A former landlord who has quit the rental sector is continuing a long-running dispute with his local authority over the accuracy, or otherwise, of its selective licensing scheme.

Brian Fish from Seaham in County Durham does not dispute the need for selective licensing when appropriate, but claims his local authority – Durham County Council – has included areas which do not meet appropriate criteria for selective licensing. 

He says: “The primary benchmark set by the Housing Act is that there needs to be 19% or above of private rental property in the affected areas. There also needs to be high levels of secondary issues such as Anti Social Behaviour, Low Housing Demand, High Levels of deprivation etc.”

Fish has a letter dated January 2024 from an official of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – then known as the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities – saying explicitly that: “The high proportion of properties in the private rented sector (including licensed HMOs), in relation to the total number of properties in the area, applies to areas designated under the criteria of housing conditions, high levels of immigration, high levels of deprivation, and/or high levels of crime. The expectation is that this would align with or be higher than the national average of 19%.”

He claims that his local authority’s alleged failure to meet these criteria have turned the licensing scheme, which charges each landlord £500 and has been running for over three years now, into “a £12.5m revenue scheme for Durham County Council.”

Fish adds that attempts to obtain latest information from council sources have been rejected, but he has secured substantial data on the numbers of privately rented properties and licences granted from both the National Residential Landlords Association and his MP, Labour’s Grahame Morris.

He says: “My major concern is the tenants who are the most vulnerable and are going to be the long term victims, as landlords leave the market it’s clearly causing housing availability shortages and rent increases in the areas involved. The reality is that the scheme’s not compliant. Otherwise any area could be included.”

In response to the allegations, Ted Murphy – Durham County Council’s building safety and housing standards manager – has told Landlord Today: “The introduction of our selective licensing scheme in April 2022 followed detailed research into the private rented sector in County Durham. 

“At that time, we faced the same issue as many local authorities – a gap in tenure information, with the previous census having been carried out in 2011. In approving the scheme and its designated areas, the government agreed that we had adhered to all legislation and guidance.

“The modelling of the sector was completed in 2020, when we consulted on the selective licensing scheme. We will be reviewing the scheme in the next 12 months, which will include re-examining all of the data and considering any changes in the county’s private rented sector market since 2020.”

Murphy states that there is no 19% threshold required to be met, and that as the current licensing regime continues until 2027, there is an ongoing increase in the number of applications received from landlords. 

He adds: “The scheme will be reviewed in 2026 and if any area in deprivation is not considered to have a high proportion of housing in the private rented sector, or it is felt that selective licensing cannot help tackle this deprivation, those areas will not be included in future proposals if the scheme is renewed from April 2027.”