Council extends and introduces Selective Licensing schemes

I wonder what percentage of those in favour were actually tenants or landlords?

Many years ago I was the PRS representative on Wirral Council's committee that put together the first selective licensing scheme. It was well thought through and well supported by LL as a useful tool to target specific areas of housing market failure. It worked well in 4 of the 5 areas targeted (Seacomb unfortunately was a harder nut to crack).
The second scheme was wider and the benefits less pronounced, possibly as the areas selected did not really need the interventions allowed for under SL. But still, it was beneficial in helping to target dodgy LL and help deliver interventions for tenants in specific need. In short, it worked less well and at a high cost to many LL who saw little or no benefit.
I am not in support of this 3rd scheme - for 3 reasons:
1. I am not convinced by the data showing housing market failure in the areas selected.
2. There are now a number of additional laws that were not available to enforcement agencies back in 2013 that make selective licensing less necessary. These include a revamp of the Housing Act, the HHSRS, Homes fit for Human Habitation Act and now the Renters (Reform) Bill. The existing legislation just needs to be properly enforced.
3. Wirral Council is in meltdown and cannot enforce the existing legislation, never mind enforcing yet more regulations. More on this below.
Wirral Council closed all their offices to the public before the pandemic struck back in 2019. The idea was for all personnel to work from home until a new centralised office was built - in 2024! In the intervening years, and totally unsurprisingly, the service levels across all Council departments has plummeted.
Direct dial phones have been disconnected and you have to go through the Council switchboard. Not ideal but workable, except that they don't have the contact numbers for staff at home. Calls go unanswered, get put through to the wrong people or you get a promise of a call back that never appears.
Emails go unanswered, meetings are virtually impossible to arrange and queries around the things important to LL; planning applications, building control questions, housing benefit entitlement queries, licensing queries, all go unanswered for weeks or months on end.
I bumped into a senior housing officer in Birkenhead a few weeks ago. This is someone I have known for 20 years and who I respect as being one of the "good guys" in the housing standards team. After some banter I explained that I was no longer investing in Wirral due to the disfunction in the Council. His response was that it was not surprising as he was only doing about 20% of the work he used to do when they were all office based - and he was one of the harder workers. Why should he pull his finger out, he said, if no-one else was?
I have a number of friends who work for the Council, and I know most of the Director-level people after working closely with them for almost 30 years. It is my view that despite what the senior managers say, Wirral Council are simply not able to manage an increase in workload at this time.
A widening of the selective licensing scheme at this time will not help tenants, in my view. What is most needed is a complete shake up the standards and delivery of existing services by Wirral Council and enforcement of current legislation.
Any additional selective licensing now is simply a tax on landlords that will inevitably bring higher rents as LL pass on the costs.