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Newham Council has initiated to licence all private landlords in little Ilford and look forward to extend it to other boroughs to check unscrupulous landlords (18 May 2012)

Date: 18/05/2012
Duncan Lewis, Legal News Solicitors, Newham Council has initiated to licence all private landlords in little Ilford and look forward to extend it to other boroughs to check unscrupulous landlords

Newham Council has announced that all the 257 private rented properties in the little Ilford ward have been registered reaching a key milestone in its bid to license all private landlords in the London borough.
The ward, which has been officially declared a Neighbourhood Improvement Zone (NIZ) was seen as the right place to start with by the council. It would like to extend the scheme to cover the whole of Newham making it the first borough in the country to license all private landlords.
In Little Ilford, the council was also cracking down on rubbish in front gardens and innovatively using legislation, The Proceeds of Crime Act, to tackle landlords who flouted the conditions of their licences.
Sir Robin Wales, Mayor of Newham, said it was a fantastic achievement to reach the particular milestone but certainly the council was not going to rest on its laurels. It was a good start he said.
He said the private sector tenants would not be allowed to be directly exploited by landlords who force them to live in dangerous and unacceptable conditions. One bad property created a bad impression in a whole street he said.
Good landlords need not fear this scheme but for the bad ones it was sending a clear message that they need to clean up their act.
Newham's bid to license all private landlords across the borough came shortly after the borough announced the creation of a taskforce to combat 'sheds with beds'. These were illegal ramshackle buildings built at the bottom of gardens which often house tenants living in appalling squalor. The council uses infra-red cameras and aerial photography to find the shanty-style homes - and ensure the landlords were brought to book.
If approved, the trail-blazing licensing scheme would apply to one in three of all the borough's households, protecting an estimated 35,000 private tenancies.
The proposals are backed by national housing charity Shelter which has urged other councils to follow Newham's lead.
Sir Robin added the proposed scheme showed that Newham was leading the country when it came to tackling bad landlords flouting the law.
He said they wanted to ensure that private sector rented properties were well managed and met a good standard. The council also wanted to deal with the crime and anti-social behaviour that was sometimes associated with bad private sector rented housing.
He added that there were good landlords in Newham with whom the council would like to work but the unscrupulous ones were going to be the targets of the proposals.
Kay Boycott, director of communications, policy and campaigns at Shelter, said that they were delighted at the developments taken up by the Newham Council, which would help protect vulnerable tenants from rogue landlords who were making their tenants' lives hell.

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