Some £2m of government money has been channeled into a brand new country cil Taskforce aimed at identifying and clamping down on landlords undertaking a range of criminal activities.
Liverpool council says the operation in the city - to be known as the Private Sector Housing Intelligence and Enforcement Task Force - will involve sharing intelligence between different agencies including the police and children's services.
A dedicated team will look at what the council calls the ‘most complex types of cases’ where often tenants are afraid to report crimes for fear of reprisals. The team would also work with neighbouring local authorities, as the landlords concerned often have properties across more than one area.
The taskforce is separate to the council's controversial landlord licensing scheme, which covers about 70 per cent of the privately-rented housing sector in the city.
Sarah Doyle, Liverpool council’s cabinet member for housing, says: “[Criminal landlords] could be using a property to store drugs, to keep people there that they are trafficking or using a property where there's illegal work happening. We know from the police that these things are happening but it hasn't been linking back with council services. So where the police are doing a raid, we want to know if it's a landlord."
She continues: “Tenants might be too scared to speak up and needed support to blow the whistle. People can feel scared to go out of their homes.Streets where once kids used to go out and play, businesses might want to move out because they feel the area is being run down. One property can change the dynamic of a place."
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Any news yet of the about to be formed….. Tenant Criminal Investigation Unit 🤔😂😂
Another chance to give a council employee a long and ridiculous job title to justify a crazy salary and eye watering pension contributions.
So judging by the LONG name starting with Private Sector they will not be looking at Social Housing. Hmmm, I wonder where most of these problem properties are, social housing or private?
As good LLs we should welcome measures that seek to remove the criminal & rogue elements from our industry. However I am not certain that even this eyewatering sum of money will achieve anything worthwhile in the hands of local Govt.
Welcome to the mad mad world of local government where there are no internal connections.
1. Create a punitive, cash grabbing licensing scheme across most of the PRS in the City thus driving yet more decent landlords out of the sector.
2. This huge void is then filled by criminal landlords who laugh at the authorities. They thrive and make vast amounts of cash as desperate tenants have nowhere else to go.
3. The council then setup another pointless department filled with useless civil servants who will expend huge amounts of time and expense uncovering a couple of token criminals who will be taken to court. This will be splashed across the local rags in a blaze of glory and they will consider a job well done.
4. In the meantime the PRS goes into further meltdown and yet more criminals fill the void as they smell all that easy cash.
The above is the classic left hand / right hand issue that infects government in this country. Incompetent doesn't even come close to describing it.
The most effective way of removing the criminals is to allow market forces to play their part. Remove all the burdensome red tape and taxation from the sector, and leave sufficient light touch regulation in place (gas safeties etc). Give tenants a choice and they will choose decent houses provided by decent landlords. It's not rocket science!
Great post Grumpy, spot on.
The civil servants run this country. So yes more pointless jobs for the boys. Causing landlords f in headaches. And exiting the sector. And will only get worse. Yes Prime Minister- remember - very humorous BUT VERY TRUE!!!
Unfortunately, Trigger, we saw it as a brilliant comedy. The civil service saw it as a training manual.
A Taskforce to finish off what’s left of the Private Rented Rented Sector maybe the money would be better spent upgrading some of those slums in Liverpool.
Build task force to build more homes rather than wasting of tax money
"Where are these criminal LLs?
They're not here on this platform, but still, we're being attacked left, right, and centre, without discrimination.
Sometimes you have to ask: who's the real criminal hiding behind the laws implemented to trip up honest and innocent landlords?"
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