Southsea HMO Licensing Update – Plaudits for PCC

At our regular meeting with Portsmouth City Council Private Sector Housing (PCC) we learnt that they are still finding unlicensed HMO"s (3 more this month plus another 21 'Section 257" properties), most of which have been in existence since licensing was introduced nearly three and a half years ago, and of the 3,200+ that have been identified, only just over 2,900 have been licensed.

This is not a criticism of PCC - just confirmation of how hard it is to find the landlords that don"t want to be found or to get the message to those landlords who may only have 1 property and who do not participate in local associations or CPD activity.

Amongst the good news this month, enforcement actions on those who do not comply with licence conditions continue, raising the overall standard of housing in the city by removing or improving the worst.

Also, in the good news section, is the news that a potential 'cold caller" newbie letting agent who thought he could make money by buying the list of licensed landlords from PCC and then selling his service to those landlords, in the hope of finding a few who would let him overcrowd (as Red Vista did) or sub-let or whatever, has been dissuaded. It has long been a gripe of PDPLA members that anyone can buy the list of 2,000+ names from PCC for a nominal sum (previous coverage here), call themselves a letting agent and then try and win some business even though they lack the skill, resources or experience to properly manage an HMO. As of October, this year, PCC agreed to accept our interpretation of the Housing Act and only provide a full list of addresses to bona fide requestors. As a result the 1st potentially rogue / newbie letting agent has been turned away. Hooray! And thank you PCC!

On the enforcement front, last time we reported on the large number of IMO"s (Interim Management Orders - where PCC take over management and running of an HMO until it is brought up to the necessary standard and any needed management improvements are put in place, all at the expense of the owner) and these have all now been completed. There are now 12 new IMO"s in place - so quite a high workload for PCC, apparently 12 HMO"s with 12 different landlords, 3 are student lets and the other 9 are occupied by Eastern Europeans. The 'breach of license conditions" which resulted in each of these IMO"s range from unlicensed properties, overcrowding, lack of wash hand basins to paperwork irregularities such as out of date certificates and the like.

One of the current properties is soon to be handed back to the owner, along with a bill for £17,000 for the works completed and associated cost of management during the period of the IMO. Whether actions like this make any difference to the average rented property in the city is highly debateable, but for the individuals who do not know what they are doing or who perhaps had the wrong perception of letting, which is very much a highly-regulated customer service business, actions such as these will either drive them out of the industry or very quickly ensure they learn to manage and operate their properties like the many good and able landlords in the city, both of which are good outcomes in our view.

The other area we were pleased to see progress was the continued focus on letting agents. Too many of our members have lost money due to letting agents not protecting deposits and then going out of business or similar - so the PCC focus on ensuring local agents who manage HMO"s do so properly and are members of redress schemes (where client monies are protected) is to be applauded. We were told at the meeting of at least 3 agents who appear not to belong to redress schemes (which has been a legal requirement since October 2014) and at least one of those is well known in the city and owns or manages between 50 and 70 properties here.

And a final piece of good news from the meeting - too often councillors have encouraged increased or more onerous regulation because local residents are complaining and it is better to be seen to be doing something than not. The reality is that some claims are unfounded and some residents just need to be told when they are wrong - a difficult thing for a councillor or a council official to do. It was mentioned in previous articles that the PCC team have setup various community liaison groups in an attempt to increase tolerance between groups of residents in particular communities, and it is as a result of one of these that they have come across a household of students who do not close bedroom wardrobe doors because the 'squeak" from those doors causes the neighbours to complain about the noise. Whereas in the past, PCC would have listened to the neighbour complaint about student noise, this time they are rightly treating the situation as harassment of the students.

Hallelujah PCC - May this common sense grow in 2017!