular and says they need to be  “simplified dramatically” to help local authorities improve the lot of private tenants. 

“We regularly take landlords to court. We have a number of enforcement opportunities available and we had an HMO in Sea Mills that was fined more than £60,000” according to Bristol council’s private housing and accessible homes manager Tom Gilchrist.

He was speaking at a meeting debating the report.

However he continued: “But the reality is that taking a landlord to court, using the complex legislation that housing is, takes officers out from doing what property licensing is which is around improving standards. Property licensing is about improving conditions for tenants, it’s not just about the big stick approach of prosecuting landlords.”

The report suggests the council’s enforcement team is too small to combat any but the most serious breaches of rules in the city’s 14,000 HMOs. This meant that many complaints about noise, rubbish and parking were not dealt with adequately. 

The report to councillors said three rent repayment orders had been issued so far in 2020 and around 20 landlord licenses had been refused.

However, the Bristol Post newspaper – reporting on the debate – says that one councillor claimed landlords were dealt with by the authority too leniently with “every possible mitigation and ways out are given to landlords”.

Housing manager Gilchrist told the councillors: “The existing legislative framework needs to be simplified dramatically to enable us to easily take action against somebody quickly.

“At the moment the legislative framework is really complicated, it’s difficult to pinpoint responsibility for certain overarching offences and then having sufficient power to ensure the person who is causing the problem is taken to court and properly punished.

“At the moment that is quite difficult to do across all of our workstreams.”