It is not unusual to hear letting agents and their landlord clients complaining that operating within the private rented sector is has become increasingly tangled with red tape.
There is justification for this point of view – regulation of both agents, landlords and rented homes has increased exponentially over the past 20 years whether it’s new regulations for EPCs, electrical safety, AML, client money, redress schemes – I could go on.
However, perhaps the greatest bureaucratic challenge faced by those within the private rented sector is selective licensing, and its less common cousin additional licensing (for HMOs).
But while complaining about selective licensing – which requires all rented properties other than HMOs to be licenced often with heavy regulatory requirements – is a favourite pub or dinner party topic, arguably landlords and agents have only themselves to blame for this.
For many decades many councils ran schemes that asked landlords to join voluntary schemes and to follow ‘best practice’ and standards of housing, schemes that were often cited as being – for the councils – a cheap and quick way to raise local property standards.
The trouble is that despite trade organisations representing landlords and agents urging their membership to get involved in these initiatives, engagement was always low.
One example is Manchester City Council’s ‘landlord renting pledge’ launched in 2015 to great fanfare and supported by several membership organisations including safeagent.
It asked those renting homes to sign up to a nine-point pledge including dealing with anti-social behaviour, completing repairs promptly and protecting deposits – all fairly basic stuff.
But the scheme was a flop – its website still s that just 30 landlords signed up out of the approximately 90,000 who operate within the city, even though at its launch the council warned that unless significant numbers signed up, selective licensing was likely to follow.
And so it came to pass – in 2022 Manchester launched its first tranche of licensing and has now expanded it this year.
This story has been repeated across the UK in dozens of cities and towns and will continue, particularly now that the Labour government has made it easier for local authorities to bring in selective licensing, removing the need for ministerial approval for larger schemes.
It is therefore pointless landlords and agents getting annoyed by such extra red tape – they all had a chance to avoid it spreading and didn’t grasp the nettle.
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