Member

Amendment 268 is to Section 91 of the Housing Act and seeks to address the ability to transfer the licence from one named person to another, which does not currently exist under the Act. It is right that this prohibition on transfer applies to bad landlords simply seeking to pass their licence on to family members or friends. That behaviour should continue to be discouraged. However, in a corporate setting, this requires landlords to apply for an entirely new licence every time the staff member holding the licence leaves the company, despite the corporate landlord managing the company remaining the same. A licence can cost over £1,000 per unit. To relicense a large-unit development therefore can cost several hundred thousand pounds. This is a huge cost to incur for a purely administrative change and is far in excess of the cost the local authority will incur for changing the name on the licence and conducting a fit and proper person test.