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Is It Time For a National Landlord Register?

Richard Blanco comments

It's busy on the landlord meetings circuit in London at the moment and in the last few months I've been doing the rounds across the East London boroughs that I look after for the NLA (National Landlords Association). Two weeks ago, I was at a very positive meeting in Hackney where cabinet member for housing, Cllr Phillip Glanville attended the whole meeting. He is sensible and approachable and in our obligatory landlord licensing chat, he assured me that in Hackney it was an option but no definitive decision had been taken and we should meet to discuss further.

Not so at Redbridge, where the Chief Housing Officer had asked me for a conference call and confirmed the worst:  politicians were proposing borough wide selective and additional licensing, subject to Cabinet approval on 11 November 2014. The one saving grace is no Article 4. I was very grateful that staff had had the courtesy to call their NLA Rep and inform me, but very angry about the 'ambush' approach.  

I'd been asking to speak to politicians and to run a joint landlord meeting with them since the May elections. They announced the scheme one week before cabinet will approve the start of a 12 week statutory consultation period - over Christmas of course! Officers have already earmarked April 2015 for final approval and implementation. I agreed to organise a focus group of landlords and a larger open forum landlord consultation meeting. The council needs to be seen to be consulting with landlords and I am minded to scupper their plans by walking away. We all know that it's better to be at the table than carping from the side-lines so I made a speech at the cabinet meeting where the consultation period was approved. They allow only two minutes, but by the time the clerk had rung the bell, members were in no doubt about the NLA's opposition to this ridiculous scheme.

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