Council Right to Buy

TJ27

Bob, your last few lines do indeed point out some of the exceptions.

Regarding fees, in my area there was originally talk of setting fees at around £110 per habitable room, which might have meant fees of over £1,000 per property. However this was largely speculation by landlords. The actual fee we have arrived at is £400 per property. If your property goes above and beyond the minimum legal standard and is accredited, then the fee is £300. If landlords submit an application within 6 months of licensing going live, £50 is deducted from the fee. So it isn't really that bad, especially when you consider that HMO registration was £80 under the old regime anyway.

We deal with some landlords who own in excess of 250 properties. To charge per landlord would be pretty unfair.

Mind you, if you have a poor property and notices are required, we will be charging to cover our costs. There is something like a charge of £220 to £270 per notice.

So if you have a good HMO you might just end up paying £250 to register it for five years. If it's a pit, you'll pay £400 to register it, plus perhaps a grand for the pleasure of us serving notices, plus whatever it costs to do the work and comply the notices. And if the notices are not complied within a reasonable period of time you'll be prosecuted and I think the maximum fine is now something like 20 thousand pounds per notice. And if you just kick the tenants out and put the property on the market, there will be land charges on the register and people will be reluctant to buy it. And if it's just left empty the council can compulory purchase it, renovate it and bring it back into use.

So there really are some quite good reasons why landlords should want their houses and flats to be up to standard.

Bear in mind that just because a property is an HMO it does not necessarily mean that it must be licensed. There are licensable HMO's and also non licensable HMO's.

I've actually got the legislation on my lap now, so I'd better stop!!