More than 100 councils across England have been awarded a share of over £4 million to crack down on criminal landlords and letting agents.
The new funding will be used by councils to take enforcement action against rogue landlords and advise tenants of their housing rights. It is part of an ongoing drive to make the private rented sector fairer and stamp out criminal practices for good. Among the councils to benefit from the funding are:
- 21 councils across Yorkshire and Humberside – to train over 100 enforcement officers across the region to ensure standards are being met by landlords;
- Northampton – to create a ‘Special Operations Unit’ to enforce against the very worst landlords responsible for over 100 homes in the town;
- Thurrock – to work with the care service to ensure the most vulnerable young tenants are in decent, well-maintained homes; and
- Greenwich – to trial new technology to identify particularly cold homes to ensure renters are warm over the winter period.
Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said: “It’s completely unacceptable that a minority of unscrupulous landlords continue to break the law and provide homes which fall short of the standards we rightly expect – making lives difficult for hard-working tenants who just want to get on with their lives.
“Everyone deserves to live in a home that is safe and secure and the funding will strengthen councils’ powers to crack down on poor landlords and drive up standards in the private rented sector for renters across the country.”
The grants will support a range of projects to enable councils to make the best use of their existing legal powers, such as banning orders. This includes trialling innovative ideas, sharing best practice and targeted enforcement where landlords shirk their responsibilities.
The fund will help councils take on the most common challenges that stand in the way of tackling poor standards in the private rented sector, including:
- encouraging positive landlord/tenant/local authority relationships, particularly with vulnerable groups such as care leavers;
- the need for better information – on housing stock, and on landlords and agents operating in their areas;
- data sharing between authorities and agencies – identifying and bringing together different data sets to enable better enforcement targeting which protects the most vulnerable tenants;
- internal ‘ways of working’ – improving housing-specific legal expertise, in-house communication between teams, and tools and strategies to effectively implement policy; and
- innovative software – for enforcement officers to record their findings, gather evidence and streamline the enforcement process.
The Local Government Association welcomed the new funding, but called on the Government to give councils greater freedoms to set up local licensing schemes for private landlords.
Its housing spokesman Councillor Darren Rodwell said this would allow more effective action to be taken against landlords who exploited loopholes with no regard to their responsibilities.
By Patrick Mooney, Editor