Agenda item

The Strategic Director City Development & Neighbourhood Services, Director of Housing, and Director of Neighbourhood and Environmental Services submits a report to the Overview Select Committee, the purpose of which is to brief Members on strategic plans for undertaking work within Leicester city’s private rented sector.

Members of the Overview Select Committee are recommended to note the content of the report and provide and comment and/or feedback.

The Strategic Director City Development and Neighbourhood Services, Director of Housing and Director of Neighbourhood and Environmental Services submitted a to the Overview Select Committee, the purpose of which was to brief Members on strategic plans for undertaking work within Leicester City’s Private Rented Sector (PRS). The Committee was recommended to note the content of the report and provide any comments and feedback to the Directors submitting the report and/or Executive.

Councillor Cutkelvin, Assistant City Mayor for Education and Housing, introduced the report. It was noted the city had not had the equivalent of a PRS strategy before, and that historically the Housing section had rightly focussed on the Housing Revenue Account and council housing stock.

It was reported the document as presented was a first attempt at developing the strategy and was a live document which, following the Overview Select Committee meeting would be shared with other partners in the sector and tenants and residents to garner their opinion on what the paper contained.

Members were informed the paper had been written in recognition that the PRS had doubled in size over the past 20 years, and that council house ownership was down to 15% (previously 36% in 1981). The Council was also aware that the demographics of those who rented properties had dramatically changed with more families reliant on the PRS.

It was further reported that 74% in the PRS had no savings, and that 28% living in the city in the PRS were claiming Housing Benefit and Universal Credit. The housing section was having to rely more than ever on the PRS for some of the most vulnerable residents in the city, so needed to develop meaningful relationships and reform the sector to both support residents, and challenge standards, as insecure tenancies, no fault evictions, disrepair and crisis in conditions had an inevitable impact on mental health and wellbeing.

Councillor Cutkelvin stated that a decent affordable house should be a basic human right and the authority needed to do all it could to protect standards, and to support vulnerable tenants moving forward. She added that the paper demonstrated a meeting of minds between the Planning, Housing and Enforcement sections in how to support a healthy PRS economy.

The Strategic Director for City Development and Neighbourhood Services continued to present the report, which read across a number of areas of the council. It was noted an enormous amount of work had gone into the strategy  and brought together holistically tools to enable the Council to engage with the PRS, to support tenants, to support landlords, and to have those key strands of work in one place.

It was reported that officers had also looked at the options around taking forward the PRS in the city including what had been learnt from research with other cities, and it was recognised as best in practice approach. The document also discussed the adoption of a licensing scheme which had been included as a separate report on the meeting’s agenda.

The Director for Housing informed Members that the strategy represented joint working between Community Safety, Housing and Planning, and offered the Council the opportunity to take positive, holistic action in relation to the PRS in the city. It was noted the Strategy proposed a number of initiatives, some of which were in progress and some that were new, ultimately all with the aim of improving housing conditions to ensure there was a robust but balanced model of support and enforcement for landlords and tenants in the private sector.

The Director reported confidence that the approach laid out would raise housing standards around important health and safety matters, energy efficiency, ensure that landlords felt supported, had access to information and knew where to go when problems arose, ensured tenants had their rights within their homes protected, further strengthened the work in this area and ensured tenants had advocacy and support when needed and knew where to get it from. The Strategy had a multi-faceted approach required due to the diversity of activity the Council took in the sector. It was noted that Licensing alone would not resolve many of the problems at present.

Members noted report outlined planned actions laid out against the six priorities at Appendix 1 to the report. The report also included a high-level sequence table at Appendix 2 which set out timelines for each workstream. The order of planned actions gave the Council the best opportunity to strengthen the PRS and develop strong relations with the PRS key players.

A number of positive steps in strengthening the offer to both landlords and tenants in the online advice included repayable repair loans, facilitate disabled facilities grants, and also extended the strong offer to landlords to get them to work with the Council to utilise their accommodation offer through a leasing scheme which had already been launched and was paying dividends to the Council and those on the housing register in need of housing. It was reported there were already over 50 new private sector homes delivered for new people because of the launch. The Council was working to deliver stronger working relations with landlords and agents in the city to work together to tackle problems together through forums. It was also proposed to extend homelessness services to landlords to work with them more intensely in a ‘Call before you Serve’ offer.

The Director concluded the Strategy would enable clear standards and expectations to be set through such items as the Landlords Accreditation Scheme, and proposed use of Article 4 in new areas, and proposed licensing in the city. He added work was already moving forward through Operation Mandarin / and Operation EPC to address existing HMO licensing and drive up efficiency levels in the sector. The PRS Strategy set out a clear governance structure at Appendix 3 to the report, to oversee the effective delivery of the strategy. Members’ attention was drawn to Section 6 that set out the benefits of moving forward with Strategy.

Members then discussed the report and made the following comments:

·         It was noted in the report there was 35% private rented housing compared to 22% social housing. It was stated there was a housing crisis across the country and the Council needed to build more social housing. The Council had to work with private landlords to provide accommodation needed but people could not afford the rents that landlords were charging. Members did not want to just accept private landlords and wanted to see a commitment to fight for social housing and increased building.

ACTION: Members asked that the report to be taken to the Housing Scrutiny Commission.

·         Members noted the report as very comprehensive, robust and ambitious in the plans it set out. It was reiterated that the Council needed to be very mindful of how it worked in partnership with PRS landlords, so as to weed out the bad eggs and encourage the good ones who were doing good work. It was further stated that housing had an impact, not just on adults, but the health and wellbeing of entire families, and it had been seen how mental health had been exacerbated by the pandemic through poor space and living conditions.

·         It was further emphasised that facilities within housing should be adequate and fit for purpose so as not to exacerbate poverty which would lend itself to affecting education, and needed to be targeted for positive impact, and the PRS activities monitored accordingly.

·         Members asked if the numbers of landlords self-nominating to work with the council could be provided.

ACTION: Officers to provide information to Members.

Councillor Porter made a number of comments on the report as follows:

·         He stated the report was confusing with questionable data. In referring to the figure of 142,379 dwellings in Leicester, with 43% owner occupied, and 35% in the PRS (49,832), he also noted the report talked about addressing rogue landlords, but without statistical data on the number of rogue landlords, the Strategy brought in measures to deal with a problem that had not been backed up by data.

·         The Council’s Planning Policy and Local Plan did not address insufficiencies nor would improve the controls within the PRS, and that better space standards needed to be adopted to provide proper sized accommodation and better housing conditions.

·         The new Strategy was going to address empty homes, but the Council needed to address the number of voids it had in the city, which was at 300 properties. Also, the Council had lost over £1,906,000 in rental as a result of empty homes.

·         Challenged was the figure of 33% of carbon emissions from housing in Leicester, which was double the figure quoted in the Government’s document Greener Homes which said 15% of carbon emissions were produced by housing. Therefore, clarification was sought on why Leicester, as first Environment City in Europe, had such a high figure of carbon emissions from housing.

·         The number of HMOs was down to policy, and figures for the number of HMOs that would require a licence were not included in the report.

·         The proportion of threats of eviction from the PRS was 24%, but could the actual figure be provided.

·         The document talked about preventing homelessness, but currently the Council did not help people unless they could get a letter saying they were going to be evicted, and it was unclear how the Strategy would address the issue. 

·         The report mentioned that if people got into rent difficulties, the Council could step in and subsidise the landlords. It was asked what safeguards would be place so the system wasn’t abused by schemes set up between the tenant and landlord.

·         There was nothing in the document tangible on how much it would cost the Council. It was suggested the landlords of the almost 50k PRS properties in the city could be charged a small amount to run the service.

The City Mayor said that a lot of points had been made by Councillor Porter, and he hoped he would accept a meeting with officers to seek to clarify the points made.

The Assistant City Mayor said she was happy to extend an invitation to a separate briefing on the Strategy to Councillor Porter between herself and officers. She informed Members the Strategy was not just about rogue landlords  but improvement across the sector, and gave assurance the Council only would work with good landlords who would be licensed.

The Chair said that until the Government took housing seriously, PRS housing was needed, and in some wards the figure of 35% PRS was meaningless and was more like 60% of private rented properties, and the Council needed to work with good landlords to get good housing.

Councillor Kitterick said the report contained real issues. He stated there was a problem with private sector landlords in the city that had been going on for decades. He noted a reference in the report made to people wanting to subdivide houses, and that it was not the city planners that put the applications forward to subdivide houses, but private sector landlords. He further noted that part of the report referred to the Council’s aspirations for minimum space standards, and how the authority worked with cooperative landlords and should be read in conjunction with future report brought forward. He questioned the legitimacy of the figure of statutorily recordable homes of multiple occupation recorded in the report, which he believed wasn’t anywhere near the actual number in the city.

He concluded that the report was commendable, and that private sector housing did a lot of hard work, but the next agenda item should discuss the step change up.

The Chair said the report highlighted how complicated housing was. He proposed that the report be taken to the Housing Scrutiny Commission.

AGREED:

That:

1.    The Overview Select Committee note the report.

2.    The report be taken to a meeting of the Housing Scrutiny Commission.

3.    The numbers of landlords self-nominating to work with the council could be provided to Members of the Committee.