Council says landlords must be on call 24 hours a day...

Private landlords in a major UK city must now provide an emergency out-of-hours contact number for dealing with anti-social behaviour, the High Court has ruled.

In 2020 Belfast city council made the emergency contact a condition of winning consent and a license to own an HMO.

This followed substantial public concern about allegedly rowdy student behaviour at HMOs in the Holyland area of the city.

The condition was challenged by the Landlords Association for Northern Ireland but in the High Court Mr Justice Scoffield held that the authority was reasonable to expect this.

Private landlords and letting agents must now provide an out-of-hours contact number for all properties in the Belfast area shared by three or more people from different households.

Lawyers for the landlords argued that it placed their clients on call “24/7, 365 days a year” and that this was impractical for landlords with - in some cases - up to 100 tenants on their books.

It was also argued that landlords contacted in the middle of the night would be able to do no more - or possibly less - than could be achieved during office hours.

However Mr Justice Scoffield said there was no expectation of action being taken in the middle of the night to terminate leases or serve notices to quit.

Instead, he said, the council wanted to “leverage” influence over nuisance residents, and that landlords may be more successful in that regard than police or other officers.

“A landlord, or agent who manages the property, may have an ongoing and/or personal relationship with the tenants (and/or, in the case of student tenants, their parents) which might make the tenants more amenable to persuasion to moderate their behaviour at the landlord or agent’s behest” the judge stated.

“In some cases, the intervention of the landlord may be effective when engagement with council or police officers has not been.

“Requiring a landlord or agent to be available to engage in an emergency situation to discuss what assistance, if any, they are willing and able to give does not appear to me to be ultra vires the Council’s powers.”

Here’s the Ulster ITV News version of the story.

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