Nottingham council to use landlord review website

Presumably the landlord will have the right of reply. There will be many vexatious reviews from tenants who have been evicted because of non-payment of rent and anti-social behaviour. People in this category often feel furious that they have finally been evicted and now have to pay for accommodation elsewhere (until they stop paying there as well). Obviously no-one will be checking on that side of the equation.

Hi Ros,

I have not had time to check how they will or are covering the GDPR issue, but if a landlord has been falsely referenced I would rpeot it to the ICO immediatley as there is no way this would be compliant.

Reply to the comment left by Dr Rosalind Beck at 13/11/2019 - 10:03
My thoughts exactly Ros
This would be fine if it was used honestly, great idea, but tenants with a grudge could leave a dishonest review just to get their own back and I'm not sure how that could be managed

I think this website has actually been going for a couple of years now and attempts have been made by various bodies, including the BBC and Guardian, to big it up as the next TripAdvisor or some such. The reality is very different. For example, in Cambridge, which will have thousands of properties for rent, just 10 are reviewed on the site and in the vast metropolis of London just 87. Even if those numbers were to double on an annual basis, it would be insignificant.

The reason they don't really work is because your typical Trip Advisor hotel will get hundreds or even thousands of guests every year - more than enough for a critical mass of useful reviews (most of us filter out the barmy ones). But, as we all know, the average tenancy in the UK is 4 years long, so the vast majority of properties won't get reviewed at all or won't get reviewed with a statistically meaningful sample on which a prospective tenant can actually rely.
Furthermore, whereas you are likely to set foot in a hotel for the very first time only after you booked it (and therefore past guest reviews are really useful), the vast majority of tenants get to see the property with their own eyes before making their decision. If the property looks total crap, that will be a far more telling indication of the bona fides of the landlord (or lack thereof) than a chance one-off review on an obscure website.

Incidentally, not long ago I checked out a 'rate my lecturer' website for academics. I know a law lecturer originally from the US, so was intrigued. I was amazed to see sexist and frankly racists remarks about her e.g "she's so annoyingly American" and "I can't stand her accent". Generation snow-flake happy to dish it out but not so keen to receive perhaps?

This is the same Strategic Housing that don't and won't communicate with good Landlords instead being fixated with their perseverance of the minority Rogue Landlords out there. So much so they ignored the tenants that were happy with their good Landlords and ignored what suffering they was now encountering from the strategies they preserved with.
We still waiting for a Nottingham Housing report which we know will contain damning evidence of the way Nottingham has operated since Licensing was bought in 16 months ago. This report should have been made available months ago. Apparently they not happy with the way it's wrote, so want it altering.

Nottingham tenants would be grateful for any house.
The HB UC vulnerable tenant would not even get chance to check the review, as the house will already be gone with the 15 working tenants that's queuing/bidding the rental price up.

Ha ha he mentions accreditation. Why would a good Landlord need to be accredited? He has tenants queuing out his ears. It's the bad Landlords that NEED the accreditation. He hasn't got a clue.

My tenants have paid out an accumulative £40,000 and not had one inspection. Their houses have got worse cause their money has gone on licensing staff 76 new jobs, and the repair refurbishment budget has gone to the council so they can write tripe like this.

At the moment, if u don't pay your rent now or damage house or your Landlord sells cause of Nottingham http://www.selectivelicensingtruth.co.uk tenants are being put in Premier Inn Nottingham at around £600 to £800 a week.
Tenants would be grateful for the worst house ever instead of Mum and 5 kids in a hotel room.

I have an online business as well as landlord. I've had two totally false one star reviews put on Trustpilot and had to threaten Trustpilot with court action to get them removed, it took nearly 3 months and I lost business because of it. When I tried to put a bad review of Trustpilot about Trustpilot it was refused and my account closed!!! Had the same on Amazon and they were brilliant and removed them within two hours of receiving my complaint. Our local pub was once taken over by a bunch crooks claiming to have a three star RAC rating and a Michelin star which they didn't and when I complained to both bodies nothing was done and didn't even get a reply. Needless to say after 6 months they did a moonlight flit leaving loads of debts and wrecked the inside, like some tenants. These review sites are in it to make money and have no real control over what goes on. When our local pub was in good hands TripAdvisor had some obviously false reviews on there about them. I wouldn't trust any of them.

Reply to the comment left by Simon Williams at 13/11/2019 - 10:26
Also, a tenancy with both a model tenant and model landlord that was 99.999% perfect save for a small disagreement over, say, a damaged carpet at the very end that the tenant took massive exception to would no doubt yield a 'review' that did not reflect the vast, vast majority of the tenancy/LL/property...

How do they plan on verifying tenants?

Nottingham City Council’s safer housing service’s strategic housing manager, Paul Greevy, said: “Sometimes the plates come together, and the simplest ideas impact on local authorities from another tangent."

can anyone see any meaning in that statement?

Reply to the comment left by Michael Barnes at 14/11/2019 - 01:07
I think he is likening the situation to the result of tectonic plates interacting. He is saying that it is just a chance event beyond the control of human beings.

Reply to the comment left by Michael Barnes at 14/11/2019 - 01:07
Nope, it's complete council gobbledygook to me.

However, I think the underlying message is Nottingham council will support any old obscure scheme in an attempt to claim success for their £780 landlord licensing failure.