From November Gedling council in Nottinghamshire wants its Selective Licensing extended to four additional wards. 

This follows a pilot where over 78 per cent of properties inspected on one area apparently needed work to bring them up to the legal standard required. Over 400 properties were inspected as part of the scheme and 10 per cent of them needed urgent work to make them safe to live in, including removing imminent hazards in areas such as fire safety because of inadequate fire protection or detection, which all required immediate action to protect tenants.

The consultation for the extension of the scheme received more than 200 responses and over 450 written comments which have been analysed and the feedback used to shape the extension to the scheme.

The scheme starts on November 1 and online application for landlords are now open.

Council leader John Clarke says: “A key priority for the council is to improve the health and wellbeing of our residents and reduce health inequalities and to do that it’s vital that our resident’s homes are safe and suitable.

“Following the success of our pilot scheme … which saw a number of potentially lifesaving improvements carried out as a direct result of Selective Licensing, we’re extending the scheme to additional parts of the borough where we know standards of living could be improved.

“We’ll work with landlords to make the necessary improvements to their properties to improve the lives and safety of their tenants and under the scheme we’ll be able to do more to step in to help even more residents and landlords if needed.”