New rules requiring shared homes in Portsmouth to be licensed will hopefully 'drive up standards'

The city council's cabinet unanimously agreed a fee structure at a recent meeting in order to cover the cost of employing as many as 40 new officers to carry out HMO inspections.

Councillor Darren Sanders, the cabinet member for housing, said these arrangements, which will see licence costs range from £776 to £1,076, would 'deal with bad landlords and reward good ones'.

'The reason this is here is because HMOs are three times more likely to have the worst possible hazards than the rest of the private rented sector,' he said.

‘We know we have to do something, but we want to try and do it in a balanced way that rewards good landlords and tenants and punishes bad ones, which I think scheme does.'

Under the current rules, only HMOs of five people or more need a licence while smaller homes were excluded.

The council is not allowed to profit from the fees charged for licences with the income being used to cover the cost of the new inspectors.

The cheapest, five-year licences will be issued as standard with at least one inspection carried out during its duration. If issues are found, the more expensive one-year licence will be awarded with a follow-up visit taking place within 12 months.

Licences will be required from September 1, but landlords will be given a grace period until December to allow time for any issues with the scheme to be resolved.

Details of the number of new officers required by the council have yet to be finalised, due to uncertainty over the number of HMOs in the city and how many of the shorter licences will be needed.

Cabinet members were told an initial 'core' of inspectors would be recruited with the potential for this team to increase to up to 40 people if needed.

Landlords have opposed the introduction of licensing, warning smaller shared houses will disappear from the city and push up rent.

But councillor Lee Hunt, the cabinet member for planning policy, it was a 'hugely commendable' policy.

'There's been a failure of housing policy since the war,' he said. 'People don't like HMOs, we all know that but they are an important part of the city's housing. They house young people, police officers, nurses, all sorts of professional people who choose to live in shared housing.

'So they are important, but so is controlling and regulating them in the way that this administration and our previous administrations done.

‘Licensing means neighbours can be assured that people are visiting HMOs and making sure everything's being done properly and tenants can also be assured that they'll be looked after as well.'