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.

Described as "the biggest shakeup of civil penalties since 2014 the fine per occupier rises from £1000 to "up to £10,000 per occupier" for a first offence.

Both landlords were found out following unannounced inspections by council enforcement officers.

The High Kingsdown estate in the Cotham ward of Bristol is seeing some students living in the area receiving fines of up to £250 for nuisance behaviour.

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 landlord, who was awarded an OBE in 2011 for services to charity, had been previously fined £20,000 in 2009 for illegally converting a house into 3 flats.

The recent byelection result in Uxbridge seems to have sent out ripples beyond merely a new addition to the House of Commons roll call not least, depending on one's view, blaming it on or crediting for it, London's ULEZ scheme.

The BRE has published a new report that provides a 'cost benefit analysis' of carrying out a national programme of remediation of substandard housing in England that would pay for itself, over 9 years, in Health Service savings alone.

The landlord had been found guilty of housing offences in his absence by Colchester Magistrates in one case and changed his plea to guilty in the second case before Basildon Magistrates.

We previously covered this case in 2022 when it was before the Upper Tier Tribunal (UTT) deciding on the council's decision to revoke a landlord's licences and refuse to grant new licences due to fraudulent licence applications.