The landlord who is mounting a legal challenge to his local authority’s plans to introduce a selective licensing scheme, has said he is taking the action as a last resort.
Constantinos Regas, who has applied for a judicial review of Enfield Council’s scheme, said that his concerns had so far been ignored.
One of his concerns is that, under the licensing scheme due to be introduced next April, with applications for licences accepted from this November, tradesmen’s vans will be banned from parking on off-road spaces at private rented properties.
Regas has also hit out at Labour-run Enfield’s decision to pull a debate on the licensing scheme after he launched his action.
He said: “The paper, which opposed rental property licensing, had been put on the agenda by the Conservative opposition group. The group’s leader, Cllr Terry Neville, himself an experienced solicitor, did not accept the legal advice but withdrew the paper.
“Matters of public policy should be discussed in the appropriate forum, whether that is Parliament or council meetings.
“The advice given to councillors by officials was not only wrong but also an abuse of democratic process. Like anyone applying for judicial review, I am taking legal action as a last resort.
“My concerns have been ignored and the council has been uncooperative in providing information. My sole purpose is to ask the Administrative Court to scrutinise Enfield Council, to make sure that it is not abusing its powers.”
Regas, who is an expert in policy scrutiny, said: “I have repeatedly stated at council meetings that I consider good housing conditions to be a human right.
“But the idea that a majority of tenants are anti-social neighbours or that most landlords are greedy people who rent out ‘beds in sheds’ is not supported by any data.
“What I am challenging is the council’s lack of transparency, its dodgy use of data, the legal basis for the decision and the unreasonable licence conditions.”
Regas said that the scheme would ban tenants or visitors from parking vans on their off-street parking, and would require landlords to investigate and document any allegation of anti-social behaviour, which includes fly-tipping, prostitution and drug-dealing.
He said he is further concerned that the scheme fee may be passed on to tenants and that any funding shortfall for the scheme will have to be met by cuts elsewhere in Enfield’s budget, which will affect all residents and businesses.
The outcome of a judicial review may also have implications for the neighbouring borough of Waltham Forest, which voted last month to implement a similar licensing scheme.
Meanwhile, in the Hexthorpe area of Doncaster, landlords are up in arms over plans to introduce a selective licensing scheme there.
The scheme is aimed at tackling anti-social behaviour in an area where tensions are currently running higher after Roma migrants moved to it, prompting a march by the English Defence League.
Carl Agar, local representative of the National Landlords Association, said: “It is blatantly not the solution to the problems we have in our community and it is wrong for the local authority to mislead the public into thinking they are addressing problems which they are clearly not.”
Comments (2)
For me, a house in multiple occupation is a property that is lived in by people who do not know each other. They live mainly in their own rooms and share kitchen and bathroom facilities. This is a completely different scenario to when a group of perhaps 3 or 4 people get together and decide to rent a house between them, where they will live as a 'family'. Is there evidence to support councils' desire to merge both of these scenarios into one?
As for conditions such as not parking vans in private driveways and inspecting properties every month; what is this going to do to the rental market?
This is what happens when someone in power has a personal wet dream, they think are an expert on a subject they really nothing about, delusional single minded arrogance that is then allowed to snowball fuelled by party politics. If only they were made accountable financially (like everyone they want to control), they may stop and think before acting!