Following the sacking of the now former DLUHC secretary of state, Michael Gove MP, one property related organisation suggested (when discussing the instalment of Mr Gove’s successor Greg Clark MP) that perhaps this could lead to a resetting of the Government’s relationship with the private rented sector and see the end of “anti landlord rhetoric”. Without wishing, here, to become involved in that debate, the definition of “good landlord” used here will be a landlord who has knowledge of and complies with the relevant laws and regulations and manages their property, tenancies and their landlord/tenant relationship (or the breakdown thereof) well and with competence and is able, if required, to demonstrate or evidence these characteristics.

So, with the above in mind, why would (or should) good landlords be right to be desperate to see more enforcement whether that be in cases of HMO licensing or selective licensing? A good place to start would be a research and analysis study published last month (June 2022) that looked into local authority enforcement in the private rented sector. The study, Local authority enforcement in the private rented sector: headline report was commissioned by DLUHC and carried out by the centre for regional economic and social research (CRESR) at Sheffield Hallam University.

The study involved, in part, a survey sent out to all English local authorities in 2020. Sadly, however, only 140 councils (44%) out of 318 authorities responded - annoying to say the least if you are a landlord or a tenant assuming that top notch regulation of the PRS will be based on comprehensive data from every relevant local regulatory body. But, therein lies a hint of another major problem for the regulated, the regulators and the consumers - even those authorities that responded showed that they themselves have poor data (and therefore inadequate knowledge sufficient to enforce efficiently) about the PRS in their areas. Some of these authorities estimated that upto 50% of unlicensed HMOs in their areas are slipping under the enforcement radar.

Most of the respondents recognised that licensing was an effective tool in managing problems in their PRS market - it gives authorities the power to do property inspections in designated selective licence areas for example, but outside such an area an authority most often relies on complaints from tenants or neighbours and complaints alone do not lead to effective enforcement (and thus improvement) across the sector as many tenants, for myriad reasons, don’t complain about poor standards.

Added to all this there are significant capacity constraints militating against effective enforcement. The study showed that a third of the local authority respondents employed only 2 or fewer full time enforcement officers and 12% reported employing 1 or fewer such officers.

If this is the environment in which good landlords are having to operate then how can they ever hope to overcome the weight of the reputational damage caused by bad or rogue landlords unless they operate in an area where the authority has the capacity to staff a properly funded “rogue landlord unit”, for example? A national register that all landlords must join is only part of the answer but the right data gathering tools and an effective no stone unturned strategy of going hard on bad landlords via proactive enforcement is the only way of solving the rest of the equation. Until then, good landlords will remain desperate, at the very least in value for money terms, for effective enforcement both inside and outside of licensed areas.