Local authorities should prosecute more letting agents, a landlords’ body has said.
The National Landlords Association said that councils are failing in their duty.
The NLA found that more than half of local authorities did not prosecute a single letting agent in the four-year period from 2014 to 2018.
In a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to 20 local authorities, the NLA discovered that 53% did not prosecute any letting agents.
A further 32% prosecuted three or less.
Liverpool City Council was the most active, prosecuting 13 letting agents, said the NLA.
Of the 20 councils questioned, 13 had introduced landlord licensing schemes.
There are some 16,500 letting agents in the UK according to the NLA, which said: “Agents play a vital role as intermediaries between landlords and tenants.
“But some letting agents make unauthorised alterations to a landlord’s property, leading to a breakdown of trust between the tenant and the landlord.
“Also, they sometimes let out a landlord’s property to multiple tenants, effectively creating an illegal house in multiple occupation (HMO).
“Given that the licensing laws on an HMO are stricter than those for a single occupancy property, this can leave the landlord liable to fines of up to £30,000 or even criminal charges.”
Richard Lambert, CEO of the NLA, said: “It is clear that too many local authorities are failing in their duty to prosecute rogue letting agents.
“These bad ones can really poison the relationship between landlords and tenants. We want to see local authorities take much firmer action.
“We were shocked to find that so few letting agents are being prosecuted by local authorities.
“While many local authorities have introduced licensing schemes to crack down on rogue landlords, they seem to be allowing letting agents to get off scot-free.
“This must stop.”
EYE asked the NLA what had prompted its FOI requests and a spokesperson said: “We have always criticised local authority licensing schemes for their lack of effective enforcement.
“Their policies cannot be effective if there is no proper enforcement procedure in place, as well as a clear plan on how they will tackle rogue operators in the sector.”
Although few local councils had received the FOI requests – 20 out a total of over 300 in England alone, excluding county councils – the NLA said: “Obtaining a high volume of FOI responses is always difficult, and we chose councils evenly distributed over the country so we could build up a rough snapshot of the UK.”
Comments (12)
The National LANDLORDS association will surely benefit from increased landlord membership with all the agents out of the way. Self-serving B**LS**T from the NLA that doesn’t deserve airtime.
Spot on comments guys… I can say no more!
And self managing LL’s are whiter than white are they? More rogue LL’s are prosecuted because more of them are rogues. Simples.
Nope, they’re definitely not and the duds should be prosecuted also. There’s 2 simple ways to stop rogue self managing landlords; every council should have a compulsory landlord registration scheme with only landlords who employ the services of a qualifying agent to be exempt. And, secondly, agents themselves refusing to provide tenant find only services.
I have no idea of the merits or demerits of the NLA since I’ve never met a landlord or agent who is a member but take Mr Lambert’s comments in isolation removing the non-proof, ‘proof’ and he’s absolutely right – the ‘authorities’ are most definitely failing in their policing duties. If we took a straw poll, I reckon every half decent agent here would say that they are too well aware of 2 or 3 dodgy agents operating in their town who should be put out of business…..
We can see another local agent advertising:
“Tenancy charge – £170 (Non refundable charge is payable once you have been accepted for a property, this is not an application Fee)”
Get them prosecuted!!!
… How is it not a fee? A charge (in this context) is surely just another word for fee? Ok, so it’s not an APPLICATION fee, but it is still a charge related to the grant of a Tenancy and therefore they are idiots trying to get round the law!
this is a organisation who used tell landlords not to use agents, as we were all useless.
Then they became more agent friendly, when they set up lots of other companies to flog us loads of services/schemes i.e. deposits/redress
The biggest problem is not agents, its useless and uneducated self managing landlords.
The two main landlord organisations are losing their way with what they choose to focus on. Landlords are under siege and the NLA chooses to talk about this?
I advise people to join the Landlords Alliance if they want to support an organisation entirely focused on fighting the landlords’ corner and not afraid to ruffle some feathers.
The “achieve target” mentality is a total nonsense be it aimed against agents or their favorite, targeting landlords. What about targetting Local Authorites who encourage tenants to commit contempt of court by telling them they will have made themselves homeless if they comply with a court order and not wait until the bailiff turns up.
Maybe NLA should consider the councils that didn’t prosecute any had no reason to ? Why assume there should have been agents prosecuted without any evidence to back it up … disgraceful claims from NLA tarring the industry further without any evidence
“also they sometimes let out a property to multiple Tenants…”
“rogue agents…”
”but some Lettings agents make unauthorised alterations to a Landlord’s property…”
The NLA is starting to sound a little like Shelter…by this I mean disseminating completely unsubstantiated nonsense, and purporting it as fact…
Do you have any facts to back this up (other than figures regarding prosecution levels- which indicate nothing in terms of levels of illegal behaviour) I suspect not…
you should have more common-sense Mr Lambert! Get off the bandwagon and do something useful!
“Day has literally become night. The men also comment about strange and unnatural events, such as Duncan’s horses going wild as if they were to attack humans and that they eat each other…