Written evidence submitted by Waltham Forest Council [PRS 046]
The Borough of Waltham Forest
Located in North-East London, Waltham Forest is home to an estimated 271,200 residents and 104,000 households. In response to the needs of the growing population, private rented housing has been the fastest growing housing tenure in Waltham Forest in the past decade. About one in four households in Waltham Forest (26 per cent) now live in private rented accommodation, up from 16 per cent in 2001.
This is in line with the London average (25 per cent) and higher than the national average (17 per cent). The total number of private rented sector households in the borough is now 25,100. In 2001 the figure was 14,100.
Our ambition in Waltham Forest is to ensure that all of our residents can enjoy a good quality of life. A secure and high quality home is a vital part of this, and Waltham Forest Council is determined to drive up the standard of rented accommodation locally, by working with landlords, tenants, and communities.
To meet these commitments, the Council introduced a Private Rented Property Licensing Scheme in April 2015. This means that all privately rented properties in the borough must be licensed with the Council. Waltham Forest is one of only four London boroughs to be allowed to extend the scheme to the whole of the borough. We have been similarly innovative when implementing and enforcing the scheme and extending services and support to good landlords. The scheme has allowed us to issue over 20,000 licenses, and work with landlords and tenants to drive up the quality of accommodation available for rent. Since February 2016 we have obtained 83 prosecutions and, since the introduction of financial penalties under the Housing and Planning Act, have issued penalty notices exceeding £200k in total value against non-compliant landlords.
We want to ensure that renting in Waltham Forest means access to high quality and secure housing, and that everyone understands their part in delivering a superior private rented sector. We welcome this inquiry as we believe that Councils should be granted greater powers to tackle rogue landlords, through licensing schemes and other enforcement powers.
We welcome the additional powers contained within the Housing and Planning Act 2016, particularly those relating to the ability to impose financial penalties as an alternative to prosecution proceedings. We would stress that the operation of the powers is still to be tested, and we have concerns that the effectiveness of the new civil penalties could be undermined by a potentially long-winded and bureaucratic appeals and debt recovery process.
New powers relating to the imposition of civil penalties rely on local authorities being able to identify and prove offences specified by the Housing and Planning Act to a criminal standard. Much of the legislation is complex and difficult to enforce, especially for councils that do not have a licensing scheme. For example:
Part 1 powers [HHSRS] are complex, not easily understood by landlords and are bureaucratic and cumbersome to enforce;
Part 2 powers can be difficult to enforce, as it can be problematic to prove that an address is let as a mandatory HMO. Although mandatory HMO licensing has been in place for more than 10 years, we believe that a significant proportion of licensable HMOs remain unlicensed;
Part 3 – we consider that what constitutes a house remains ambiguous for licensing purposes. Most local authorities require each separate dwelling to hold an individual property license for practical enforcement purposes, but the current drafting of Part 3 allows for a single license to cover multiple dwellings in some circumstances
We believe that interpreting and enforcing the legislation can be difficult, for the reasons set out above.
We also believe that the work councils have undertaken to enforce adequate fire safety in private rented blocks post-Grenfell using HHSRS powers highlights the inadequacy of enforcement powers available to local authorities in this area. The current risk-based approach (as opposed to specific property standards), together with the split of enforcement responsibilities between different agencies, is not an effective means for ensuring the highest possible standards in such accommodation. We believe that this could be resolved with the setting of specific standards for landlords and local authorities to work to.
There also remain considerable challenges with regard to resources, both in terms of budgets and staffing levels. Housing enforcement resources have tended to decline over the years, mirroring the reduction in local authority funding, as well as the previous decline in the importance of the PRS at a national level. Local authority resources have generally not expanded to meet the demands arising from the significantly increased size of the PRS in recent years. In addition, there is a shortage of skilled enforcement officers to undertake complex and time-consuming investigations into the activities of rogue operators, with Councils competing for the same limited resources and qualified staff.
We believe that properly resourced and focused licensing schemes can have a significant positive impact on the standard/quality of the private rented sector.
In 2016, Waltham Forest council launched a programme of regular borough-wide enforcement days. Working in partnership with the Police and Border and Immigration Services, the council has carried out over 26,000 property visits as part of such enforcement days and has issued around 1,000 notices to properties with issues such as dirty front gardens as well as take action against cases of fly-tipping, graffiti and abandoned vehicles to make streets cleaner and safer. Through the development of our PRS licensing scheme, we have been able to that properly resourced and focused licensing schemes can have a significant positive impact on the standard/quality of the private rented sector.
When issues are identified with PRS properties, the council seeks to work with landlords to help them operate lawfully and within license conditions, for example, by issuing a one-year licence to regularise a planning breach. However, as a Council we do not hesitate to prosecute if warnings are ignored or if landlords refuse to license their properties. Between February 2016 and March 2017 the council successfully prosecuted 64 private landlords, and courts ordered fines and costs came to around £200,000. We were pleased to have the second highest level of prosecutions in London in 2016/17.
In May 2016, a landlord was being ordered to pay over £7,000 in fines and costs following a potentially fatal fire at a property in Leytonstone, which highlighted serious issues with overcrowding and a lack of fire precautions. The Council also enforced its first Interim Management Order in October 2016 at a house in Walthamstow. In this instance, the Council took over the day to day management of a property, as there was no prospect of becoming licensed. The Council used the rental income generated by the property to raise the property to the required standards.
Through a proactive approach to enforcement, the Waltham Forest landlord licensing scheme is making a significant difference driving up living standards for people renting privately in the borough. The PRS licensing scheme, improves the safety of residents and ultimately helps to reduce the demands on council resources. The main emphasis of the Waltham Forest PRS licensing scheme is on enforcement. This means that bad or rogue landlords who refuse to engage with the council and secure improvements for their tenants can be easily tackled.
The licensing data we hold, covering 24,000 applications and 22,000 licenses, provides an invaluable source of information to highlight a ‘go to’ person for each rented home in the event of a complaint or other issue. It can also be used to identify additional properties in the control of the landlord of an identified problem property for targeted proactive enforcement action. Necessary improvements can be effected through the enforcement of licensing conditions, with sanctions of prosecution or civil penalties available in the event of non-compliance, avoiding the need to use Part 1 HHSRS powers.
However, it can now be difficult for local authorities to establish licensing schemes. Since April 2015, local authorities that want to introduce a Private Sector Licensing Scheme that covers more than 20 per cent of the area or 20 per cent of private rented homes must seek permission from the Secretary of State. This threatens to make the process unnecessarily cumbersome, and could limit the scale, and therefore, effectiveness of these schemes.
To help empower local authorities to better represent the needs of their residents, we believe that the power to approve Private Sector Licensing Schemes in London should be devolved to the Mayor of London. The Mayor should also be empowered to set the criteria for establishing private sector licensing schemes, and to provide guidance as to what an effective scheme ought to include, as called for in the Mayor’s draft housing strategy.
At the moment, the Housing Act 2004 does not specify or give any guidance regarding the length of issued landlord licenses other that they must not last for more than 5 years. Waltham Forest has issued a number of property licences for a reduced period due to concerns over the landlord and/or the property, but our approach has been subject to a number of legal challenges. We would like the government to provide Statutory Guidance which more clearly mandates local authorities to issue shorter term licences in appropriate circumstances. This will provide another tool that councils can use to ensure that landlords act responsibly, and tenants’ rights can be protected.
November 2017