Councillor concerned after progress update
Slough: Customer and community scrutiny panel meet over licensing schemes
Concerns were raised over outdated figures as Slough councillors were updated on the progress of licensing schemes for houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) at a meeting on Wednesday.
In 2019, Slough Borough Council (SBC) approved a proposal to implement two property licensing schemes to run alongside a mandatory licensing scheme for HMOs, which is UK-wide.
This meant that all landlords of HMOs needed a licence to rent out rooms.
Providing an update on the progress of the schemes at the customer and community scrutiny panel on Wednesday night, Rhian Richards, housing regulation manager, said HMO licence applications have been ‘lower’ than anticipated.
Discussing a graph showing the number of HMO applications received per ward against the number of HMOs estimated to exist, Ms Richards said there is a ‘significant gap’ in the number of properties licensed and what they think ‘might be out there’.
She said: “This is obviously an area that requires some focus.
“Statistically occupants of HMOs might be at higher risk from things like fire hazards because of the nature of the properties and the transience of the occupancy of those properties and also all sorts
of other reasons why they might be higher risk.”
Ms Richards said COVID-19 had presented a ‘significant issue’ due to restrictions on being able to visit properties and the vulnerability of staff.
However, a report presented to councillors said the team identified ‘hundreds’ of unlicensed properties through remote investigations in lockdown and on-site operations.
The report added that intervention from officers has led to 543 applications being submitted between April 2020 and March 2022.
Cllr Safdar Ali (Labour, Central) queried what information had been used to predict the number of properties the team thinks are in each ward.
Ms Richards said that, prior to the introduction of the schemes, a stock modelling exercise was commissioned and took place in 2018, using data to come up with a model and make predictions.
She added: “The author of the report acknowledges that the degree of confidence in those predictions for HMOs is lower than for the predictions around private rented properties more generally.”
Cllr Ali added: “My concern is that if these predictions are even 50 per cent right, it clearly indicates that the council hasn’t got those properties who should have an HMO licence [and] they haven’t got an HMO license.
“I’d rather have realistic and reasonable information to work on and then make sure those houses which qualified for HMO do have a licence because it does matter for those people who are living in those houses.
He added: “My concern is this that these figures are four years old [from] 2018. This is now 2022.
“Unfortunately we are back to square one where we have been given information which is, as far as I’m concerned, outdated.
“There’s nothing updated here, there’s nothing even for 2020, nor 2021 and we are now
in July 2022.
Cllr Ali asked what the team has in the pipeline to ensure that the figures are updated when the matter comes to the committee again.
He said: “Until we get that sorted, this business of how many licences have been issued and how many licences may be issued is all up in the air, isn’t it?”
Ms Richards explained that the team is ‘actively looking for unlicensed properties’ and is going out en masse to knock on doors and will continue to do so.
She added that it is not ‘entirely unusual’ to rely on stock modelling data from a few years ago because ‘the exercises to get up-to-date modelling data are very expensive and time consuming’ and they would usually need additional expertise.