Nottingham Council – Why do you refuse to work with Good Landlords?

A good article and one which obviously comes from the heart. In London we are experiencing exactly the same problems which I identify as being the following.
1) Insufficient staff in the relevant departments to handle the enormous and ever increasing workload imposed by years of neglect and the increasing, sometimes several times a year, new legislation.

2). A hostile environment for the private landlord due to media and political interventions by the statist/Labour powers that be.

3) Incompetent council staff motivated by the hostile atmosphere mentioned and the fact that they are interested in doing as little as possible and then going home.

4) The fact that there is no landlord political base to lobby in the same way as the homeless/ public sector have even though the public/housing association part of the economy is now essentially private. Shelter, which started out in the 60's with good intentions, is now a huge corporate body which spends most of its income on salaries and media events some of which are to demonize us. Increasingly the bulk of S21 possession orders are being granted to the social housing sector a fact which they don't publicize.

It's important not to give up however and might I proffer a piece of advice? Writing article like this is skill and one best not done in anger as possibly you have done. Take your time, marshal your thoughts and arguments, check the facts and then press send. Any discrepancies or inaccuracies will be used against you. Remember, essentially council officials are time servers who can't run a business, resent those who can and see any criticism as an attack. Good luck

Reply to the comment left by Terry Fitzpatrick at 18/12/2018 - 08:46
Yes very hostile-For the majority of Landlords that ain't done 'ote wrong. And this is impacting on the good tenants.

Ha ha yes anger. No not anger, annoyed that they ain't listening.
They can use what they like against me. I only tell what I am told.

Yes they wun't last two mins running a business, would they.

Reply to the comment left by Mick Roberts at 18/12/2018 - 08:56
I agree totally. I am a good responsible landlord yet i had six months of severe stress tackling a 25k intent to fine which then got dropped due to 'admin error' after they realised their officer was incompetent. No apology nothing. 2.5k legal fees. They have invented a 'zero tolerance' policy which means on any day they can find a minor fault which can be tenant caused, and fine again. They called me highly culpable, an 'offender', likely to reoffend and obstructive. None of those were true they never investigated properly and didntfollow their own cabinet agreed policy. Ive sold up and im gone i never want to go through that again. The council i have worked with for years are now an enemy out to get everyone to line their pockets. Ive been a landlord for 11 years and a letting agent for longer working with the council all the time now its all gone and im just an 'OFFENDER' and i hadnt even broken the law they got it all wrong. I intend to sue and get my costs back and anything left over will go to help the homeless people they have abandoned. Rant over

Reply to the comment left by MARIE ELLIS at 18/12/2018 - 09:14That's the thing.
Housing Benefit staff know me cause I have housed the homeless HB people for 20 years, so consequently, I am always in touch with HB & now have some great contacts there.
But Licensing had not heard of me at all, as I haven't been a problem to them in 20 years in terms of bad houses. But now since Licensing, it seems us good ones are being vilified.
25k fine, wow, some people in Nottingham so far who have received Licenses say the 'new' conditions on there appear to be leaning towards making it easy for the Council to issue fines.
I know what's gonna' happen there, as soon as some good Landlords start getting fines, they gonna' sell up, had enough, leaving more tenants homeless.
And yes, that's happened to u too, selling up. Someone needs to be shouting up for us, some Govt body cause this is all contributing to the homeless problem.

Reply to the comment left by MARIE ELLIS at 18/12/2018 - 09:14
Hi Marie, please keep us updated on how you get on, getting the fees back out of the council, I think this will become a regular occurance.

Terrible story. I suggest you look at iHowz and what they have achieved in getting selective licensing stopped in Brighton. Can you do the same in Nottingham? What a shambles.

Reply to the comment left by Mick Roberts at 18/12/2018 - 09:33Mick, you can take your back on the Council, if they do fine you, you can legally punish them by housing asylum seekers or HB tenants, that way the council will have to fork out their council tax and rent benefit out of their budget, I once got a parking ticket through no fault of mine apart from the ticket had fallen off the screen, I appealed and it was rejected on the bases that I had not displayed a valid ticket, I contested that I did have a valid ticket and it had come lose and fallen. I had to pay £60 penalty, however, I am glad that I managed to prevent council earning more in revenue by saving 4 other motorist from being given PCN by quickly buying £1.00 parking tickets and placing it on the screens of totally strange owners cars, each time I went up to the traffic warden and asked him to stop writing a pcn as I had gone to get a ticket from the machine, showed the ticket to him and he went away, you have to be a bastard to deal with bastards, there is no room for diplomacy, why do you think the French are taking to streets each weekend when their Government is failing to listen to their people they represent. Does that need an Einstein to work out the problem if one segment of the community is being targeted, unfairly punished with big hefty fines, etc, instead of paying hefty fines why not offer free or low cost accomodation to tenants and turn them against these hostile bastards who seem to think money grows on trees, and they can mistreat landlords as they tarnish us all with a same brush branding us bastards! so we might as well act as real bastards since we are now all rouge landlords, there is no such thing as decent landlord 😥

Martin.
Yes Licensing already here now. A lot of Landlords are saying they wish the council would just take our £780 per house (as bad as that was to start with), but Oh no, the pain the council are causing on the worst website on the planet is shocking.
You get 1 digit wrong which should take 10 seconds to correct, but Oh no the council wants a whole new application. One hour. It's bang your head against wall stuff.

Mike, I already take have HB tenants, although can no longer take HB tenants with the new Licensing conditions, & Universal Credit.

That's the thing, they are making us good landlords now seem bad landlords. Never had any problems before.

I am another good landlord who has just had a rejected application.

The council state that there is a mortgage on the property. But there is no mortgage as I paid in cash for the leasehold flat.

They are possibly picking up on some obscure technicality of the freehold housing association possibly having a mortgage on the land on which the property is located. But this is nothing to do with me?!?

Of course I can sort of see where this is going as they would like to force me into paying an extra £30 for a new application . This whole situation is very peculiar, and meanwhile how many real rogue landlords will be caught?

Yes there has been lots of Flat owners saying Licensing rejecting cause of owner on Registry being slightly different to what Landlord is saying.
You will laugh at this, Licensing need insurance proof as u know. Flats in same block as council has to be insured by council. Well I can't give it Licensing cause SAME COUNCIL still hasn't gave me the insurance from April, even though I've paid Council for insurance. Funny how Licensing aren't rejecting me for that.

But yes, they can see what they want to see on Land Registry, so does it matter if u put Timbuktoo as they KNOW who the owners are. Why do they need us to tell them?
They something like to say we've notified the lender, owner. I said Why don't u re-word it then to say Tick here to confirm you have notified the lender or owner.
It's becoming one big paper exercise waste of money & our time & money which is detracting from stuff we should be doing for tenants.

Other capable Letting agents are getting rejected on flats cause Licensing want stuff the Letting Agent don't know. Some of these parent companies who own the flats/buildings are in Bahama's Umbrella companies, & Letting agent just doesn't know.

Here's some interesting reading for u: http://www.arla.co.uk/news/november-2018/nottingham-is-latest-licensing-scheme-to-be-failing.aspx
The Rogue Landlords ain't come forward.