Housing Supply
Debate between Clive Betts and Andrew LovePrivate Rented Sector
Debate between Clive Betts and Andrew Love
Mr Betts
The Committee received evidence of concerns in some local authorities that the squeeze on their resources was affecting their abilities in respect of the private rented sector. We tried to look at how authorities could deal with the challenges that they face most effectively with the resources that they have. One thing that we looked at was licensing.
On balance, the Committee did not come down in favour of a national licensing scheme. That is essentially because, over a number of reports, we have tended to be localist and to believe that local authorities should be allowed to make such choices for themselves. We went to Leeds, which has a very good accreditation scheme, under which there is good training and advice for landlords, which the landlords really appreciate. However, we were told by landlords and tenants that the problem is that it is the good landlords that join such schemes. They said, “It’s those landlords down the road you want to get hold of and they’re not going to volunteer.”
The selective licensing approach tends to be cumbersome, time-consuming and bureaucratic, and the criteria are very restricted. The Committee therefore asked whether we could relax the criteria and make them more flexible so that local authorities could engage in selective licensing if they wanted to. We also asked whether, in a more general sense, a local authority could have an accreditation scheme that was mandatory, so that it would include all landlords, including those who do not want to join.
Unfortunately, on both issues, the Government’s response was not as helpful as we would have liked. They said no to mandatory accreditation schemes and no to a review of the flexibility of selective licensing. The Government’s recent consultation document does include changes to selective licensing, but they are talking about tightening the criteria, rather than making them more flexible. That seems to be a retrograde step. All our evidence suggested that that was too cumbersome and does not work, and authorities that want to make it work find it difficult to make it happen.
We are apparently consulting on a landlord-specific, rather than property-specific, licensing or accreditation scheme, which the consultation document refers to as a suggestion from the Communities and Local Government Committee, although it was not. It has clearly come from somewhere, however, and it may not be unwelcome if it gives local authorities another set of powers and another way to deal with rogue landlords who are causing problems. If those landlords who persistently cause problems with individual properties have to become part of a mandatory registration scheme, that could be perhaps not a complete response to the Committee’s request, but at least a helpful step in the right direction, as we suggested.
Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
All the evidence from London suggests that the problem is not low demand as the criteria state, but high demand. Surely all that evidence leads us to believe that we need greater flexibility in licensing, otherwise we will not get to the heart of the problem.
Mr Betts
Precisely, and the Committee’s view was very simple. These arrangements are—or at least should be—for local authorities to determine. Local authorities know their own areas and there is a big difference between one local authority and another. Even within London and within local authorities themselves there are big differences, so we hope the Government will recognise the value of giving a local authority a range of powers to tailor requirements to the needs of a particular area.