Licensing Consultation in Southwark

Of course you cannot draft a standard that is "specific to MY business model" if you think I am requesting that, you have completely misunderstood me. Our rents are some of the lowest in the area and we receive many applications from students and young professionals but have never received a request from a family nor any DSS tenant. We do not state we do not rent to them, they have just never contacted us. Our flats are in blocks with many other council tenants/ private sector tenants and owner occupiers. Those PRS tenants are ALL the same type of tenants as ours (no families). I have friends who own rental flats in many blocks in Southwark and they too rent to a similar type of tenant,and are also letting out flats similar to ours - small 3 person maximum.

Therefore I am raising the point about small HMOs only, a business model that is very common in Southwark, but I imagine you are well aware of that.

Of course I have responded direct to Southwark formally and to be honest, if Southwark approach the scheme in a fair and even handed way I am certain that we would have no problem with the license scheme. I am encouraged by your answer regarding the utilities as that actually goes against what it says in the consultation document, and that shows there is the flexibility in the scheme that the smaller HMO's require, bearing in mind that at this level the choice could be made to switch to 2-bed + study market thereby cutting significantly the number of private sector tenants that could be accommodated in this market significantly.

On room size you asked "where do we draw the line", well I am sure you want to be fair so why try and reinvent the wheel and use 6.5 sq m that satisfies the Cat 1 standard? From all the Southwark tribunals that I have read about, the only time that Southwark have won on the bedroom size issue appears to have been when there are significant OTHER issues that affect the rental property, not in isolation (plus these were cases where room sizes were 5.8 sq metres) so I would be most grateful If you can direct me to an assortment that shows that tribunal cases have been won on inadequate size alone.

Reply to the comment left by "John Daley" at "21/10/2014 - 14:40":

Your reply to Victoria has cheered me up no end! In complete agreement with you on this point. Please can you ensure this sort of flexibility is fully understood by your colleagues in Southwark who may have to enforce any such scheme.

To be a finer point on it - you will not find the sort of landlords that you are really trying to tackle on this, or any other landlord type website or forum. You will also not find they are members of NLA, RLA or any landlord organisation, nor do they protect their tenants deposits or have gas safety or electrical inspectors.

Reply to the comment left by "chris wright" at "16/10/2014 - 18:45":

Chris,

I have not been asked, told or any otherwise to avoid or duck any questions from you.

The problem is that you don't really ask any questions. If you challenge the data on ASB and ask for it to be given to someone else, a statistician or whatever then who is it you want us to give the data to ?

The data is collected by Southwark and the Met and is reported to Govt for community safety purposes. It is collected concienciously and audited for accuracy.

We have a number of incidents of ASB of the types allowed under the terms of the housing act.

The incident data has an address / location which allows us to plot it on a map. We have then added up the incidents by type and collected all the data together on a summary and plotted this in a heat map, which indicates by colour the frequency of incidence.

We have agreed that the data is not absolute, in that no one can tie ASB to tenure, because the data does not record tenure.

We do say that, on balance, if there is a high incidence of ASB in a street that also has a high density of PRS lettings, and the asb is of a type related to property occupation then there is a link between the two. That is what the housing act asks us to prove but does not set a value or test for us to achieve. So we have to make a case that we think is reasonable.

Because the data is intended for community safety purposes we have no interest in making it say anything other than it does and we can't influence the data collected. Not least beacuse a lot of it is the data from the Police.

Our intention is not to introduce licensing for landlords, we want to take action to improve some very clear problems in the operation of the PRS in Southwark.

As a final point there is no possible way to construct a view that Enfield's proposal is lost. Their selective licensing scheme has been approved to go forwards and the landlord challenging the additional scheme has been given leave to take the JR to court. This at present does not add up to the end of licensing. Even if the JR is allowed the scheme may just be changed by the judgement.

The JR has limited application to every other scheme because they are all different and the terms of the scheme and its evidence are what is challenged not the terms of the Housing Act which created licensing.

Reply to the comment left by "Matt Wardman" at "21/10/2014 - 05:14":

Hi Matt,

We can't estimate how many bedrooms are let that are smaller than 8m2 because there are no records to consult to find out.

Based on our experience, most times we find undersized rooms are when flats and houses have been cut down from larger rooms to create more lettable bedrooms in HMOs. In other let property we don't see this too much because older property and particularly LCC/LA housing has good room sizes which don't tend to be too small.

I will see if any of our tribunal decisions have been reported on this subject.

There might be an effect on rents but I think that the more general increase trend in rents wil mask it or even obscure it altogether. I have seen a recent peice of research which claims the lowest room rental in Soutwark is now over £200 pw

"Our intention is not to introduce licensing for landlords, we want to take action to improve some very clear problems in the operation of the PRS in Southwark."

Deal - use the powers you already have like your friends in Lewisham (almost a twin of Southwark)

Reply to the comment left by "chris wright" at "21/10/2014 - 15:37":

Well done Chris, you have managed to get a crowbar into a badly drafted sentence, has that taken the debate forward ?

Anyone else think that Lewisham and Southwark are the same ?

Reply to the comment left by "John Daley" at "21/10/2014 - 14:40":

John, thank you for your detailed answer !

For clarity, I have reproduced below the key extracts from your consultation documents.

Consultation Document - 7.3. Licensing procedure

We will require the owner or manager of a licensable property to decide who is the landlord for the purposes of licensing. The landlord will usually be the person who exercises practical control of the property, collecting rent and arranging repairs etc. The landlord will be held responsible for the discharge of all the duties that are imposed by licensing and be responsible for any penalties of failure to comply with the terms of the scheme.

Proposed Standard - Regulation 3 –

If a landlord is regularly out of the country or away for long periods of time, a local manager should be appointed who can act on behalf of the landlord.

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To summarize your reply to my question, and using the terms of your consultation documents,

The ‘landlord’ for the purpose of licensing may choose to delegate the practical control of the property, collecting rent and arranging repairs etc, to a ‘local manager’. In this case it will be the ‘landlord’ who will be held responsible for the discharge of all the duties that are imposed by licensing and be responsible for any penalties of failure to comply with the terms of the scheme, and not the ‘local manager’.

Given the increased clarity that you seek to achieve through introducing the new standards, would it be possible for the clarification we have received from you and which I have summarized above, to be included in Section 7.3 of the Consultation Document ?

many thanks

To support Victoria's request I too had a query that there seemed to be no room to be able to inform Southwark of a "deputy" or stand-in for those times when the landlord could not be physically available at the property.

In addition, in other areas (for example the points I raised above) more flexibility could be written in to the HMO standard to be able to give licensing officers the power to be lenient when they felt it prudent to do so so that a license was not necessarily refused if a property did not meet all requirements. I will look again at the document and email thoughts on this direct to the consultation team (ie. formally)

Reply to the comment left by "John Daley" at "21/10/2014 - 15:45":

To take the debate forward we need an agreed set of facts

" who is it you want us to give the data to ? "

here's a radical idea for Southwark why dont you give the data to the people or is it too complicated for them to follow as they're not experts like you just LL's and the public etc? - yes why not simply publish the full set on the Southwark website and let anyone who wants to look at it - democratic and open hands dealing something all responsible councils support ?

Let us know when you've put it up.

Quote "We have agreed that the data is not absolute, in that no one can tie ASB to tenure, because the data does not record tenure. "

So what you're saying is ASB is not directly attribitable to the private rented sector?

there is of course no such word as attribitable apologies for any confusion -

to confirm my post

Quote “We have agreed that the data is not absolute, in that no one can tie ASB to tenure, because the data does not record tenure. ”

So what you’re saying is ASB is not directly attributable to the private rented sector?