Councils failing to meet a minimum threshold of proactive inspections and enforcement actions shouldn’t be allowed to renew discretionary licensing or introduce new designations, according to Propertymark’s scathing assessment of the schemes.

It believes multi-million-pound licensing schemes don’t typically provide value for money while a lack of transparency prevents a meaningful assessment of whether the cash could be more effectively spent on targeted enforcement rather than the “management of a vast, often redundant, administrative database”.

It explains that evidence suggests a disproportionate amount of fee income is swallowed by the administrative costs of processing paperwork. “Structural inefficiencies within many licensing regimes mean that stage one administrative fees, covering data entry and document verification frequently account for 35% to 50% of the total licence cost, resulting in half of the fee being exhausted before a single on-site inspection is even scheduled.”

Cities

Propertymark says in some major cities, the ratio of enforcement officers to private rented dwellings is so low that proactive inspections are rare, with councils instead relying almost entirely on reactive interventions. “This lack of boots on the ground undermines the justification that licensing is a necessary tool for identifying ‘hidden’ hazards in the sector.”

About two-thirds of local authorities in England hadn’t prosecuted a landlord in the previous three years, despite councils receiving an estimated 300,000 complaints about property conditions each year.

The group believes many councils’ serial renewal of their schemes raises a critical structural question: “If a licensing scheme requires a fourth renewal after 15 years, it has failed in its aim to improve standards and provides further evidence if anymore was needed that they are ineffective.”

It suggests a range of measures to shake up the system, including a mandatory duty for local authorities to publish annual data on the number of inspections conducted, the ratio of officers to private rented dwellings, and the percentage of civil penalties successfully collected.

Funding

The UK government must ring-fence funding specifically for local authorities to train, recruit, and retain environmental health officers, says Propertymark, and introduce a standardised national fee framework to prevent increased fees.

It also suggests the use of a private rented sector charter to set out legal standards for private landlords and letting agents, along with a shift towards local authorities using data and intelligence to focus on known non-compliant landlords rather than imposing universal licensing requirements across entire areas.

It adds: “The Private Rented Sector Database under the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 will fulfil the function of licensing schemes, so the UK government should commit to removing them once operational.”

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