Issue - meetings

Report of the Director of Environment and Resident Experience. To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for Housing Services, Private Renters, and Planning.

This report seeks the consideration of the outcome of consultation  and whether to introduce a new Additional Licensing Scheme for HMO to replace the current scheme which is due to end.

The Cabinet Member for Housing Services, Private Renters and Planning introduced the report which updated the Cabinet on the key findings of the statutory consultation for a proposed new additional licensing scheme for HMO accommodation. The report further sought a decision from Cabinet to consider whether to authorise the designation of the whole of Haringey borough as subject to additional HMO licensing (when considering the consultation outcomes, evidence, and prescribed criteria within Part 2 of the Housing Act 2004).

In response to questions from Cllr Luke Cawley – Harrison the following information was provided:

• The Council had a two-pronged approach to inspecting premises that were potentially unlicensed or premises the Council believed should be licensed. This was through considering the originally completed evidence base for the scheme that used information was taken from different Council held records and also information from Experian records. The information was overlaid, and it gave the Council an opportunity to identify properties that were likely to have high turnover of occupation. The address list was then compared with addresses of licences that had been received. Door-to-checks were done after the coronavirus crisis. The time during the crisis was used to write to property owners identify property owners to inform them that they may have a HMO that was not licensed with the local authority. The Council also continued to use intelligence from different sources, and they can be health professionals, the internal service officers or waste officers (who were good identifiers of HMO accommodation).

• The process of sending warning letters was no longer an option and the Council was now pursuing landlords for failing to license (once evidence of this had been obtained). Landlords also got a reduced licence period for being a non-compliant landlord. This allowed the Council to review their properties and their licence applications within one or two years. Part of the penalty was that they paid for the relicensing within a shorter period of time.

• Noted that over the last two years, the Council had been issuing civil penalty notices for landlords who had failed to license. The Council was continuing with that process. The process was evidence based, so tenants who did not want to provide the Council with witness statements or would not be part of the process, it became more difficult in evidencing that a property had been operating as a house of multiple occupation. It was also very easy for people to say they were living as one family.

• With newly appointed and more experienced officers now having been appointed, the team was growing and had recently completed a round of recruitment, there were officers who had experience in doing their own licensing scheme. This would help on build on the Council’s enforcement activity.

• The Council was working more closely with the Police, Waste and Antisocial Behaviour officers to try and target and prove that certain properties were operating either as selective, but mainly as multiple occupation properties.

• The consultation results were disappointing in relation to the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 118