Letting agents have spoken out against the growing costs and administrative burden of council landlord licensing regimes.
Propertymark has warned councils that they must do more to justify these growing charges.
The trade body reminds agents that councils are not permitted to use licensing schemes to generate a profit. Yet landlords and agents are often given limited information about the full cost of running a scheme or how much licence income will fund inspections and enforcement.
A statement from the body says: “We are calling for clearer reporting. Councils should publish the total projected cost of a scheme over its full five-year term, with a breakdown of staffing, IT, and legal costs.
“They should also publish annual data on inspections, enforcement action, officer capacity, and the collection of civil penalties.
“This would help landlords, agents and the public assess whether a scheme is delivering meaningful improvements in housing standards.”
Propertymark says it supports enforcement action against rogue landlords allowing unsafe and poorly managed homes to be let.
But it says licensing can become a broad administrative burden involving substantial red tape and costs.
To justify this work by agents and landlords, the body says local authorities should specify the projected cost of each scheme across its full five-year term, alongside annual figures on inspections, enforcement, officer capacity and civil-penalty collection.
It also says councils should show how far licence income funds property inspections rather than paperwork.
With a nod to the upcoming mandatory private rental sector database, Propertymark adds: “Local [licensing] schemes must not require landlords and agents to repeatedly submit the same information or pay to operate parallel systems.
“The UK government must require councils to use the national database as their primary source of information. Local fees should then reflect the actual cost of property inspections and enforcement, rather than duplicating data entry and document storage.
“We also recommend a lead authority model for agents working across several council areas so that core checks, such as fit and proper person assessments, could be accepted across local authority boundaries rather than repeated.”
This article is taken from Landlord Today