Council inspects 500 PRS homes – and finds 2,000 issues

I;d be very interested to see the actual numbers of enforcements that result because the LL was found 100% at fault....

I chuckled when I read the phrase "despite initial reservations, more than 7,000 applications had been received." Woohoo.
I don't think any one rushed because of Landlord FOMO.
More like a gun pointing to your head,,,,,,,

And how many were council controlled ? Do as I say...

The Home Safe inspector came to my BTL. The inspection took about 30 minutes, and after minor remarks about fire alarms, the job was done. It is not as dramatic as the Council is trying to picture the situation.

Did they just target the private sector? What about the council properties or LHA properties? You will find more problems. I had a call from someone saying Housing Repairs asking if I have any damp or mould issues in my property. When I said no, they asked again if I was sure, as they are there to help. I said are you phoning around a lot of people to find out these issues, they put the phone down. I have saved the number. Next time they call, I shall say yes and see what happens. Just stated House Repairs. It was an 0330 number.

Reply to the comment left by Markella Mikkelsen at 13/11/2024 - 09:15
exactly what I thought. Landlords did not apply voluntarily but on threat of prosecution...

wonder if they have stats on the numbers of LL's they have prosecuted for not even having a licence yet considering the scheme has been in place (and so the requirement to have a licence) for a while now?

The numbers are likely to be misleading. The figure probably includes cases where the tenants complained to the council - the inspectors went out, agreed the issue, and found the property had many more.

If I were the inspector, I'd visit the other properties the landlord owns expecting to find a similar number of faults. It would be easy to produce entirely unrepresentative statistics that could be used for whatever purpose.

A report on visits to random properties where there's been no complaint would be more representative.

I wonder how many of these 2000 problems were category 1 hazards and how many come under the "curtain rail broken by the tenant" category? Statistics are wonderful, they can always be interpreted to your advantage.

Missing window restrictor - is this something else they have just made up?

I can't help but do the math.

The license costs either £600 or £900 depending on when you get it, so let’s take an average of £700. There are 7000 licenses so a total of £4,900,000.
A visit averages 30 minutes, make that an hour for travel etc, so 6 visits in an average working day for a council officer. Let’s assume 4 days for inspections and 1 day in the office for paperwork, lets also assume 8 bank holidays and 4 weeks leave so 28 days not working. Now, lets be generous to the highly skilled council officers who do these inspections and pay them £50,000 pa plus expenses of £20,000, so £70,000 total

So, each officer does (52 weeks x 4 days) – 28 days = 180 inspection days a year
At 6 visits a day that’s 1080 visits a year and 5,400 in 5 years
They have a total of 7000 properties to be visited twice in 5 years, so 14,000 visits.
So to perform all these we need 3 inspection officers and probably 2 admin officers as back up
Add another inspection office to cover for revisits, sickness and possible expansion.
So 4 at £70,000 = £280,000
And 2 at £50,000 = £100,000
Total £380,000
Add £120,000 for contingency etc, equals £500,000 to run the whole scheme.

So where is the rest of the money, some £4,400,000 being squandered?