Housing Minister Alex Neil has revealed that not one single landlord has been prosecuted for failing to register in Scotland since January 2007 – when the first landlord registrations took place.


Until the end of March this year, only twenty four landlords in Scotland have had their application to go on to the landlord register refused. Of those whose registration was accepted, only three individuals have had their registration revoked in the three years of the schemes’ operation.

However in a recent answer to parliamentary questions in the Scottish Parliament, Neil pointed out that councils in Scotland have applied fees to more than 1,300 late applications. As well as these late registration penalties, Scottish councils can also suspend rents due to landlords with a penalty notice and more than 1,200 such notices had been issued by the end of March.

In a letter to Neil, the Tory housing spokesman Alex Johnstone claims that £16 million of public and private cash had been spent on the compulsory registration initiative.

"Landlords have expressed the opinion that the scheme has been unsuccessful in dealing with rogue landlords, and that the scheme has amounted to little more than a tax on those property owners who are responsible landlords," said Johnstone. "The scheme is quite clearly not working. Why has there been so little action?"

John Blackwood of the Scottish Association of Landlords said to PIN that: “We submitted a briefing paper in April which was brought to the attention of Alex Johnstone who then raised this matter with Alex Neil in the Scottish Parliament.

“On a daily basis, the Scottish Association of Landlords is being made aware of unregistered landlords advertising and letting properties with little or no enforcement action being taken against them. We consider this practice to be unacceptable and indicative of a registration system that is clearly not working and certainly not protecting the interests of tenants and good landlords who have complied with their legal duty to register.”