Local councils are maintaining a confidential database on private shared housing landlords across London, Property Investment Expert can exclusively reveal.
The information classes a landlord as “good, bad or average” and is the basis of decisions of whether the landlord is a fit and proper person to get a licence for managing a house in multiple occupation (HMO).
Other councils outside London are also adding landlord information to the database – and the database could become a countrywide tool for councils to track HMO landlords.
Existence of the database is just one of several pieces of previously behind-closed-doors HMO information revealed in a document published on the Communities and Local Government Department web site called Evaluation of the Impact of HMO Licensing and Selective Licensing that is free to download from the CLG web site.
New laws imposing stricter licensing and planning controls on shared housing start from April 6, 2010.
In commenting on the database, the document says: “A London authority promoted a database for recording information about landlords. It is a London based database that records whether a landlord is ‘good or bad or average’. The benefits of such a database are that it accepts that landlords may have properties across a number of London boroughs.
“Many landlords may have properties in locations across England, this database is now being populated by some authorities from outside of London, and the extension of such a database could provide some assistance to local authority officers assessing the fit and proper status of landlords and managing agents.”
Precise details of the information kept on the database is sketchy, but councils check several details about a property owner or the person they elect as the manager before granting an HMO licence.
The council will run a background check on the proposed HMO licence holder to check out if the applicant:
- Has convictions relating to violence, drugs , sexual offences, or fraud.
- Has breached housing, landlord, tenant or unlawful discrimination laws
- Has contravened any HMO code of practice as the owner or manager of any other HMO
Property Investment Expert editor Steve Sims uncovered information about the database when researching a guide to new HMO regulations available from the web site.
“Good landlords have nothing to fear from a database,” said Steve Sims. ”The problem in this case is the councils are keeping sharing this data behind closed doors and no one has any redress to check the data held about them or to question how a council officer rates tham as a landlord.
“This database needs to be brought out in to the open so anyone who is listed has a right of reply. The councils swapping information need to prove they have proper security and access controls in place as laid down in the data protection act.
If this was a database that rated tenants – and there might well be one for all we know – all sorts of groups would be making a hue and cry about breaching rights. Landlords have the same rights as tenants and in this case, a right to know what is recorded about them in secret. ”
