STUDENT HMOs: Lancaster consults on plans to clamp down on university rental market

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Lancaster City Council says measures are needed to prevent ongoing ‘imbalance’ within areas swamped by student lets.

Landlords in Lancaster are under
attack from their local council which is cracking down on the city’s HMOs.

A large student population has fuelled
growth in Lancaster and nearby Galgate, which the council hopes to curb. It
wants to make landlords submit a planning application before they can convert family
homes into HMOs and restrict HMOs to no more than 10% of
housing stock within a 100-metre radius. 

Lancaster City Council also has
its sights set on To Let boards and wants advertisement controls to prevent
them being put up in the wards of Bulk, Castle, John o’Gaunt and Scotforth
West.

However,
Gavin Dick, the National Landlord Association’s local authority policy officer,
says the council is misguided. “It’s good news for sitting landlords but the
council is reducing the housing supply so people seeking properties will pay
higher rents. It’s not good news for new landlords either,” he says.

Many
homes in the city have permitted development rights, so they can be converted
into small HMOs – for three to six occupants – without having to apply for
planning permission.

Councillor
John Reynolds, Cabinet member with responsibility for planning policy, says the
concentration of student HMOs in some areas is creating an imbalance in the
community and affecting the neighbourhoods’ character. 

“Issues
arise from depopulation over the summer period, noise and disturbance, pressure
on refuse storage, car parking and services, as well as the detrimental visual
impact caused by the display of a significant volume of ‘To Let’ boards,” he says.
“Student HMOs also remove family homes from the housing market and by
constraining their further growth we will retain a good balance of affordable
accommodation.”

A six-week
consultation starts on 21st February.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – STUDENT HMOs: Lancaster consults on plans to clamp down on university rental market | LandlordZONE.

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What’s causing landlords and tenants to fall out of love?

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The latest data by rental deposit replacement scheme, Ome, has revealed which areas of the UK have seen the biggest uplift in deposit disputes, as well as the areas with the highest number of total disputes raised.

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Today in politics : Cabinet reshuffle and new PRS data

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In a bumper edition we look at the impact of the cabinet reshuffle, data from RICS and the Ministry of Justice as well as HMOs, Disabled Facilities Grants and much more. Javid quits and housing minister McVey leaves role Sajid Javid has quit as Chancellor of the Exchequer after number 10 told him to sack his […]

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Japanese Knotweed: Property information form updated

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Those selling their properties who do not know whether there is an issue of Japanese Knotweed at the property will now have to declare this, after the Law Society updated the TA6 Property Information Form sellers complete when selling a property. Currently, those selling a property have to select either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ if they […]

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Councils struggling with council tenant rent arrears…

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Direct payments:

With councils now
exposed to direct payments for the rent element of Universal Credit,
some are now struggling with massive and mounting rent arrears, as in
the case of Sandwell Council.

Direct payment of Housing Benefit was introduced for private landlords around 2004 under the 2004 Housing Act. This meant that the benefit was paid initially direct to the tenant, whose responsibility it then was to make sure the landlord was paid the correct amount of rent. The thinking behind the change was that it garners responsibility in money handling and budgeting in the tenant on welfare, nudging them away from the “nanny state” mentality.

Until the introduction of Universal Credit, and not all local authorities are affected as yet, councils have been in the envious position of having Housing Benefit paid directly to them, making their job of minimising debt much easier. Now, however, where UC is involved, because the payment to the individual tenant involves up to six benefits, councils have to rely on their welfare council tenants splitting off the rent element and paying back the rent.

Whereas private
landlords large and small have had to learn to manage direct payments
efficiently, or face going out of business, it seems that some
councils are struggling to do this. According to the City of
Wolverhampton Express & Star, Sandwell Council rent
arrears hit £5.7m because its IT system is struggling with Universal
Credit.

The Council outsources its rent arrears to Capita’s IT system, but it seems the system is outdated and incapable of correctly targeting debtors. Instead it is flagging up around 14,000 arrears cases every week, despite the fact that many of them are not in arrears and don’t need chasing up.

The result is that
the nearly £6 million owing in rent to Sandwell Council is steadily
increasing. This is because Council staff are wasting time manually
managing the outdated IT Housing system, which they claim Capita has
failed to improve despite the Council raising concerns since 2013.

Housing management
at the Council have warned that the debt could rise by another £3.8
million if the system is not improved soon and changes in how
payments are collected are not implemented.

The authority says
it is now about to spend over £400,000 on new IT software, which it
says it hopes will boost income by almost £700,000 in the first 12
months of operation by correctly identifying tenants most at risk of
not paying.

Nigel Collumbell, a
service manager for housing at the Council, told The Express
& Star thatthechanges in welfare payments had seen staff workloads increase by
60 per cent.

He says:

“With the
backdrop of welfare reform this is producing a really challenging
environment to collect and prevent rent arrears.

“We have had a
trend of increasing rent arrears over the last three years and there
has been a real steep increase in the amount of rent owed to us by
local authority tenants since the roll-out of Universal Credit in
Sandwell since November 2018.

“In terms of some
of those specific challenges, Universal Credit is far much at the top
of the tree.

“As a consequence
of the full roll-out, we have an additional £3.4 million rent debit
we have to collect that would have paid directly onto (our) accounts
by housing benefit.”

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FINALLY revealed: Rogue landlord database contains just 18 individuals

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Sacked housing minister Esther McVey’s last act in post is to reveal that just six names have been added to the database since August last year.

Esther McVey’s final
act as Housing Minister before being ‘relieved of her duties’ this morning has
been to reveal the awkward truth about the government’s national rogue landlord
database, which she has revealed contains just 18 people and five companies listed
on it following its launch 16 months ago.

The admission came
in a statement released by McVey just before losing her ministerial job in a
written parliamentary answer to a question posed by MP Sir Christopher Chope
earlier this week.

Last year it was
revealed that just 12 landlords had been added to the rogue database, so a
further six have now been included.

“There are 18 individual landlords and property agents and five
companies currently registered on the database for offences committed since 6
April 2018,” said Mcvey.

“For mandatory inclusion on the database a landlord must be convicted of a banning order offence and receive a banning order.

“If the landlord receives a conviction for a banning order offence or receives two of more civil penalties for [such an] offence within a 12 month period then the local authority has the discretion to include the landlord on the database.

“The database is intended for the worst and most persistent offenders, who neglect their responsibilities to provide tenants safe homes.”

But the Residential Landlord Association says this admission, together with rising rents revealed by RICS this week, highlights a failure of government policy for the private rented sector. Asked why the association thinks the rogue landlord figures are so low, an RLA spokesperson told LandlordZone that it is likely to be a mixture of councils who don’t have the resources to add landlords to the database, and that there may not be as many ‘serious’ rogue landlords as defined by the database within the market as previously thought.

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String of data shows government policy failure

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The RLA is claiming claiming that a string of data released today demonstrates the failure of government policy for the private rented sector.

The Royal Institution for Chartered Surveyors is warning that private sector rents are set to increase by 2% over the next year as a result of the demand for such housing exceeding supply as landlords dis-invest from the sector.

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Government policy for rented housing is failing

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Landlords are claiming that a string of data released today demonstrates the failure of government policy for the private rented sector. The Royal Institution for Chartered Surveyors is warning that private sector rents are set to increase by 2 per cent over the next year as a result of the demand for such housing exceeding […]

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Mark Smith (Barrister-At-Law) Landlord tax planning strategies – Liverpool

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Our Hon. Legal Counsel, Mark Smith, Head of Chambers at Cotswold Barristers will be presenting an overview of several landlords tax strategies at the pin Liverpool Meeting property networking event Thursday 27th February 2020.

The event will be held at The Shankly Hotel

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I can do what I want when I want – Wrong!

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I recently read the shocking story about Mr Valentine-Brown who was murdered by his landlady, her partner and two accomplices when they decided they would take the eviction process into their own hands.  Although an extreme case, this story serves to highlight just how quickly problems can escalate when emotions are running high and landlords take an unlawful route to eviction.

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