Exclusive: Furious landlords condemn Leicestershire council’s green light for huge Selective Licensing scheme

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Oadby and Wigston Bor­ough Coun­cil says its new scheme will include 90 streets and rake in £504,000 to fund the scheme.

Landlords in Leicestershire are
calling on their local council to rethink a major new selective licensing
scheme.

Despite concerns from property owners in the town, Oadby
and Wigston Bor­ough Coun­cil has given the green light to a scheme covering 90
streets in the South Wigston area, with the aim of improving private rental
accommodation where almost one in three privately rented properties fails to
meet the decent home standard.

However,
the Leicester Landlords Association has told LandlordZONE that the scheme will
just be a money-making exercise which won’t tackle the real cause of the area’s
high crime rate and anti-social behaviour.

“The
council doesn’t have enough people employed to implement the scheme properly so
they’ll make money, but things will just get worse,” says chairman Tony Bhaur.

“Some
landlords don’t realise when criminals have taken over their properties and
turned them into HMOs, which is when there are more problems.”

The
association believes a compulsory accreditation scheme would be more effective,
with a thorough survey of who lives in each rented property to flush out any
problems along with rogue landlords.

With 600 chargeable properties in the area, the new
scheme has the potential to generate £504,000 a year through the £590 licence.

Tony
Cawthorne, regulatory services manager for the council, estimates that 85% of
landlords will sign up – with time being allocated for officers to track down
and prosecute those that don’t.

“This
will give us more powers – it will be a way for good landlords to help us root
out the bad and the rogue landlords,” he says.

The scheme starts on 5th May 2020.

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