Government Must Act on Selective Licensing Review

Responding to the publication of the government-commissioned independent review into selective licensing schemes, CIEH has today strongly welcomed the findings and called on the Government to commit to taking the recommendations forward.

The Government has said that it will carefully consider the findings of the report and respond in due course.

Tamara Sandoul, Policy Manager at CIEH, said:

“This government-commissioned review confirms many of the findings of our report - A Licence to Rent - published earlier this year alongside the Chartered Institute for Housing.

“Selective licensing schemes are very effective despite suffering from a number of design flaws such as inadequate powers to address housing conditions, overly bureaucratic processes for introducing a scheme, and lack of accurate data on the size of a local private rented sector.

“We encourage the Government to take all the recommendations on board and improve these schemes so they can work even better at improving the safety and decency of renters’ homes.

Vitally, we believe the introduction of a national registration scheme for landlords would play an invaluable role in streamlining enforcement action in the private rented sector, and supporting the introduction of selective licensing where this could be beneficial.”