Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Enfield agrees borough wide licensing scheme for private sector properties
Tackling rogue landlords is a major issue in Haringey. Its regularly debated here on HoL and the problems caused by badly managed properties are visible across across our residential streets.
During my four years on the Council it was one of my top priorities to improve and strengthen regulations using every means we could. A few of us worked hard to get additional powers agreed. We were successful in fighting for the Article 4 direction to be implemented which removes permitted development rights for landlords to just open HMOs as they wish and means they must apply for planning permission. We also pressed for expansion of the licensing scheme and this extended to North Tottenham from May 1.
But the real goal was to get a borough -wide licensing scheme in place like that piloted in Newham, where all private sector properties have to be registered. This provides the framework for wide controls around management of properties, environmental health and waste management for example. We didn't get there, so it is now in the hands of whoever wins the election and is running the Council. Let's hope they can rise to it.
Regeneration isn't just about plans for tower blocks and trips to Cannes - it's crucially about our residential streets, our local communities and the quality of life for people already living here.
Enfield have clearly got this message as they have agreed to introduce their borough wide scheme against considerable opposition. Well done to them! You can read the local news stories here:
http://www.enfieldindependent.co.uk/news/11183966.Landlord_licence_...
http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/11141936.Cabinet_passes_lan...
Zena Brabazon
Cllr, St. Ann's ward till May 22nd
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Robert Pike on
-
A move in the right direction to improve prospects for generation rent. BUT not nearly emough to tackle the main issue - Spiraling rent prices. No doubt to be increased by added licence fee.
Issues classed under the stigmatising umbrella ASB are often not as black and white as regulators would care to generalise.
Noise. My last rented accommodation - a 50s flat block with floors and walls like paper. Our simple everyday act of ironing clothes - where the cord taps the floor - was enough to have downstairs neighbours complaining and noise nuisance letters arriving from LBH. Yet we were faced with noise! During our tenancy the upstairs neighbour had a baby. It felt like we had had the baby! Sleepless nights and early morning wake up calls - someone elses baby is a good form of contraception! Everyone agreed the building was the problem. No one agrees who should address the issue. You are left with multiple tenants with multiple gripes with ever growing frustration, with no one really to complain to and no one to resolve the situation. So under these regulations who is Anti-social? Me, the upstairs baby, the landlord of each flat, the freeholder..?
Okay so move out and escape the noise you'll probably say? But some tenants are not able to do so. Our landlord - fortunately not a rogue one - charged a rent way below the local average. But his decision to sell-up meant we were forced to move after 3 years of trying to settle down in one place. Once again we were renty-something nomads thrown out into the bear market where rents stood at double what we had been paying - inflated by agent scum like B*st*rd Thieves, sorry, Bairstow Eaves, advertising local property to corporate tenants in need of weekday accommodation away from Surrey mansions.
There is nothing in this to say that rent might be regulated. There is nothing in this that offers longer tenancy agreements with fixed terms and better security. All this does is potentially make an HMO reach a minimum standard and make sure tenants behave. It is a minimum set of easily enforceable standards on things that are easy to target that will make no differentiation between actual nuisances and those just trying to live a decent life.
If the rental market was properly reformed with terms that could allow people to afford to live in a place for longer and call it their home wouldn't that help to establish a community in which people actually cared about their surroundings rather just feeling that this is a temporary base until next years rent rise forces us to move on again?
© 2024 Created by Hugh.
Powered by
