A partnership between Hull City Council and the Residential Landlords Association is piloting a innovative self-regulation scheme for local landlords.
The council is piloting this scheme as an alternative to selective licensing and will review its’ success with the Humber Landlords Association, other partners and residents. The project aims to improve health and safety conditions at 1,200 houses in the city’s Shires and De la Pole areas.
Some 45 landlords have already attended the first stage of four RLA training sessions on how to self-assess their own rented residential properties – which explain how to identify, prioritise and rectify any hazards they find.
Landlords are then required to submit their findings and relevant certificates to the council with details of any remedial work and the council can then exempt the property from internal inspection. Hull City Council will be pro-actively inspecting properties whose landlords have not undergone the training or who do not complete the self assessment forms.
The details of the scheme and content of the one-day training courses were also negotiated and agreed with Hull and District Landlords Association.
Hull City Council is proactively inspecting and enforcing housing standards within these target areas; but exempting self-regulating landlords from the inspection programme enables the Council to target its resources more effectively against non-compliant landlords.
The Shires and De la Pole areas were chosen as pilot areas for self assessment because Hull City Council was already considering them for compulsory selective licensing.
“As a test bed for self-regulation it was a perfect alternative,” says Neil Marsden, of the RLA’s Local Government Liaison Group. “It was also a good way of promoting the council’s accreditation scheme. Raising standards of expertise and professionalism among private residential landlords is essential if we are to turn the tide of over-regulation in the private rented sector.”
Self-assessment revolves around the 12 most common hazards in Hull’s late Victorian two-storey terraced properties – including cold, condensation and fire safety. Importantly, landlords are now effectively assessing property condition rather than simply managing tenancies – and this, says Neil Marsden, “makes this self-regulation pilot scheme of national significance. The lessons learned from its success could be rolled out across the country”.
The Residential Landlords Association is a leading national organisation with members owning over 100,000 properties in the UK’s professional private rented sector. The range of members’ services – on www.rla.org.uk – includes legal advice, insurance, financial services, credit referencing and training.
