A council in the south east of England says it is “exploring the possibility” of introducing a huge landlord licensing scheme.
Councillors agreed for £50,000 of work to be carried out to assess if there is a need for selective or additional licensing for homes in Medway. A statement last evening by the council, to Landlord Today, says: “The £50,000 budget was approved by Cabinet to ensure that we can robustly and comprehensively assess if there is a need for selective or additional licensing for homes in the private rented sector in Medway. The approved budget will also help facilitate engagement and consultation, so that the views of landlords, tenants and those with a stake in their local area are considered.”
Medway is a unitary authority covering much of Kent including Rochester and Gillingham; now around 20 per cent of all households rent privately.
No timescale has been given for the feasibility study and once that is completed - assuming councillors nod the idea through - there would have to be formal consultation periods.
A spokesperson for the council says: “This is a really positive step towards addressing some of the challenges residents are facing with private rented properties. We want everyone in Medway to be able to live in properties which are maintained to a high standard. We also recognise the challenges that landlords face and part of these new measures, if introduced, would include advice for landlords.”
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The public sector wheels move so slowly and so financially incompetent
The above statement would be more accurate without the word financially.
I’m seriously thinking of unsubscribing to these emails as it’s like reading a comic with some of the headlines and content. It’s hard to believe some of the ideas being floated about. I almost wish we’d all sell up and those in government then realise how they are fxcking things up
Most of the challenging tenants are in the social sector and they are exempt licensing
Why don't they just cut to the chase.
Their's no exploring to do, the figures have already been calculated in their budgets.
The average LL's licensing costs £400 with discounts. I recently paid £300 in Newham, with a discount which would've cost £750.
Let's take the figure of £300 per LL and times that by another 300 LL's within the borough, and you have a total figure of £90,000.
Assuming that you have 1,500 LL's with that borough, including both private and limited companies, then you're looking at £450,000.
Now that's something worth exploring, with better yields and a great ROI, from the council's perspective and certainly not ours!
I would like to see a breakdown of how the license scheme works and how the funds employed are used. Unless that was broken down prior to being invoiced then I would respectfully decline this and take it off rental. Another set of tenants kicked out for no reason.
Pay double council tax when its empty, tax on non existent profits... ENOUGH
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