A "Serial slum landlord" has received Brent Council's first banning order whilst a "Dodgy landlord" and his agent in Dagenham are made to pay £22,000 with the landlord also ordered to pay a £15,000 rent repayment order.

Local authority selective licensing schemes, now increasingly being used by councils seeking to improve living conditions in their local private rented sector, can be a way of moving beyond the debate surrounding a recent byelection result (extensively covered elsewhere)

The designation of new private rented sector selective licensing schemes by local authorities continued apace through 2022. Some schemes involved the licensing of tens of thousands of urban PRS properties.

The point is that all councils, one way or another, must be able to evidence their private rented sector (PRS) housing enforcement activity. This is even more so the case now, following the recent letter sent by Michael Gove MP to all council leaders and chief executives in England demanding details of their housing enforcement activity relating to damp and mould issues in both the social and private rented sector.

Housing standards, and the capacity of local authorities to enforce them, are rightly, but for all the wrong reasons, in the headlines at the moment. With this in mind, it’s instructive to look at what local authorities can achieve, in the private rented sector, via prosecutions and their attendant penalties. So, here are the top 5 housing enforcement cases of 2022.

Two just published documents could, perhaps, point to a way that local authorities could better persuade private rented sector (PRS) landlords that there are benefits to selective licensing schemes.

The “Outsourcing” behemoth Serco has an interesting “calling all landlords” message on its webpage. The company states that it is looking for “landlords, investors and agents” with rental properties available (in the North West, Midlands and the East of England) in all category types - HMO, single family, care homes, residential and former student accommodation.

Who’d be a private landlord today? Certainly it’s obvious that many private rented sector landlords (on the evidence of local press interviews and property portal commentary) feel, shall we say, under-appreciated. But the question can also be asked - could they look at things from a different perspective?

“Private renters stuck in dangerous homes ‘failed’ by councils” is certainly a catchy headline and it was followed by the equally eye-catching “Tenants who complain of dangerous or potentially deadly faults in privately rented homes are being let down by councils, a BBC investigation suggests.”

With very significant public sector financial and thus also capacity constraints in the short to medium term and no let up (thus far) in Government approvals of larger selective licensing schemes, Local Authorities need to box clever to achieve their strategic housing goals in the face of the choppy waters they are currently experiencing.