Author Archives: Alan Ward

Alan Ward

The Independent View: tackling bad landlords

By Alan Ward | Thu 4th May 2017 - 10:15 am

With more and more people relying on the private rented sector for their housing, the Liberal Democrats will be looking to develop a workable policy that supports tenants and encourages good landlords.

Last year Caroline Pidgeon from the Greater London Assembly published startling research. It showed that in the whole of 2015/16, just 411 landlords had been prosecuted across the capital, with a quarter of all boroughs not prosecuting any landlord at all. This is despite there being over 400 regulations governing the sector.

This highlights that the problem of tackling bad landlords is in large part due to regulations not …

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Posted in The Independent View | Tagged | 9 Comments
Alan Ward

The Independent View: Rooting out criminal landlords

By Alan Ward | Thu 20th March 2014 - 9:00 am

Landlod and tenant License Some rights reserved by umjanedoanIn his recent article, Julian Huppert MP declared that “landlords should have to compete on quality not just on price.” The Residential Landlords Association agrees. The question is how to achieve this.

Many councils have chosen some form of licensing to identify the ‘rogues’ who over-crowd homes and rent sub-standard properties.

The problem with licensing schemes is they identify the good landlords who sign up but fail to find the crooks. Even Newham, the most pro-active borough in this respect, has failed to reach the hardcore of 20% of rogue landlords after a year’s intensive enforcement.

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Posted in The Independent View | Tagged , and | 7 Comments
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    It's good to have an MP putting herself forward for this. The manifesto seems a bit vague though. All good thoughts and nothing you can really disagree with, b...
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    I am sure Alan will have the sympathies of all of us. The situation is sad and frustrating. Forgive me for making one small point, Alan: you said that 40 Ho...
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