The council is trumpeting the extension of its Selected Landlord Licensing area scheme with a series of public meetings this week.
This is the alleged aim: "Wirral has areas of low housing demand and almost one in three properties in Wirral’s private rented sector fails to meet the decent homes standard, which can have a huge impact on the health and welfare of tenants and wider communities. Selective Licensing aims to improve homes in these areas by ensuring private landlords and agents meet satisfactory standards of tenancy and property management."

Reality: Someone of my acquaintance had to leave home due to circumstances and as beggars can't be choosers found themselves in a flat in king Street which was nothing short of a hovel with rain pouring in and lots of other things wrong. The estate agents in Liscard were hopeless to the point of being very rude. One day a letter dropped through the box. Congratulations you are in a Selected Landlord Licensing Area and your landlord has been granted approval for this property. My friend contacted the council wondering why there had been no inspection - . the obnoxious individual dealing with such matters said sniffily,' there is no requirement to inspect'.

So much for the council's attempts to improve housing. Utter cobblers and a sham.

Seems like they just have to reach certain safety targets. But safety is only a small issue in poor housing.

"The scheme requires landlords who privately rent out properties in the four areas to obtain a licence from the council. They need to show basic safety checks have been carried out and that they have appropriate management arrangements in place".

https://www.wirral.gov.uk/housing/h...-and-managing-agents/selective-licensing

The licence is not about the property its about the landlord as a manager hence there is no property inspection.

There are already legal protections to tenants about the standard of the property, there is no real need for this scheme.

What I believe the thoughts may be are that sorting out a rogue landlords through the traditional legal routes are long and costly, this scheme bypasses that by it being easier to show he is in default of the licence conditions.

This is similar to the decriminalisation of parking, whilst you can still be done for obstruction etc by the police, it is far easier and cheaper for the council to have a simpler process.

However, I don't think this entirely works in the tenants favour, sometimes people are in the position that they need lower costs and accepting a sub-standard property at lower rent is a means to achieve this. The new scheme prohibits this although as pointed out it can still continue unofficially.

Furthermore the costs to the landlord of this scheme are bound to be passed onto tenants.

Of course there are also the two twin traditional problems, you give trouble to your landlord and your tenancy is under threat and in the extreme if the council close a property down (or effectively force the landlord to close it down), you get kicked out. Many people are not in the position to risk getting kicked out.

So what is the point of an SSL at all if not to be something to use as leverage against a landlord.Window dressing then.

I have this on my flat, my landlord pays around £600 for each property he owns, so this is running in to thousands if they own lots of flats etc.
Someone came round to make sure there were smoke alarms fitted, a fire blanket and extinguisher in kitchern and thats it.
I wrote to Anglea Eagle MP saying this was a load of bull and its just another way of Councils getting money in, or as i called it a Landlord Tax!
I still have damp in my bedroom, bathroom and hallway, plus the gutters leak and run down the outside walls.