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Rogue Landlords Project-the Lincoln perspective
East Midlands Council. Melton Mowbray, 22 September 2016
Alan Jones, Private Housing Team Leader, City of Lincoln
Introduction
This account sets out to describe the actions and findings of a project team which was quickly put together in response to a successful bid for government funding and which in a very short time was effective in identifying bringing about improvements in poor rented housing.
The Government’s Communities secretary Greg Clark on 13 November 2015 announced new funding to tackle rogue landlords who “let out poorly-maintained and unsafe properties to vulnerable tenants making their lives a misery”. £5m was set aside for the purpose of helping up to 65 councils (of the 326 local housing authorities in England) to:
•Increase the number of inspections
•Carry out more raids
•Initiate more enforcement actions and prosecutions
•Demolish sheds and buildings that are prohibited
The City Council submitted its bid on 2 December, received early notification of its success on 11 January and was one of 48 authorities formally notified on 22 January.
A project team was very quickly put together drawing enforcement staff from two agencies and interpreters from a third. In all the team consisted of 4 full-time surveyors, 2 part-time interpreters and a team leader. The team leader was already engaged by the council to support the Private Housing Team. The team was fully assembled and being briefed by 28 January. The funding had to be spent and the outputs achieved by 31 March.
The initial bid had been for £85,396. The bid had found favour with DCLG who increased the award by 12.5% to £96,071 and the outputs to match. The projected outputs are reproduced in table 1 below together with the actual outputs.
The term “Rogue Landlord” has been in circulation for a while. It was used by Shelter in its 2011 paper “Asserting authority: calling time on rogue landlords” and was adopted by government in a 2012 Department for Communities and Local Government publication “Dealing with Rogue Landlords. A Guide for Local Authorities”. The guide does not define what a rogue landlord is but does describe a range of problems which it attributes to rogue landlords. More recently (23 February 2016) Baroness Williams of Trafford when asked to define the term “rogue landlord” on behalf of the government replied as follows:
“The term ‘rogue landlord’ is widely understood in the lettings industry to describe a landlord who knowingly flouts their obligations by renting out unsafe and substandard accommodation to tenants, many of whom may be vulnerable.”
The new Housing and Planning Act 2016 has incorporated the term into its Database of Rogue Landlords and Property Agents.
Housing deficiencies can arise through ignorance of the law, indifference to the requirements of the law and a deliberate attempt to defy the law. A deliberate attempt to defy the law might be regarded as characteristic of the rogue landlord, and perhaps criminal landlord is a better description. The project sought to identify and remedy deficiencies whatever the reasons and motives of the landlord.
Delivery of the Project
The bid had identified an area based approach to surveys. The Sincil Bank development had been chosen on the basis of deprivation indices, high levels of category one hazards (the risk assessment for housing) and a significant migrant population. However, as identifying “rogue landlords” was the purpose of the exercise inspection of properties outside the target area was legitimate for the project.
The initial proposal was to identify rented properties using Revenues and Benefits records. Inspections could then have been targeted and visits to owner occupied properties avoided. The information was not available and the tactic was changed. The change of tactic was to call upon every house in a street but only enter those which were privately rented. Existing service requests relating to the target area and already registered with the Private Housing Team were re-directed to the project team.
No advance warning was given of the surveys and once a rented property was identified surveyors were dependent upon being allowed in. The surveyors went out as a team and the late afternoon and early evening were the favoured times for access. The team was accompanied by two interpreters from PAB Translation Centre who spoke Eastern European languages. Further support was provided by PAB Translation Centre through use of a telephone hotline (supported at their Boston office) and translated documents which were used by the surveyors to explain their purpose and identity.
When the surveyors entered a rented property they used a proforma to capture details of ownership, tenure, nature and condition of the property. This information helped to determine if immediate action was required, or whether a second, more formal inspection should be planned or no further action was required at all. The information was collated in a database.
The concern at the outset was that the project team would identify statutory duties but be unable to discharge them within the time available. To minimize the risk the instruction was given that where a property had been identified as having a feature that fell outside the law then the surveyor would take all necessary actions before fully re-engaging with the survey. This meant that informal actions were largely to be avoided and statutory actions promptly taken.
As the work progressed so other teams and agencies became involved. Emergency Prohibition Orders meant that alternative accommodation had to be found for vulnerable tenants. Here the Homelessness Team were so helpful but stretched when the second and third orders were served. When access was refused and overcrowding suspected warrants to enter were sought from the magistrates’ court. In these circumstances legal services advised on the appropriate protocols. To effect the warrants the City’s maintenance team provided a joiner, and Lincolnshire police provided a constable to give protection. Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue accompanied the team where there were visits to mixed commercial and residential premises. The multi-agency work was successful but there was scope for further work in this area.
With little opportunity for in depth briefing the team nevertheless gelled and gained a sense of purpose and commitment to the project. One of the surveyors left for firmer employment but was quickly replaced. The work finished as the officers were so clearly getting into their stride. The City had been able to retain the Team Leader whose actions since have been primarily concerned with prosecution files, following up on the notices and orders for compliance, and planning actions against premises where intelligence gained gives reason to think that there may be significant risk. A modern apprentice became part of the project and that role was to make sure that the information was entered into the data management system.
Impact of the project and outputs
Knowledge of the housing conditions in the selected area could be drawn from the BRE Dwelling Level Housing Stock Model 2014. This told us for example that the prevalence of private rented property was likely to vary between 23% to 70% of the total stock depending upon the census output area, that between 3 -47% of the stock might be HMOs and that between 14 and 33% could be expected to exhibit a category one hazard, again dependent upon census output area. The project was not able to test these findings. It was not designed to achieve a 100% inspection of all the houses or even of all the rented houses, and there was a bias in favour of inspecting those properties where the residents were at home. The surveyors reported that their overall impression was of property well maintained. Nevertheless poor housing accommodation was found and formal actions were taken as summarised in table one below.
Table 1. City of Lincoln Rogue Landlord Project 2016. Projected and actual outputs and as described in the bid to DCLG.
Goals / Projected(Number or rate) / Actual
(Number or rate) / Evidence or comment
Number of streets surveyed / 34 / 41 / These were in the Sincil Bank area.
Number of inspections / 520 / 580 / These were of rented properties and were primarily in the Sincil Bank area
Number of raids / 1 or 2 / 2 / These were in conjunction with the police and the fire and rescue service
Number of notices under housing or planning law / 180 / 318 / These concerned any statutory procedure and there could be more than one per property
No of enforcement actions or prosecutions / 112 / 101 / These concerned any actions where a deficiency had been noted, and there could be more than one per property
Number of “sheds” demolished / 0 / 0 / This relates to the unusual circumstance of requiring the destruction of a structure.
Number of buildings prohibited / 10 / 7 / These concerned the prohibition of the occupation of a dwelling
Other / 6 / 0 / This concerned the output from other teams in the council
A surprising feature of the project was that there was very little if any protest from landlords, letting agents or tenants. There had been no advance publicity yet rarely was a surveyor challenged. Even when enforcement actions were being pursued against a portfolio landlord the entitlement of the authority to inspect and enforce was accepted.
There were no recorded examples of retaliatory eviction as a consequence of the Improvement Notices. Where the council had identified houses as overcrowded or had intimated that Emergency Prohibition Orders were to be declared the person responsible brought about the vacant possession of the building. As to where the tenants or licensees had been rehoused, this was not known to the team. The clear risk was that they had been re-housed in unsafe accommodation elsewhere. Where Emergency Prohibition Orders had been made with the involvement of the Homelessness Team the condition of the new accommodation was known.
Table 2. City of Lincoln Rogue Landlord Project 2016. The number of enforcement actions taken in respect of Private Rented Property (61 dwellings)
Unlicensed licensable HMO. Prosecution file. / 1Breach of HMO Management Regulations. / 43
Breach of HMO Management regulations, potential prosecution file¹. / 4
Non return of section 235 information. Potential prosecution file². / 13
Prohibition Orders made. / 7
Improvement Notice served³. / 21
Breach of Prohibition order or Improvement Notice. Prosecution file / 2
Letter (informal notice) advising of deficiencies (part one actions) or breach of HMO Management Regulations / 55
Section 4 Prevention of Damage by Pests Act 1949 notice / 3
¹ The 4 potential prosecution files relate to 4 properties and include all the 43 breaches in the line above
² There may be more than one defendant for each property.
³ There may be more than one copy for each property if there is more than one interested party
Note the total number of actions does not equate to a figure in table 1.
Table 3. City of Lincoln Rogue Landlord Project 2016. The productivity of the project:
Total number of operational days, Monday 1 February to Thursday 31 March, excluding Good Friday and Easter Monday. / 42Number of streets inspected / 41
Total number of houses in the street surveys / 1,830
Total number of houses where access was gained (regardless of tenure) / 893
Success rate for access:
Houses accessed/total number of house calls. 893/1830 / 49%
Of houses where access gained, number owner-occupied / 313
Of houses where access gained, number privately rented.
Of which 224 HMOs / 580
Of private rented houses where access gained proportion which were HMOs 224/580 / 39%
Tenure rate for access:
Houses accessed owner-occupier/privately rented. 313/580 / 1:1.9
Of privately rented properties the number requiring some form of enforcement action / 61
Enforcement rate:
Properties requiring some form of action/ All private rented properties inspected 61/580 / 11%
Table 4 City of Lincoln Rogue Landlord Project 2016. Assistance provided by PAB Translation Service
Telephone hotline. Staffed Monday-Friday, 9-3Number of calls received and dealt with: / 1
Languages used: / Romanian
Translation of posters and leaflets
Number of documents translated / 1
Translators accompanying street surveys and inspections
Episodes / February X 9 / March X 1
Translators in attendance for each episode / 2 / 2
Languages used: / Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Czech, Hungarian, Slovak, Portuguese, Afghan, Iraqi, Turkish, French, Spanish, Chinese
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Lessons Learnt.
There were many successes in this exercise which could be carried forward into future activities. Almost inevitably there were areas which could have worked better but given the circumstances this was not surprising. There were no terrible mistakes, no dreadful omissions. The lessons learnt are grouped into five areas although these are arbitrary headings and there is some overlap. The subject areas are:
- Project set up
- Team selection and preparation
- Fieldwork
- Record keeping and reporting
- The aftermath
a. Project set up
The identification of the area to be surveyed had been determined when preparing the funding bid and there was no reason to suppose that the conditions found did not justify its selection. The targeting of the surveys within the selected area was to have been guided by intelligence about properties known or thought to be privately rented. The primary source of that intelligence was to have been from Revenues and Benefits, which was to have been refined by information held by the Private Housing Team. To make that information available council policy required an information sharing agreement. During the course of the project an information sharing agreement was drafted and signed but only became available as the field work was finishing. A greater lead-in time was required.
What could have worked better was the advance information to other teams and organisations. In particular the:
•Private Housing Team who fielded enquiries and had to know how the work of the Rogue Landlord Team was to be integrated.
•The Homelessness Team who were going to have to respond to the consequences of prohibition orders.
•Lincolnshire Police who the public could have in the event of suspicions about bogus surveyors operating in the area.
•The City’s own help desk who might also be approached about bogus callers.
All these groups, except the Police, received briefing information but it was very much made on the run rather than planned in advance.
A dedicated room was made available for the project team, and this worked well although the room suffered the drawback of acting as a thoroughfare to the printer for the wider department. This could have compromised the security of the confidential information that the team was handling.
Computer access was quickly established and identification passes were made available when the staff arrived. Personal protection equipment was ordered in advance of the team starting. Surveying equipment was also ordered and each officer signed for and took responsibility for their own surveying equipment.
b. Team selection and preparation
Given the very short lead in it was fortuitous that a full team of officers was brought together. This was done not by direct recruiting but through the use of staff agencies, namely:
•Osborne Richardson
•Oyster Partnership
The use of agencies provided the authority with a pool of professionals who were used to working to the adhoc conditions of short term projects.
c. Fieldwork
In the absence of targeted addresses the surveyors carried out blanket inspections of whole streets which meant that owner occupied properties were visited as well as rented properties. Whilst these visits equated to lost time it did give an opportunity for owner occupiers to provide intelligence about nearby rented property.
Access could not be gained for every property and this had to be accepted. The best time for access proved to be early morning or late afternoon. For future projects the same flexibility for working times will be adopted.
In the initial project planning and briefing surveyors were to avoid “informal actions” and were to pursue formal action directly. This was reinforced during the project but not tested against individual surveyors’ actions systematically. Quality control of the surveyors’ actions had not been built into the project and in reality there was little time to do so given the focus on the project outputs. The subsequent identification of informal actions requiring as they did formal assessment had the potential to impact upon the future work load of the Private Housing Team. Some informal actions were viewed as appropriate and they primarily related to The Management of Houses in Multiple Occupation (England) Regulations 2006. There are no statutory notices for deficiencies in respect of these regulations and any follow up work is therefore also informal unless the decision is made to pursue a prosecution for non-compliance.