Landlords have been warned to take extra care when making licence applications after a rise in numbers being fined by councils for inadvertently filling out the wrong form.

Landlord Licensing & Defence says the “disturbing and unlawful enforcement tactic” is being used, most recently by one council which penalised a landlord thousands of pounds simply because they had mistakenly ticked the wrong box on an HMO application form.

The firm says that some councils are rejecting HMO applications where a landlord inadvertently uses an additional licensing form instead of a mandatory form, or vice versa.

Compliance director Phil Turtle explains that by rejecting the application and refunding the fee, a council effectively removes the landlord’s statutory protection of having an ‘application duly made’ under the Housing Act 2004. Once that protection is gone, councils will then issue civil penalty fines for operating an unlicensed HMO.

Legal

He says there is no legal justification for a local authority to refuse or refund an HMO licence application that has otherwise been duly made just because the landlord did not understand the difference between two identical schemes or ticked the wrong box.

“The licences for most councils are exactly the same and rarely state whether they are mandatory or additional on the final document. By acting in this manner, councils are acting unlawfully. They are using pure bureaucracy as a weapon to generate enforcement revenue rather than to improve housing standards.”

Advises

Turtle advises landlords to check their local council’s licensing criteria meticulously or seek professional help when submitting HMO applications – and to look out for an unexplained amount appearing in their account.

He tells LandlordZONE: "We’ve seen this happening over the last year – a lot of it is driven by councils’ awful software systems which can be very confusing. They typically claim to send a communication telling landlords their application has been refused but a lot of them never get to the landlord either due to issues with the postal service or, we suspect, some are not posted at all.”

Just Landlords’ recent Freedom of Information request shows that since 2018, the number of HMO applications has increased from 41,162 to a record 57,725.

LandlordZONE has approached the Local Government Association for a comment.

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