A new council licensing scheme has been given the go ahead by the government.
Peterborough council’s selective licensing scheme will be run in parts of the city with high levels of privately rented accommodation.
The cost of a licence will be £608 if an application is made in the first 30 days of the scheme going live, and £908 for the remainder of the five year life of the scheme.
The previous selective licensing scheme operated in Peterborough between 2016 and 2021 but there are changes to the new regime’s boundaries.
The council is directly partnering with Home Safe to administer the application process. Unlike the previous selective licensing scheme, landlords will need to apply directly to Home Safe.
Once the application portal goes live, private landlords with properties in the designated areas will be able to apply for a licence from March 11 2024 when the scheme goes live.
To obtain a licence, landlords will have to meet certain standards and comply with conditions which include ensuring the property has a gas safety certificate, working smoke alarms and safe electrical appliances and furniture. These requirements are mandatory licence conditions.
A statement says the council “will also require landlords to meet a host of other criteria which includes monitoring overcrowding, resolving anti-social behaviour and legally removing tenants where there is evidence of criminal activity or anti-social behaviour, ensuring properties are in good condition and free of waste at the start of each tenancy, as well as advising and reminding tenants of their responsibilities for the storage and disposal of household waste.”
A council spokesperson says: “We are fully committed to working with landlords, the majority of whom provide decent, well-managed and well-maintained accommodation, to ensure that tenants are living in the best possible conditions.
“The introduction of selective licensing will help enhance the work we already do with landlords operating in the private rented sector. It will allow us to have a more active role in ensuring all private tenants can live in housing that is safe, of high standard, appropriately managed and offers appropriate tenancy protection.
“I would also like to thank our Housing Standards team within Regulatory Services that has worked incredibly hard to achieve a scheme that now has the approval of the secretary of state and will improve the quality of life for everyone in an area by ensuring a consistently high standard of privately rented accommodation.”
It will become an offence for a landlord to let a property in a designated area without applying for a Selective Licence. Landlords with unlicensed rented properties, who those who fail to adhere to the conditions of the licence, can face a civil penalty notice of up to £30,000 or an unlimited fine from the court. Landlords could also be ordered to repay up to 12 months' rent.
In such circumstances, the council would then consider whether it was appropriate to revoke the licence and take over the management of the property.
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"Latest council licensing scheme takes over £900 from each tenant"
There you go, fixed the headline for you. Tenant always pays. I've got a load of licence renewals coming up in Feb. Rents rising accordingly
more costs for the tenants
Dear Tenant, your rent is increasing due to the decisions made by xxxx your local councillor.
Please do not hesitate to contact them to express your views.
Council has decided to push up rents by £75 a month to ensure the landlord fills out an online questionnaire to state he is doing what he legally has to do anyway. This is theft, pure and simple. Shameful behaviour. Next they’ll be demanding we pay “protection money”
It not £900.00 add all the other requirements they now want like Fire Assessment certificate every year cost me £220.00.
It didn’t matter that I had supplied them with interlinked Fire Alarm Cert’ annually at Emergency Lighting Cert’ Annually. The Gas Cert & Service Annually, this all cost a great deal of money and reduces fire risk far better than the Assessment photographing what you have already supplied.
Then you have all the physical material Compliance.
This is yet another Council not capable of doing their job and have to sub it out. They are not capable of dealing with their own Administration but we are expected to be able to it and pay them for the work we do, while we have to supply & maintain the Property. Deal with the Tenants and all the extra requirements the Regulators have loaded on there. What is their input apart from sitting on their bottom making a m. it’s marvellous you can save £300.00 if you are quick, excuse me isn’t that our money and we still loose £600.00. but there’s a £300.00 penalty if you are not quick imagine that but it takes them 6 months to look at the Application. They bribe us with our own money.
PS. Now they want my Anti-Social Behaviour Policy before they issue the license.
Do we have a housing Crisis surely not ?????.
Paterborough rent increases then
It would be great if we had a body to represent Landlords that challenged the government, councils and rogue activist groups.
It could have a catchy title like National Landlords Association or Residential Landlords Association, they could go into battle for all landlords and we could all be in awe of a leader of this mythical group with a hero's name like Big Ben The Beadle.....
Here's in hope .....
You know that would be really good wouldn’t it. Imagine
This cost will be passed onto the tenant's plus the extra tax.
No need for Council to visit or for licensing it’s all twaddle.
I now got the fire assessment 15 pages and every aspect photographed issues stated and documented. Nothing for Council to see if they come that they don’t know already and all the other Certifications that I had to supply. Obviously the Council’s want homeless or they wouldn’t be going out of their to cause it.
I have a few more things to do following the report even though it probably the most Compliant house in the post code.
It doesn’t matter it will be vacant longer waiting for the license while paying double C/tax. On the bright side they are loosing 45% income tax on lost income.
I was looking at a couple of properties there....not anymore! So we all would have to pay to do more of the council's work and paperwork and policies?? What's actually in it for the LL? What's in it for the tenant...apart from rent rises??
Talk about perpetuating the housing crisis!
So the question is, will the ‘Portal of Portals’ proposed in the RRB effectively remove the need for licensing schemes?
Answer, absolutely yes! Next question. Will local licensing schemes then be withdrawn? Answer, of course not!
So, we all end up being forced to pay time and again for completely unnecessary and repeated duplication, ‘Some may say’ that’s extortion!
Even Beadles about mustered the guts to put this point to Gove who actually agreed with him! The very next day he (Gove) authorised 2 further huge SL schemes.
Gove’s gutter politics goes on and on endlessly fuelling distrust. He’s heading for some full on consequences!
My local council included in their selective licensing scheme a street where I own two properties. The ostvwas £600 per property (my two properties were assessed at £3,000 as they were split into 5 flats), the justification for the scheme was high levels of antisocial behaviour. I went to the next "Neighhourhood Forum" meeting and asked the Police representative for statistics on antisocial behaviour in that street. The answer was "None on record for the previous 5 years". The justification was then changed to high number of empty properties in the street. I provided evidence that the only empty property was one that was held up by probate delays after the death of the owner and that my agent had a waiting list fir people wanting to move to this street. The street was dropped from the final scheme. Of course it didn't stop 5 "random" visits by the Fire Brigade in the next 18 months!
Good on you for taking them to task- we should all do this at every opportunity. These councils thrive on us all shrugging and paying up without getting them to justify themselves.
“We are fully committed to working with landlords, the majority of whom provide decent, well-managed and well-maintained accommodation, to ensure that tenants are living in the best possible conditions” so let’s tar them all with the same brush, lubbly jubbly, loadsa money.
Google marston court estate for what a mess a council can make at running properties
Certainly don’t need their … help ..
There is no level to which councils will not go in order to fabricate justifications for licensing schemes. Blatant lies (as Stephen outlines) coupled with grossly manipulative so called ‘consultations’ clearly designed to illicit exclusively pro council responses. Too many of these schemes are nothing more than money making ‘scams’, and this criminality has been going on far too long.
No tenant I have housed has gained anything from these schemes except an unwelcome rent increase.
Now the same councils are harmoniously bleating that the PRS can’t/won’t house their homeless. Well, I wonder why!
Just another overhead to add to the rent. The tenant can always then complain to the local council regarding the introduction of this fee.
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