Councils are being accused of stuffing increasing numbers of issues into licensing conditions, meaning there are more rules that can be broken – and therefore more penalties paid by landlords.
And many of those conditions are allegedly duplicates: that is, they are rules put into licensing schemes, but already covered by national legislation.
Duplication is believed to occur across areas such as HMO Management Regulations 3–9, EICR rules, EPC requirements, Gas Safety law, tenancy deposit obligations, prescribed information duties, pest control legislation, and the Regulatory Reform Fire Safety Order.
Phil Turtle of the Landlord Licensing & Defence says his service has come across cases where the local housing authority has regurgitated tens of different pieces of primary legislation as licence conditions.
“These are all pieces of existing legislation passed by government and each with their own specific enforcement regime specified by government.”
Ho continues: “Councils are double-dipping and legally untrained enforcement officers are creating dozens of new criminal offences so that not only can they prosecute landlords under the regime envisaged and set by the government, but they also get a second go by re-stating the existing law as a licence condition.”
This applies across selective, additional and mandatory HMO licensing.
“Doing, or not doing, anything specified in a licence condition is a breach of licence condition – a strict-liability criminal offence with unlimited fines in court or a fine of up to £30,000 if the council decides to issue a civil penalty and keep the fine money.
“On average we are seeing fines of around £12,000 per condition that is breached.”
Landlord Licensing & Defence says it has persuaded a small number of councils to amend licence wording to prevent dual enforcement.
The proposed clause states: “Where there is a lack of compliance, and a condition is a reminder of primary legislation or regulation, enforcement will be under the Primary Legislation and not as a breach of this licence.”
Turtle says this restores enforcement to the route intended by the government and he now wants this approach taken across the board.
“We call on all councils to stop this immoral activity immediately, stop giving themselves powers to double dip and be moral and honest for once and put in the clause we recommend.”
This article is taken from Landlord Today