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Jackie Welbourne
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Jackie Welbourne
Bristol is introducing Additional Licensing city wide without and evidence of need except the council's own incredibly strong motivations to plug its own funding gap. The consultation process was a joke. I suspect similar situation with other councils. I believe there should be a legal challenge on the basis that the 'licensing service' that landlords are being forced to pay for IS NOT value for money but a blatant money making scheme. I accept that with Mandatory HMOs there are more people in the property and more regulations and may require inspections; however for anything less than Mandatory HMOs, membership of an organisation like NRLA with an online portal to upload images, electric and gas safety certificates, for your properties along with accredited landlord training would be easy and cheap to do. ie we should not be allowing councils to get away with charging £1,800 per property for a selective or additional license. It's crazy and similar to the banks being challenged for charging £40 for a failed £2 cheque etc (where it didn't cost them that to auto send a letter out, so they lost the case and had to pay out many many £millions to customers back-claims of being over charged, some clause of being not fair and equal in contract law). The high fees the councils are charging the landlords for selective and additional licences do not represent the amount of 'work' involved to charge that high fee, Bristol says it 'hopes' to visit at some point in the duration of the license. So sounds more like a get rich quick scheme to me, take your money and run, when surely the council's inspection should be carried out at the beginning before any license is issued? There should be a legal challenge and a fee cap which is what happened with the banks. If there are complaints about particular landlords properties that are sub-standard etc, re non Mandatory HMOs, then the council should just put their energies investigate that particular problem and if complaints are genuine and landlords are either abusing the system or don't make good, then interventions and fines for these particular bad landlords that are match the cost of that aspect of things.

From: Jackie Welbourne 05 March 2024 15:12 PM

Jackie Welbourne
Bruce, whereas Thurrock made a pigs ear of terrible risky investments that went wrong, most councils are suffering 13 years of Tory central funding cuts. Havering grant in 2010 was £70m pa, cut to £1.5m current year. Running costs have gone up, drastic service cuts made by Havering, more pressure on these restricted services as we now have far more elderly people plus young people re families whom have migrated here whom needing support and care in our borough than we had 13 years back. The result is that recently Havering has had to request some special government capitalisation loan against property it owns so the council doesn't go bust, and the figures don't match up that Havering will be able to pay this back as it is just plugging and immediate deficit that is predicted to rise. So what happens to the assets held when the default on that loan ultimately happens, likely within 5 years? Typical London Councils have seen 70% reduction in central government funding since 2010. So ditto other councils. Right to buy asset striped councils of their social housing assets because 80% of the money from those BMV sales were eaten up by central government and councils NEVER got the money that Thatcher promised so social housing was never rebuilt as Thatcher promised. It was not the right to buy scheme that was wrong, but that we were duped by Thatcher into believing that all the money was going back to the councils to build new social housing stock. The end result is that councils now have limited social housing and income from this, increased homelessness, council tax is much higher and residents get less services for paying it, so all in all councils are extremely financially motivated to put in place these licensing schemes as a money spinner to keep afloat. The system is broken. Whom are the winners here?

From: Jackie Welbourne 05 March 2024 14:27 PM

Jackie Welbourne

From: Jackie Welbourne 13 February 2024 11:18 AM

Jackie Welbourne
Across the UK, Councils faced a £15bn real terms reduction to core government funding between 2010 and 2020, from £41bn to £26bn, the Institute for Government found. However, in that time they did raise 25 per cent more in real terms through council tax as ministers encouraged rises as a way to generate cash. Thoughts: Though I disagree with Haringey's tactics, charging more for council tax and cutting council services is likely the only option to deal with drastic central funding cuts under this current government?? Many London boroughs are the worst hit from Tory funding cuts. My council is London Borough of Havering, and their funding from Government has been slashed to just £1.5m today from £70m back in 2010, despite their burden of having one of the oldest resident populations needing the most care and support. Haringey's core government funding is now an estimated £143m less a year in real terms than it was in 2010/11 (as of 13 Dec 2023), by Nov 2022 this had amounted to a 63% cut in their core central government funding since 2010/11. Maybe the REAL issue is the government slashing council budgets and loss of housing stock. Council houses were sold off under right to buy and Thatchers big lie that councils were to receive all the proceeds to invest into buying new social/council housing - when 80% of that sale price was absorbed into central government coffers and not reinvested, councils only got 20% of that reduced sale price and lots of restrictions put in place to even allow councils to use that 20% to build any new social/council housing. Councils have been rightly screwed over by drastic central core government funding cuts since 2010 and and have also lost a good proportion of their social housing stock assets over the past 40+ years without due compensation, so doubly poor. This also somewhat explains some councils' motivations for expanding selective and additional licensing schemes to borough wide, where these is little evidence of any need for them, in order to make up the deficit from the funding cuts. Frankly regulatory proof that such rental properties are being well-managed and certifcations up-to-date could be submitted cheaply by landlords/agents online annually for each property at very low cost maybe in partnership with NRLA membership, and the appropriate records as a checklist proof shared just with the council concerned. I would still keep the licensing and council inspections for the Mandatory HMO's, and the council can then focus their energy and resources doing inspections (and when necessary following up with procecutions) relating to properties being reported as problematic or being run by rogue landlords. Social and Council housing should also be judged by same standards as expected of private rental accommodation, some council's are not doing the repairs they should be doing with some of their properties in a shocking state.

From: Jackie Welbourne 22 January 2024 13:56 PM

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