Just 100 landlords have been banned in Scotland in the last five years after the introduction of a compulsory registration scheme that has so far cost £17.4m.
The 100 have had their licences refused or revoked, out of a total of 200,000 – equivalent to just 0.05%. Eleven have been reported to the procurator fiscal – Scotland’s equivalent of the public prosecutor – for serious breaches in the last two years.
The figures have been obtained by the Scottish Tories.
Landlords have paid £11.2m in fees to the scheme, while taxpayers have contributed £5.2m. Annual running fees are estimated to be just under £300,000.
The Conservatives said the scheme has been a costly failure. Tory housing spokesman Alex Johnstone said: “This farcical programme, introduced with the best of intentions, is failing to deliver at a tremendous cost to the taxpayer.
“And responsible people with aspirations to get into the property business are being hit in the pocket because of this inadequate scheme.
“The private rented sector is playing an increasingly important role in delivering solutions to housing need in Scotland, and we need a robust and efficient mechanism to help achieve that.
“These figures suggest that, at the moment, the Private Landlord Registration Scheme is not it.”
The Scottish government said that the scheme had been introduced to provide reassurance to tenants – but the figures may not provide much assurance to the London borough of Newham which has just introduced blanket compulsory licensing, and to Liverpool which is considering a compulsory city-wide scheme.
%20-%20IMAGE%20Client%20Accounting%20%E2%80%93%20what%20are%20your%20options.jpg)
Comments
The way that Scotland looks at landlords is if you pay us £66 then your status changes from a rogue landlord to a good landlord.
That is an absurd amount of money to have sucked out of landlords and the public purse in comparison to such a low annual running figure.
Dare anyone ask what happened to the other £15.9 raised and what it was used for?
"Policing" is not carried out on many "initiatives" whether by the associations or local (and big) government. How can CAB or Trading Standards or Councils or Planning Departments or Environmental Control or anyone else police the raft of new, copious, knee jerk legislation when everything in government is being cut back?
In reality, most tenants (and many landlords) have no idea or care who ARLA, NAEA, NALS, NFOPP, RICS, ARMA, NLA, UKALA, RLA, TPO, SAL, SAFEAGENT, TDS, CMP, LLP, Ltd, Plc etc are. It's time for a drastic re-think (...and methinks a MLA (Multiple Letter Acronym) dictionary)..
As for SHELTER - their Scottish initiative to eliminate fees has only resulted in increased average rents by c£10-£15/month in Scotland and increased average letting fees from 9-11% on average by a percentage point or two.
RESULT (LETS DO THE MATH(s)!:
In this environment, the letting agent has somewhat compensated for their (now penalised - but probably unpoliced) administration fees
...and the landlord pays more agent's commission, but gets more net income - and anyway the agent's commission is tax deductible.
THE DEFINITION OF "INSANITY" - REPEATING THE SAME MISTAKES AND EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS!
Until we start bringing in legislation that is good, fair to all, cost effective and not responding to fads or organisations with a political agenda - with policing that really is a deterrent, it is not worthwhile bringing them in.
It really is time for a (LBA) Lettings Big Idea - with apologies to the Lawn Bowls Associations and Leeds Bradford Airport.
The system is failing because there is inadequate policing and lack of awareness by tenants. Many tenants who are aware are frightened they will be evicted if they complain. Rogue Landlords have gone to ground along with their new "no deposit" schemes/leases. Many of these Landlords are DSS funded yet Councils ignore they are not registered or deal with deposits correctly.
Is it a coincidence that the Councils who have major drug issues which create the DSS tenant are the same Councils who appear not to enforce the Regulations.