Responding to research published this week by Direct Line showing that the most costly landlord licencing schemes are 21 times more expensive than the cheapest, David Smith, policy director at the Residential Landlords Association said: “Whatever the cost of licensing, it fails to provide any assurance about the quality of accommodation. The RLA’s own analysis shows that there is no clear link between a council having a licensing scheme in place and levels of enforcement against criminal landlords.

“The fundamental problem with all schemes is that it is only the good landlords who come forward to be licensed. They completely fail to identify the crooks. They just mean landlords, and therefore tenants, having to pay more. Instead, councils need to be more creative in how they identify landlords by better using the powers they have to collect data using council tax returns and accessing information from deposit schemes.”