A Licence to Let for all Landlords
5th May 2009 07:32:45
Another wizard wheeze by Herr Brown. Require anyone planning on letting out anything to register with the government! Your parents left you a house when you died, and you're letting someone stay in it for a few hundred quid a week? You'll need to register. Got a couple of houses that you let out to students? Register. Letting out your son's room while he's at university to get a little bit of cash in? Well, you've got the idea.
No, leave us alone. Leave us to make our money in our own way. So what if I wish to make my money by the sale and/or lease of property? As long as I pay my income tax, and the house conforms to already existing required Health and Safety standards, there's no problems.
- From the Times Article
So landlords would have to comply with standards? Houses have to comply with standards anyway?
They are required to carry out necessary repairs? They have to do these anyway under Health and Safety laws.
They can't intimidate tenants? I'm fairly sure the law takes a dim view of intimidation as a practice under any situation.
Most strange was the bit at the end of that paragraph. So if I rent a flat off a guy who's a bit of a useless git, but the rent's low and I don't care about the few minor problems that creep up every now and then, and another of his tenants makes an upheld complaint, I'm homeless?
It's another case of needless, mindless bureaucracy that will fulfil absolutely no practical use whatsoever, except raise money for the government, and then promptly waste it paying for this useless registration scheme. It is symptomatic of a Government that just can't keep from registering and checking and validating and inspecting every instance of the lives of its citizens, and the activities of its small businesses.
Leave us, Mr. Brown. Leave us to make our money and spend it however we want to. The Government doesn't need to register every carpenter on the offchance he might make poor-quality tables, they don't need to register every corner shop to prevent grumpy people on the tills spoiling the rest of our days, and they don't need to register landlords either.
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