With new rental reform legislation in the pipeline and at least 36 pieces of current legislation and associated regulations to cope with as well as, in some areas, local authority selective licensing conditions and associated fees it can seem for private landlords as if they are under the cosh on a permanent basis. But what’s the reality, and are private landlords, as a class, “hard done by”?

A big issue in the private rented sector (it sort of comes with the territory) is the inbuilt tension between being a residential landlord - providing a necessary social good - and being an investor - requiring a satisfactory return on investment in a highly financialised industry. Local authorities, though, approach the private rented sector from a different direction with its own inbuilt tensions - between tight supply and high demand (when an authority needs to facilitate a household into the PRS) and between both of those and consumer protection - where an authority, at the same time as utilising its local PRS also directly regulates it. So, a local authority looks at private landlords as a class whereas most often, landlords regard themselves as individuals rather than a class - landlords operating fewer than 5 properties and on a non professional basis still being in the vast majority of housing providers in the PRS.

Because the PRS is so highly individualised those 1.5 million individuals operating properties each have their own opinions on what a “good landlord” is but the point of a regulatory tool like, for example, licensing - whether of landlords and their properties or of nail bar owners, taxi/minicab drivers or pilots - is that the licensee needs to be able to prove that they are good (not just say it), or rather, that they are capable and safe enough to operate in their chosen sector; that they are aware of and comply with the regulations designed to protect their customers. Local authority regulation and enforcement of that regulation is based on risk to the public including consumers of products like tenancies and the current levels for fines along with the introduction of rent repayment orders reflects that position.

This shouldn’t be a partisan issue but, at least where licensing is concerned, it is still possible to read below the line comments on property websites that angrily call licence fees a tax and that the cost of those fees to the landlord will simply be put onto the rent charged even though these fees are (still) - tax deductible and even though it is against the law for local authorities to use licence fees for anything else but the cost of operating and administering the licensing scheme. On top of this, many authorities, where they can, use funds from their general revenue to subsidise the setting up of selective licence schemes and offer discounts (based on membership of an accreditation scheme or recognised landlord organisation showing a level of engagement going some way to proving a landlord might be accepted as being “good”) that often make it cheaper for a landlord to obtain a licence than it is for, say, a minicab driver to get theirs (in Leeds for example).

A licence then is simply permission to operate based on evidence via tenancy documentation, property certification, clean background checks and, preferably, concrete visual proof from property inspections rather than someone’s say so. A “good” landlord will be able to cope with that because, in the current era defined by getting better outcomes for less money (health & wellbeing, quality of life, quality of place, regeneration, better educational outcomes, better environmental outcomes), local authorities are, internally, adapting at pace and contrary to some popular beliefs have recognised that they can’t operate in silos and need to work holistically across departments and within the communities they serve. Some even offer training both for landlords as well as tenants.

A good investor with no desire to be at the coal face will (or at least, should) instruct a good agent but the direction of travel given that the Government is approving increasing numbers of larger licensing schemes is, for more licensing. Local authority budgets are going on statutory duties such as adult and child social care and, like it or not, the cost of proving your capability to be a landlord falls to … the landlord - as it does in most other industry sectors.

It may or may not be easy to be a landlord in an area like Mayfair but in many areas, both in London and in the regions, whether high risk/high return or quiet suburban, being an active landlord rather than a passive investor increasingly takes hard work in terms of compliance. From that perspective landlords are no more hard done by than any other industry where safety and standards are to the fore.