Nottingham city council's executive board has approved a proposal for a new selective licence scheme to start in 2023 when its current scheme comes to an end. The city has a private rented sector estimated at just over 45,000 properties with a growth in size since 2011 from 25% of properties to 33% in 2021.

A local landlord group, the East Midlands Property Owners Group (with around 600 members) has criticised the proposed scheme with its business development manager, Giles Inman, saying "The costs associated with complying with the licensing scheme translates into higher rents (for tenants). There's no question about it." and he adds that given the current cost of living crisis this will make things more difficult for tenants as charging landlords fees under the scheme means "most [landlords] will have no other option than to pass on the costs to tenants".

However, there will be a lot of information to sift through for anyone not agreeing with the proposal. The council's proposal is put forward in a very detailed 179 page document (which includes a mid scheme review carried out in 2021 and an update of that review carried out in February 2022).

The document states that "the value" of the new scheme is estimated at £25 million of which just over £20 million is staffing costs for a team of 94 officers. The "non recoverable" costs of HHSRS inspections (which cannot be recovered from licence fees) is estimated at just over £900,000 and will need to come from the council's general revenue fund.

Prior to the covid lockdowns the council carried out 660 internal property inspections internal inspections (where 202 were improved after intervention and 70 before intervention) but, given the size of the scheme, even with some inspections carried out by the council's accreditation partners (Unipol, DASH and ANUK), this leaves an awful lot of properties yet to be inspected before 2023. One reason why the new scheme has been proposed - to be able to carry on the work started under the current scheme.

The mid scheme review also points to real world examples of where the current scheme has enabled the council to help and support both tenants and landlords with tenancy management issues.