Nottingham City Council has come under criticism for releasing images of shocking examples of living conditions in rental properties as justification for introducing selective licensing.

East Midlands Property Owners (EMPO), a not-for-profit landlords association, claims releasing the imagery – featured in EYE on Tuesday – was reckless on the part of the council.

Giles Inman, business development manager for EMPO, told EYE: “Good landlords salute the efforts of the council to bring in regulation but are concerned that they are not doing enough to recognise existing good practice.

“Nottingham has a thriving private rental sector with over 43,000 rental properties, of which 32,000 will come under selective licensing.

“Is it necessary for the council to release the most shocking pictures representing such a tiny percentage of private sector housing to justify their selective licensing scheme?

‘There are many thousands of excellent landlords and agents in Nottingham who provide affordable, decent and safe housing resulting in happy tenants.

“Any professional property owner operating in the city will be utterly appalled to see our council behaving recklessly by releasing shocking pictures to influence public approval for a costly scheme that has barely commenced and where no property inspections have taken place to warrant such pictures.”

He also hit out at the council’s track record of enforcing current regulations against rogue landlords, adding: “Nottingham City Council continuously raises the need to tackle rogue landlords. Instead they penalise law-abiding ones whilst simultaneously letting criminal landlords off the hook.

“Too often we see the very worst landlords being prosecuted and ending up with small fines as in this example.

“The council shout about a problem they are fundamentally failing to tackle and pretend a massive licensing scheme that taxes good landlords, increases rents and inspects just 40% of all the properties that fall under the scheme will provide protection and safeguarding to tenants and rid the sector of the criminal landlord.

“The council will struggle to complete all the inspections of the 2,500 properties under their 2014 HMO Additional Licensing scheme, so how they plan to efficiently handle applications for 13 times this amount remains to be seen.”