Landlords: Save £255 per rental property

Selective Licensing: Save £255 per rental property you own within the Nottingham City Council area

Further to my previous blog on 18th July this week, regarding the impending Landlord Licensing Scheme proposals, I add further update and advice.

The Council’s revised proposals and recommendations were approved on Tuesday and it is expected to be rubber stamped by The Secretary of State for the Department for Communities and Local Government. The implementation date is set for 1st January 2018.

All Landlords owning a property within the revised Nottingham City Council boundaries, as specified, will have to pay a licence of £655 per property if they are not accredited. If they are accredited then the fee is reduced to £400. Please click on the map to find out if your properties are captured.

Walton and Allen is committed to saving its Clients unnecessary fees and strongly urges those affected by this ‘tax’ to minimise their costs. Those Landlords who are not our Clients are also urged to take our advice. Has your current agent contacted you and advised you about this? If not, we would be happy to assist, once our current Clients have been serviced.

The writer, Mark Batty, is also a Landlord in the city centre, captured by this new charge but he has reduced his liability from £655 to £400 per property, and you can do the same, by following his advice;

Mark states;

I contacted a local accreditation body called DASH Services and registered myself and my property online.at www.dashservices.org.uk.

Once signed up I was given an access code to an online course of 6 modules. The initial registration only took me 15 minutes but the online course took 3 hours, although DASH expect an average Landlord to take 6 hours.

Each module had a multiple choice questionnaire at the end which requires a 100% success rate. If you answer any questions incorrectly, you can go back and correct them, although your first answers are recorded, so please make sure you listen to the videos carefully and interact with the other parts properly. You must pass, otherwise you won’t qualify for the £255 saving per property.

Once you have passed the theory test, DASH will inspect your property. DASH will arrange this with you direct.

It appears that the inspectors only work on Saturdays and not during the week.

If you are a joint owner of a property then only one of you needs to become accredited. If you hold the property in a limited company, only one Director needs to become accredited but any other Directors need to be listed. If the accredited Director resigns, then another Director needs to become accredited.

There is no monetary cost to become accredited other than time, although if you cannot attend the inspection a third party is likely to charge you for it.

To retain accreditation, a Landlord must complete 10 hours each year of CPD (Continued Professional Development) which means that you are required to prove that you have kept up to date with relevant legislation by reading, courses etc. In the first year, you will have already completed 6 hours through the accreditation process.

An additional inspection by the City Council is also likely. However, the Council has indicated that only 10% of accredited Landlord’s properties will be inspected, and 50% of non-accredited Landlord’s properties will be inspected. The further savings are obvious. Multiple property landlords will not need all properties to be inspected.

The only good news is that the licensing costs are tax deductible at your prevailing rate.

We urge all of our Clients to become accredited, despite the effort that is required. It will help your property be more marketable, the next time it is advertised for rent, as any prospective tenant will know that his/her new Landlord is an accredited one. Walton & Allen are looking at every angle to increase rents (we call it ‘marginal gain’), and accreditation is one of them. We have more angles in the pipeline to help our Landlords properties to be more in demand from tenants, so pushing rents upwards.

So, we implore you to help yourselves and become accredited through DASH.
Should you require any further information then please do not hesitate to contact Mark Batty mark@waltonandallen.co.uk.

Good luck in your studies!