Council could name bad landlords in bid to protect tenants

Published by Ross Macmillan for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Local Government

East Staffordshire Borough Council is considering plans to publish the names of landlords who were issued with enforcement notices in a bid to improve the quality of the private rented sector.

With 250 complaints every year and only a small team to deal with them, the council is looking at ways to step up its enforcement activities.

The plans include the possibility of naming ‘bad’ landlords to make sure tenants know exactly who they are renting from.

Richard Asher, housing standards manager at East Staffordshire Borough Council, told 24dash: "We want to assist tenants in ensuring the landlord they are – or could be - renting from is a responsible landlord. So for landlords we’ve taken enforcement action against, we could have their names published.”

Mr Asher explained the measure could have legal issues and that the council’s team is currently making sure it would be a viable solution.

He said: “We need to delve a little more into that. We don’t want it to cause more problems than it solves. Publishing just a name might be confusing so we are looking at what we can legally do.

“The idea would be to make our enforcement activities more apparent to everybody, so more people could be aware this is happening and could check if their landlord is right.”

It is hoped such a move would create powerful incentives for landlords to keep their homes to a decent standard.

“You would hope that landlords would not want to have their names published in this case,” Mr Asher said.

The council had first been looking at several landlord accreditation schemes – something housing charity Shelter is fighting for – but ruled them out because of “disadvantages”. Mainly, it was feared only good landlords would care to join them.

Alternatively, the council’s team also thinks about targeting particular areas where they receive many complaints or even ask tenants to self-assess their properties.

Mr Asher added: “We issue a reasonable number of notices and most of the time, we do things informally, meet the landlord and they fix things pretty quickly. But occasionally, there are some we would definitely classify as rogue landlords.

“We are getting around 250 complaints a year, of all kinds. We know there is an issue. That’s why we need to go out and start looking for solutions.”