Haringey Council Selective Licensing Scheme Spells More Misery For Both Landlords and Tenants

I have a property in Haringey in one of the roads shown to need the new licensing. However, it is let to a single person. It states that licensing applies to a single family or two unrelated sharers. How do they define 'unrelated sharers?' Supposing a couple lives there but are not married? I am assuming they are related in that they are living 'as husband and wife' to quote an archaic expression. Does this mean that I don't need to license it for a single person? If I need to upgrade it beyond the legal E for EPC I won't be able to afford to do that and will sell.
Another point is that I also rent on one of the designated roads, so my landlord may see having my flat licensed as the 'nail in the coffin' as she is already fed up with existing regulations. This flat is also an 'E' and she won't pay to upgrade it. It's Victorian so would cost a lot of money.
The road where I live is largely comprised of families in owner occupied houses and has no HMO's and few rental properties. It is not what I would call an area which requires 'supervision.' I don't know how they have decided on which roads need to be licensed.
If I am evicted I will have to evict one of my long standing tenants to live in that home, thus creating more misery for tenants and fewer properties available for rental.

I know I must be missing something, but I've looked at the Haringey site and can't find what they demand as the new minimum EPC rating. Can anyone help? Also, I wonder how many other local authorities will lower the number of renters to two?
JWB

It doesn't specify about what any new EPC level might be. As usual this is ill thought out. As for what defines 'a family' I have decided that a single person is not a family and so I don't have to license and neither does my landlord. Does 'a family' have to have children in which case landlords won't want to rent to anybody with children, and if tenants have a baby, they would then have to license, or, as with a former tenancy of mine, where it was a mother and adult daughter sharing, would this be 'a family?' It is all too ambiguous.

Where do Councils get the legal authority to over rule the Government in saying what EPC rating is required to allow a property to be rented.
The current EPC is E or above, as people have said to get a victorian house or flat up to a C is very difficult.

Reply to the comment left by DGM at 24/08/2022 - 13:51I’d hazard a guess at band-C. It’s the expected new minimum following Westminster’s consultation on the same but, interestingly, hasn’t yet been implemented (probably due the unworkability and the effect it would have on the sector and country as a whole). Yet ‘politics-of-envy’ local council bods want to bring that ideal in sooner.
Honestly, I reckon they believe if they mandated or legislated all residents must forevermore hover instead of walk, we’d have no choice but to figure out how to do it…either that or sCiEnCe better catch up with their looming deadline!

You cannot *will* the impossible into existence!!

Reply to the comment left by Jw Bryan at 24/08/2022 - 11:09
I have read through the "Proposed Conditions of a Selective Licence" downloaded from the link above and I cannot see any requirement for a grade C EPC; only that the property must have an EPC.
However, the Council is trying to make the landlord responsible for things he has no control over:
The conduct of the occupiers and their visitors;
That tenants put their waste out for collection on the correct day;
That tenants use the correct type of waste and recycling containers.

In wondering if it is possible to play the Localism Act 2011 card here here...after all this is a tax on private Landlords only...(see bit between asterisks)

General power of competence
Local authorities’ powers and responsibilities are defined by legislation. In
simple terms, they can only do what the law says they can. Sometimes
councils are wary of doing something new - even if they think it might be a
good idea - because they are not sure whether they are allowed to in law, and
are concerned about the possibility of being challenged in the courts.
The Government has turned this assumption upside down. Instead of being
able to act only where the law says they can, local authorities will be freed to
do anything - provided they do not break other laws.
The Localism Act includes a ‘general power of competence’. *****It gives local
authorities the legal capacity to do anything that an individual can do that is
not specifically prohibited; they will not, for example, be able to impose new
taxes, as an individual has no power to tax. *****