Agenda item

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 private rented sector. The Council got more owner / occupiers willing to participate than private rented sector tenants.

• Tenants were asked to participate when the Council was undertaking the compliance inspections. Leaflets, the use of a QR code and other methods were offered.

• This would be the fourth additional HMO licensing scheme that the Council had taken, so it was possible that the consultation was too close to the selective licensing consultation and residents, particularly private rented sector tenants, felt that they had already participated.

• One of the benefits of having an additional HMO licensing scheme was that the Council could start to better understand where the HMOs were in the borough and the condition of those properties as compliance inspections were performed.

• The base evidence was used to show what the Council already knew about the known HMO population. This had not existed in the past. The selective property licensing scheme had started to highlight properties with landlords who thought they might get away from having to license under the additional scheme.

RESOLVED

1. To consider the evidence that a significant proportion of the HMOs (that will be subject to the proposed designation) are being managed sufficiently ineffectively as to give rise, or likely to give rise, to problems either for those occupying the HMOs or for members of the public as detailed in Appendix 3.

2. To consider the outcome of the consultation and the Council’s consideration of those findings as in Appendices 4 and 5.

3. To consider the Council’s strategic approach linking the proposed additional HMO licensing scheme with the Council’s wider strategic approach to the private rented sector as set out in paragraph 7 to 8 in this report.

4. To approve the designation for all wards within Haringey borough, as delineated in the map at Appendix 1 and as set out in the Draft Designation Notice (Appendix 2) as subject to additional HMO licensing pursuant to Part 2 of the Housing Act 2004, which is expected to come into force on 17 June 2024.

5. To approve the proposed licence conditions applying to any HMO licence at Appendix 6.

6. To approve the proposed fee structure for any HMO licence applications made to the Council at Appendix 7.

7. To approve that the “policy on determining the appropriate level of civil penalty for offences under the Housing Act 2004” which was approved by Cabinet in February 2019, shall continue in force and shall also apply for the duration of the new scheme unless amended or a replacement policy is adopted prior to 16 June 2029.

8. To authorise the Director for Environment and Resident Experience, following consultation with the Cabinet Member for Housing Services, Private Renters and Planning, to:

(i) Ensure compliance in all respects with all relevant procedures and formalities applicable to the authorisation of such schemes.

(ii) Keep the proposed scheme under review during the designation lifetime and agree any minor changes to the proposed implementation and delivery, including administration, fees and conditions and give all necessary statutory notifications.

(iii) Ensure that all statutory notifications are carried out in the prescribed manner for the designation and to take all necessary steps to provide for the operational delivery of any licensing schemes agreed by Cabinet.

Reasons for decision

The current borough wide additional HMO licensing scheme is due to end on 26th May 2024.

The majority of the HMO accommodation in our borough is occupied by less than 5 persons and therefore falls under the additional HMO licensing criteria. Additional HMO licences accounted for 65% (3140) of the total number of HMO properties, licensed by the Council between 2019 and August 2023.

Evidence concludes that a significant proportion of these HMOs continue to be managed ineffectively across the borough, resulting in problems for either those occupying the HMOs or for members of the public. Complaints made by tenants and others to Haringey Council regarding poor property conditions and inadequate property management are a direct indicator of low quality and poorly managed HMOs. The Council recorded 492 complaints from tenants and others linked to HMOs over a 5-year period (April 2018 – March 223). Of

those complaints 265 have been linked to Additional HMOs.

 Additional HMO licensing requires HMO managers to comply with licence conditions and HMO Management Regulations. These include space standards, repairing obligations, fire precautions and testing, waste, and tenancy management. (Appendix 6 contains the proposed additional HMO licence conditions).

Not having the further powers provided by this type of licensing scheme, would mean the Council having only limited options available to protect private tenants and ensure landlord behave responsibly. As the scheme is financed by the licence fee income it can deliver interventions on a greater scale and more economically.

Renewing the additional HMO licensing scheme across our borough, will ensure that the health, safety, and welfare of the tenants that occupy this type of HMO remains protected.

Alternative options considered.

Do nothing and rely on a reactive complaint’s procedure. Doing nothing is not

considered a viable option due to the significant scale of poor housing conditions and the poor management of HMOs in the borough as outlined in the evidence report in Appendix.

To do nothing would mean relying on a reactive property inspection programme, which depends heavily upon complaints being made by tenants as the means of identifying poor HMO standards. Without HMO licensing, our human resources to do this as well as powers to achieve compliance would be limited. Doing nothing would also mean an inability to continue to work in the way that has been established through having the existing additional HMO licensing regime. The amount of operational partnership working that we are developing would also reduce.

Do nothing and rely on the use of Part 1 of the Housing Act 2004. The Council could rely on the enforcement powers listed in Part 1 of the Housing Act 2004 alone. Those

powers include issuing Improvement Notices, Hazard Awareness Notices or Prohibition Orders to improve living conditions or remove hazards, among other things. This formal action however is slow, with appeal provisions against most types of notices served, which can significantly delay the time period for compliance. In addition, the Council’s powers under Part 1 do not enable it to regulate the management of property as licensing schemes do. The Part 1 provisions are currently available to the Council but despite our best efforts to exercise these powers they have not provided the necessary large-scale improvements in the sector. All the above options are time consuming, resource intensive and not feasible on a large scale.

Voluntary Regulation. The Council could rely on voluntary accreditation schemes such as the London Landlord Accreditation Scheme (LLAS) or landlord membership organisations, such as the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA). These can help to support and improve a professional approach by landlords, and we have encouraged this by promoting voluntary regulation through voluntary accreditation schemes, but this does not give the Council any additional powers to ensure compliance. In addition, voluntary regulation is not likely to capture non-compliant or poor landlords.

Planned Government Reform. The government has announced that they want to provide more protection for private tenants and national registration for landlords. However, the details of any legal reforms affecting private rented housing are still unknown and without a

clear timetable.

Opting for a smaller designation within the borough. The data analysis and evidence gathering (Appendix 3) has highlighted that HMOs exist across all wards in Haringey. It also indicates that there are varying levels of compliance across all wards in Haringey. There is no current evidence to suggest that where compliance has been achieved, it has been maintained. We also know that there are likely to be un-licensed HMO properties remaining within some wards that should have been licensed under the Council’s current scheme. At present it is therefore proposed that HMO licensing continues to be required borough wide.