Liverpool Council is determined to win the war against rogue landlords and has set up a “hit squad” to try and tackle the problem. The new team will identify, investigate, and of course prosecute, any rogue landlords who have failed to meet the minimum standards for rental housing in the city, which should help to reduce the numbers of complaints made to the council about poor living conditions in rental accommodation.
The problem of rogue landlords is one that seems destined to keep popping up in the news.Every week I read yet another story in the press about some landlord or other letting out squalid houses and flats in an attempt to cash in on the current demand for rental accommodation.
The news story relating to the new Liverpool’s so-called “hit squad” revealed that Liverpool Council logged 11,000 complaints between 2009 and 2011. This equates to more than 100 a week and a recent report suggested that more than 40% of landlords were letting out accommodation below the decent homes standard.
But Liverpool Council are hoping to drive up living standards across the city by being more proactive than ever before and introducing stringent quality controls on rental accommodation. New measures to achieve this include a confidential helpline where people can report squalid conditions and an incentive scheme to encourage “good” landlords, which includes the chance to win funding for home improvements. And since more than 1500 landlords have already registered their details, it looks like there
