TH Council agrees to license private landlords in three wards

TH Council agreed to implement a landlord licensing scheme in three wards at its cabinet meeting last night.

All private landlords in Whitechapel, Weavers and Spitalfields and Banglatown – based on their pre-May boundaries – will be obliged to be licensed and meet its conditions from – it’s hoped – October.

The annual fee and exact conditions that must be met are yet to be agreed.

Licensing is aimed at improving the conditions of private rented properties, their management and to tackle so-called anti-social behaviour.

In Newham it has been successfully implemented since January 2013 and the borough now prosecutes more landlords than the rest of London combined.

Unfortunately the scheme is only being implemented in three Tower Hamlets wards after the Coalition government limited Selective licensing to a maximum 20% of a borough shortly before the election last year after intense lobbying by the National Landlords Association. Permission must be sought from the Department for Communities and Local Government before extending the scheme to become borough-wide, but recently blocked Barking and Dagenham’s request to do so.

However, Additional licensing, which only covers houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) – as opposed to HMOs and single family households that Selective covers – is not restricted and the council agreed to look into consulting on implementing it once the government finishes its own consultations on extending mandatory licensing to a greater number of HMOs. Legislation already covers HMOs with five rooms, three or more floors, and two or more households.

However, if it decides to act, the government is expected to implement a diluted version of Additional licensing that would not, for example, cover flats.

The key protections that licensing offers tenants is that the license becomes invalid if any of the conditions are breached rendering the landlord liable to a fine of up to £20,000 and unable to issue a S21 eviction notice.

The decision comes more than six months after the consultation was completed last summer following mayoral elections and a change in administration.

The council said that one of its problems in dealing with the private rental sector is that it relies on tenants reporting poor conditions and reacting to them with limited resources.

Licensing puts the onus on landlords to meet certain conditions and face penalties if it breaks them.

Some of the conditions that must be met include: carrying out repairs, particularly to furniture, fittings and electrical appliances, fitting and maintaining working smoke alarms and having an up-to-date gas certificate. However, each tenant will also be obliged to provide a reference.

In its report to cabinet, the council stated it would also use licensing to identify landlords of the approximate 1,500 empty properties in the borough and encourage their owners to bring them back into use.

It also said it would employ additional staff for its under-resourced environmental health team to carry out house inspections.

TH Renters letter of objection to the privatisation of Balfron Tower

Dear LB Tower Hamlets Planning Dept

please accept this letter as an objection to planning application PA/15/2554 for the refurbishment of Balfron Tower.

It is not that we are in itself opposed to the refurbishment of Balfron, in fact we wish it had happened thirty years ago when it was first mooted, or any one of the number of times since.

The problem is that instead of refurbishing the flats and maisonettes for Balfron’s tenants, Poplar Harca is refurbishing them for private buyers of which no doubt many will be investors who will either leave them empty or rent them out at rates that are unaffordable to most people.

Not only is this a breach of the promise Harca made to refurbish tenants’ homes if they voted for stock transfer in 2007 and then allow them to return, it is a betrayal of the highest order. If they had known Harca was going to kick them out shortly after they would have surely voted to keep the council as their landlord.

Harca would no doubt say that the former social tenants all left voluntarily but testimony shows that tenants felt they did not have an option – that their removal was a fait accomplis, while others were ‘seduced’ by the £4,700 buy-off, of which tenants are on record as saying they were not told that accepting it meant they lost their right-to-return.

Poplar Harca claim they cannot afford for social tenants to return given the estimated £20m cost of the refurbishment, but what has happened to the slice of the £45m they were given to refurbish the East India Estates which should have been for Balfron, and all the rent that has been paid since 2007?

And if money is so tight why did Harca swap the rent-paying social tenants for property guardians who pay them no more than a peppercorn rate, why have they voided so many flats so they can’t be rented out, and why are they paying leaseholders up to £1,500 a month since January 2014 to keep their properties empty – how many millions have been lost through this strategy to keep social tenants out of the block?

No matter, the cost of refurbishing the 146 homes comes to around £140,000 each – £20m in total. Harca says it’s not cost effective keeping them as social homes yet Barking and Dagenham Council has just spent £45m on a block of identical size. That makes refurbing Balfron and keeping it social a bargain.

But am I getting ahead of myself? The planning application makes no mention of the change of use from social housing to private sale and Harca has made no public announcement of its intention to do so. This is indicative of the sly approach Harca has taken all along: making false promises to tenants before transfer, bribing or bullying them into leaving, and failing to be open and honest about its intentions.

Throughout Harca has claimed it had taken no decision on the building’s future, yet we now know from a confidential 2012 report by the HCA that a privatised sell-off was their intention all along.

As you will know Tower Hamlets needs more truly affordable housing not less and this is what granting permission in the application’s current form will lead to. Harca will claim they can put the profit from selling off the flats to better use, but it will simply be used to pay back some of the £260m debt that its accrued under the guidance of its HSBC and property developing executives and the homes will be lost forever as we are seeing in other Harca developments.

On both Aberfeldy and Leopold estates it claims it is building new homes, but they are primarily for private sale. The number of ‘affordable’ homes it builds is less than the number of social homes it demolished. Harca is acting more like a private developer than a social housing provider.

Tower Hamlets Council should refuse to be complicit in the privatisation of social homes. Sure, allow them to build private homes for sale in and around the estates, but don’t ever let a development – or refurbishment – see a loss of social homes. If Balfron is privatised the Brownfield Estate will see a net loss of 99-social homes according to a recent academic study.

For this reason the application in its current form should be refused unless Harca agrees to keep it 50% social, which should not include any intermediate rated homes as these can in no way be considered social housing. The profit from the 50% sold would easily pay for the rest to be refurbished.

Yours Sincerely

Tower Hamlets Renters

Tower Hamlets public consultations on landlord licensing

Tower Hamlets Council is holding a series of public meetings (see below) on introducing a landlord licensing scheme for residents to learn how it will work and benefit them.

Officially the scheme is to force landlords to take more responsibility for their properties and the tenants that live in them – in particular to tackle anti-social behaviour: noisy neighbours, rubbish being left out on the street, drug dealing or properties being allowed to fall into a state of disrepair.

In reality the scheme can also be used to pressure and force landlords to take better care of their properties and meet minimum legal standards to the benefit of their tenants. Any landlord who is found to break the conditions of the license – including not having one – faces a fine of up to £20,000, a potential ban from operating in the borough, and is prevented from evicting their tenants.

Private renters join anti-bedroom tax campaigners to lobby Council

Tower Hamlets Private Renters linked up with the Benefit Justice campaign outside TH Town Hall this week to call on the council to support people being evicted from their homes.

Private renters are being kicked out for complaining about poor and dangerous conditions by callous and lazy landlords while those in social housing face eviction if they can’t afford to pay a recently introduced tax on a perceived ‘spare room’.

We had been scheduled to ask the full council meeting what was being done to improve living conditions and prevent retaliatory evictions in the private rented sector, and call on officials to consult with us on implementing a landlord licensing scheme.