Perhaps it’s the left’s puerile belief that all property is theft that has led to Rachel Reeves’s swingeing attack on private landlords. Her latest threat is to slap National Insurance on rental income in her autumn Budget. As a proud socialist, I’m sure Lego-lady is on board with anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s property-thieving assertion; in which case, why not go the whole hog and hand all that stolen booty back to the state? Or give it to Angie; I’m sure she’d be thrilled to add another 14 million properties to her already bulging portfolio.
As a small-time ‘landlord’ (a word dripping with feudal menace), it’s not just the wracking up of taxes that makes me despair. It’s the petty little bureaucracies and extortionate fees designed to make me feel guilty for deigning to offer paid accommodation to someone who might need it – the horror!
What’s with the weirdly specific fee? Why £923 and not £920 or £900?
Only the other morning I received an email from my letting agent reminding me to apply for the ‘second phase of selective licensing’ before 1st September or risk a fine. This so-called ‘scheme’ sounded ominously Orwellian. ‘Second phase?’ I don’t remember there being a first phase. ‘Selective licensing’? Selected by whom and for what purpose?
The form many landlords are now mandated to complete offers few clues. Having confirmed that basic rental regulations such as a gas safety certificate were in place at my one-bedroom rental flat, I attached the current tenancy agreement and was about to press send when I noticed one of those foreboding ‘how to pay’ sections. Pay for what? Filling in yet another tedious form? Shouldn’t Lambeth be paying me for my trouble? Some hope. ‘The fee of £923 will be taken from your account in two instalments,’ the instructions revealed; £650 up front, the rest once the form had been checked and approved by the council.
I immediately messaged my letting agent in a panic. ‘What’s all this about and why such a huge and seemingly random fee?’ ‘No idea mate. It’s all just crackers. Reeves is a useless t**t, excuse my French.’ Another local letting agent seemed equally perplexed while expressing concerns about where all the new regulations might be leading. ‘We are running out of properties to rent. Landlords are petrified.’
And with good reason; failure to comply with the ‘selective licensing’ scheme for instance, comes with harsh penalties listed on Lambeth’s website (I notice they are still flying their old red flag emblem; only now it’s in black and white):
Failure to licence your property is a criminal offence.
Upon the designation coming into force, a person commits an offence and will be liable for action to be taken against them if they are the person having control of or managing a property which is required to be licensed under the licensing designation but is not licensed, and you may be subject to the following:
- Prosecution, and on conviction, a court may impose an unlimited fine.
- The council may, as an alternative to prosecution, impose a financial penalty of up to £30,000.
- The tenant(s) and/or the council may also apply to the First-Tier Tribunal (Residential Tribunal) for a rent repayment order.
- You would be unable to recover possession of the property using a Section 21, Housing Act 1988 notice.
- The landlord/managing agent may also be banned from running a rental property.
Petrifying indeed, but there is nothing in the scheme that isn’t already required by law and to which landlords, letting agents and managing agents must adhere. Presumably my completed form is simply transferred to one of Lambeth’s data files for reference so what’s with the weirdly specific fee? Why £923 and not £920 or £900? Could that innocent-looking £3 be a clever ruse to mislead me into thinking that studious bean counters have been busily doing their sums? Or do they imagine I am more likely to believe and therefore comply with an exact figure rather than one that has been rounded up or down? None of the letting agents I spoke to had a clue and seemed as baffled as their furious clients.
AI appeared to be more up to speed, instantaneously revealing that the fee:
Covers the costs of administering and enforcing a licensing scheme designed to improve housing standards, particularly in areas with poor property conditions or high levels of anti-social behaviour.
But tenants are already protected from the worst excesses of unethical landlords and as for cases of anti-social behaviour, that is surely a matter for the police, whom we already pay through our taxes.
Like so many state-imposed burdens, I can’t help but feel that ours is not to reason why but merely to comply. If any of England’s 317 local councils would like to add that phrase to their selective licensing forms, my fee is £927.39p – payable in two instalments.
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