Greenwich Council says the consultation has been relaunched "following feedback from the community" with the new consultation running from 13th January to 24th March. The council also says, in its October 2022 consultation report, that currently, there are "450 suspect HMOs under investigation" in its area. It added that the previous additional licensing scheme ".... has made good progress in improving standards in a large number of HMOs, However, there are still a significant number of properties that remain unlicensed and there are issues with non-compliance".

Meanwhile, the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) has said that Greenwich Council was "going back to the drawing board over unlawful licensing consultation". The organisation says that it wrote to the council in relation to the previous consultation to complain that it was flawed and if the council went ahead with the new additional licensing scheme on the basis of that consultation then "the matter would be escalated to a Judicial Review".

The NRLA had 4 complaints about the previous consultation: That the consultation documentation format wasn't easily accessible; there was no evidence report to support [a new additional] licensing scheme; no alternatives to a new additional licensing scheme were proffered; the review commissioned by the council of the previous additional licensing scheme, which ran from 2016 to 2021, was not included in the consultation documentation.

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