Additional Licensing Nottingham

The Nottingham City Council (NCC) Executive Board critique detailing the proposal for a widespread scheme of Additional Licensing for houses in multiple occupation and approval of HMO conditions and feeshas been published on the NCC website.

The Councillors will meet to consider and vote on implementing the scheme on Tuesday 17th September at 2pm at the Council offices, Loxley House, Station Road, Nottingham.

THE GENERAL PUBLIC CAN ATTEND THE MEETING AND EMPO WOULD RECOMMEND THAT LANDLORDS WHO ARE OPPOSED TO THIS SCHEME ATTEND

Your Business Development Manager’s observations

It is regrettable the Council failed to invite EMPO and other organisations which support good landlord practice in Nottingham into the early stages of discussion regarding this scheme.

Instead it has found it necessary to proceed without reference to us and promote a costly blanket scheme of regulation impacting all HMO landlords and not a targeted scheme focusing on the small numbers of criminal landlords.

  • Despite the Councils claim an extensive and widespread awareness campaign was undertaken to communicate the consultation only 659 people responded to their online survey. This represents 0.21% of NottinghamCity population.
  • After many requests the Council finally arranged a meeting with landlord representatives on the 18th April 2013 to discuss the Additional Licensing (AL) proposals.Regrettably by this time the consultation had already been published for 7 weeks.
  • According to the critique 65% of respondents agreed to implement the scheme, 33% disagreed and 3% offered no conclusive opinion. The basic arithmetic mistake in this breakdownhighlights another example of the lack of thoroughness employed by the Council around this scheme.
  • The Universities support the scheme.
  • The cost of a 5 year license is £910.00 per property, making it one of the most expensive schemes in the UK.
  • A discount of £115.00 is offered to landlords who choose to become part of the Nottingham Standard,an overarching accreditation mark promoted by NCC. (£40.00 discount for multiple applications)
  • There are 3200 properties which will fall under Additional Licensing.
  • The complaints data the council is relying on for the scheme is described as “the best data available to it in order to evidence the need for a scheme” The Council claims their data demonstrates there is a significant need to warrant an AL scheme.However according to their data, between 2010/12 there was a 50% reduction in the number of reported complaints against non mandatory licensed HMOs within the designated areas.
  • The Council maintains they have and will continue to use a range of enforcement powers including AL to tackle criminal landlords.Under AL the Council maintains the onus will be on enforcement activity and working with partners to identify and prosecute offending landlords. Sadly since 2006 there has only been 24 prosecutions of criminal landlords
  • The Council claim it is not possible to release Accredited landlords from AL. They did not provide any explanation to the reasons why it was not possible.
  • An additional 22 Council officers will be employed to administer AL.
  • An AL application refused by the Council will not result in a refund of fees paid.
  • All electrical appliances will need to be PAT tested under AL.
  • The license holder shall ensure that all refuse containers are returned within the cartilage of the property on the same day that they are emptied by the council.
  • NCC claims the decision to implement the scheme was not predetermined. However in a document presented to Councillors on the 18th December 2012 referencing AL, it states the following. “The Council is proposing to implement an additional licensing scheme.”

The predetermined decision clearly makes a charade of the consultation and is extremely disrespectful of the views expressed by its participants.

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