The Green Deal
Alan Ward of the RLA talked about The Green Deal being offered by the Government and will be introduced some time late in 2012. The 2011 Energy Act is going through secondary legislation, which will allow Green Deals to commence. This has great implications for landlords:

‘Landlords may have as little as five years to upgrade their properties to a minimum energy standard or have them banned from the market. They would face criminal prosecution if they marketed a rental property with an EPC rating of less than E. They are being told to wake up to a new regime, where they must look on higher energy performance certificate requirements as part of an essential health and safety regime.’ Find out more from the RLA site Energy Defficient Properties Face Ban

V Phase
Presentation by V Phase. They market a device suitable for all homes to save money on electrical use. It involves a small investment (£400 – £600) with a pay back time of about 6 years.

Photo Voltaic Generation
Presentation by Haven Kaye Photo Voltaic Generation. This is an established company which has an excellent reputation and has been researched by Ron Frost (Committee member).

SCC Private Housing Standards structure 

The letter is attached

LetterofconfirmationofArticle4

SCC presentation of Housing Benefit and Private Rented Sector (pdf)

Council Tax Representatives from CAPITA and Sheffield City Council talked about the problems with the payment of Council tax and how we can avoid them. (The notes for this presentation are given below).

Overview of Council Tax by Capita and SCC (pdf)
Student Questions (Word doc)
Sheffield City Council Council Tax information for Landlords and Managing Agents of rented properties

This direction affects the change of use of dwelling houses from category C3 to Cat.C4. After April this year it becomes a requirement to apply for planning for a change of use of a property as anything with 3 or more unrelated persons (HMO). This was altered in October 2010 so that the above change became Permitted Development.

The Council has made an Article 4 Direction covering an area including areas such as parts of the City Centre, Walkley, Crookes, Broomhill, Broomhall, Hunters Bar and Sharrow.

In Sheffield, the council have applied the Core Strategy policy CS41 to planning applications for HMOs in these areas, to assess whether there would be an over concentration of shared housing and therefore whether planning permission should be granted or refused. The CS41, therefore stops the creation of any more HMO’s in an any area where there are more that 20% HMO’s within a 200 metre radius.

If the property is already in use the requirement is not retrospective, however, the use should be known at the time.

December 10th 2011 is the date of the implementation of the above.

This was part training, part workshop so that Landlords can be equiped with the tools to carry out their own risk assessment of their properties.

The risk assessment process follows 6 steps to carrying out a risk assessment.  A sample property inspection form can be found using the following the link:

Property Inspection Form

Full time students are exempted from paying council tax. If the students have separate short hold tenancy agreements the landlord is liable for payment of council tax, if the students have a joint short hold tenancy agreement then the students are liable directly for the payment of the council tax. Often the students are away over the summer period so correspondence from the council remains unopened until September; in the meantime the landlord is pursued for the payment.

Court summons have been received by our members even before the students have arrived back from the holidays. Members have told us that they have provided details of their student tenants, in registered student houses, but correspondence has been ignored. The change seems to have come about since Capita has taken over the collection of council tax; who have been over zealous in the collection of non payments. Automated processes have issued court summons regardless of any correspondence received. One member has even been issued with a threat of bankruptcy proceedings before the court summons date. Another member found it quite distressing, as she had never had any court summons issued to her before and she felt she had been made to feel like a criminal.

We would be interested in your experiences of this  matter to gauge how big this issue is, please email us using info@sadla.org.uk.

Sadla has been in touch regarding this matter to the council, we have asked for a meeting with a person with sufficient authority to explain why this was occurring and how our members can be prevented from this harassment. We will keep you posted on it’s outcome.

1. Access to an advice line either by telephone or online.
2. Full access to all RLA guides and documentation which cover all aspects of being a landlord including online tenancy agreements, a comprehensive library of legal documents and free advertising.
3. Receipt of a bi-monthly landlord magazine.
4. Receipt of a monthly e-news.
5. Support for training courses in Sheffield
6. Access to credit checks and tenant references at a reduced rate.
7. Local training available in Sheffield.
8. Free advertising on the RLA website to find tenants and to sell property
9. Use of the RLA logo.
10. From November 2010 members will subscribe to SADLA via the RLA’s online payment process. From 2011 members will be expected to subscribe by direct debit or by continuous payment by credit card.
11. The RLA communicates by email and all members will be expected to supply an email address. Those SADLA members without an email address will be serviced by post for the first two years.