At current rates, it will take Liverpool Council almost 150 years to process applications for its landlord licensing scheme, it has been claimed.
The council has hailed the importance of the scheme in addressing sub-standard housing across the city. But, according to the National Residential Landlords Association, figures that its representatives showed a Liverpool Landlord Forum, revealed that in the eight months since the revised selective landlord licensing scheme went live, only 104 licences had been granted.
It is estimated that 31,000 applications for licences have been made.
At its current rate, it would take the local authority 148 years to process all applications received so far, said NRLA.
This raises serious questions about the extent to which the scheme is needed to address poor quality housing, according to the association.
Freedom of Information data previously obtained by NRLA show that, in the three years to ending 2021, 103 civil penalties were issued private landlords in Liverpool. Of these, 89 were for offences related to the previous selective licensing scheme. No penalties were issued for failing to comply with a property improvement notice, a banning order or a notice that a property was overcrowded. Only two penalties were issued for breaches of management regulations in shared housing.
This suggests, it said, that the Council’s civil penalty strategy has served only to tackle administrative issues such as the failure to hold a licence rather than improving property conditions themselves.
‘If Liverpool Council really believes licensing is so key to ensuring properties are safe, it begs the question why it takes so long to process applications for them’, said NRLA chief executive Ben Beadle.
‘At a time when the condition of housing is under such scrutiny, the council is spending too much time administering a licencing scheme and not enough time taking enforcement action to tackle poor quality housing.
‘Rather than penalising good landlords with a blanket policy, the council should use the range of data already available to them to find and root out the minority of landlords who fail to provide safe housing’.
