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A REVIEW OF THE FIRST YEAR OF THE MANDATORY LICENSING OF HOUSES IN MULTIPLE OCCUPATION IN SCOTLAND
CHAPTER FIVE THE PROMOTION OF THE MANDATORY LICENSING SCHEME
5.1 This Chapter reviews the promotional activity by local authorities about the mandatory licensing scheme in the period before and after its introduction. Different contributors offer their perspective on the positive and negative aspects of the publicity, promotional effort and communication by local authorities with HMO owners and tenants.
PUBLICITY AND COMMUNICATIONS
5.2 To publicise the introduction of the mandatory licensing scheme on 1 st October 2000, local authorities were encouraged to do more than the minimum statutory requirement, namely, a public notice announcement in a local newspaper. The Guidance looked to authorities to consider using a variety of techniques such as information leaflets, websites, seminars, posters, and copies of the local standards to be met (Scottish Executive, 2000b). It also expected authorities to aim their publicity not only at HMO owners but, as appropriate, at tenants and neighbours of HMOs. The emphasis on publicity and promotion was a major improvement on the Guidance Notes for the previous discretionary licensing scheme that did not refer to publicity methods (Scottish Office, 1991b). Although the final version of the guidance was issued only a few weeks before the scheme was due to start, the Executive had circulated draft guidance to local authorities several months before October 2000. The research took account of the pre-October as well as the post-October promotion of the scheme by authorities.
PERSPECTIVES ON THE PUBLICITY FOR THE MANDATORY SCHEME AND ITS INTRODUCTION
5.3 The majority of HMO owners interviewed and some key player organisations expressed strong criticisms of how well-prepared local authorities were for publicising and establishing the mandatory licensing scheme.
5.4 Most of the 10 private sector HMO owners believed that authorities were quite unprepared and poorly organized for the introduction of the scheme. This was manifest by owners' observations about the lack of clear information provided, their comments on the uncertainty of council officers about the standards to apply, their observations about the difficulties of officers coordinating with each other - most obviously between building control officers and fire brigade officers - and their awareness of visible tensions about who was the lead officer to relate to. Illustrative of their views was an Edinburgh owner who said the council "n ever explained how I was to go about complying" and a Glasgow owner who felt officers conveyed " No sense of being coordinated". Poor scheme promotion was not seen as just a 'big city' problem. A Dumfries & Galloway owner stated the introduction was "b adly promoted and [had a] heavy handed approach" and a Highland area owner concluded that the council " didn't seem to know what to do". However, there were some satisfied owners. A Glasgow owner had no complaints about the information received: " it was straightforward and clear to understand". He had to deal with different officers and the police and found them all to be " helpful and treated me well". An owner in Dumfries and Galloway had attended a public meeting prior to the introduction of the scheme and felt the public meeting provided all the information he needed.
5.5 The criticisms of publicity and communications can be understood in terms of the personal experiences of those involved. For the owners, the experience of the promotion of the scheme was interlinked with the quality of their early contact with their local council about applying for a licence. Where the early personal contact had not gone well, owners viewed both the authority's promotion of the scheme and its organisational efficiency to be poor. One owner had contacted the council for information and an application form in the spring of 2000 only to be told it was too early but his name would be taken and information sent to him when available. However, the council forgot to send him a form. It was only when he contacted it again, six weeks prior to October 2000 that he discovered he had less than 2 months to submit his form, five sets of plans and certificates. A recurring theme from private owners was of the inflexibility of attitude by officers who stuck rigidly to their standards and would consider no alternative ways of achieving the same outcome. One owner said he had received no information or leaflets from the council and " just had to apply". Council officers tended to answer his questions by referring him to " section such and such of some act" rather than explain things to him.
5.6 Such views were not restricted to the private sector HMO owners. A housing association manager believed that in dealing with its inquiry about the inclusion of one of its very sheltered housing scheme, " Officers didn't understand the type of accommodation they were dealing with" while the other housing association thought council officers were " prescriptive in their approach, not flexible". The universities also expressed various degrees of unhappiness about the early period of the scheme. A university accommodation manager commented that the council seemed quite unprepared for the introduction of the scheme with no clarity about the standards and the advertising seen as poor. Coupled with that, the manager witnessed disagreements between fire officers and building control officers about the ways that doors could meet the requisite half hour fire resistance standard. The manager considered this " inexplicable" for a council that had operated a previous discretionary scheme.
5.7 Four national organisations with a keen interest in the implementation of HMO licensing policy provided their views on the introductory period. Despite SAL and ARLA representing quite different interests from SCSH and Shelter Scotland, they shared a critical view of the introductory period of the scheme, though a different analysis of the reasons for its problems. ARLA thought that scheme had got off to a very poor start because of a lack of staff allocated to licensing by local authorities and because of a lack of understanding by Scottish Executive civil service about what local authorities faced on the ground trying to implement the scheme. SAL emphasised the variation in the licensing scheme's implementation across Scotland: " very hit and miss" with no sense of an overall appreciation of what was required. SCSH perceived that there was inadequate publicity by local authorities and that they seemed to have " stuck their head in the sand" until just weeks before the scheme started. It also thought authorities seemed to be caught up in budget problems and bureaucracy and were not able to agree who was in charge. Shelter Scotland agreed with ARLA in as far as it considered that many of the problems associated with the introduction of the scheme were due to lack of capacity within local authorities i.e. inadequate resources devoted to licensing, but it also held the view that there were publicity, subsidy and organisational failures. Shelter identified several problems. The Executive should have taken a lead on publicity aimed at landlords and should have considered central funding support to authorities. It believed there was inadequate team working within authorities and this still needed to be built up. Finally, it thought there had been a failure by most authorities to give sufficient priority to licensing. As it was, Shelter thought the scheme was " all sticks and no carrots".
THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES' PERSPECTIVE ON THE INTRODUCTION OF THE SCHEME
5.8 From the postal survey results, 25 authorities (78%) had produced information leaflets for HMO owners. Copies of leaflets and information booklets were provided to the research by a number of authorities. It was clear that the local guidance booklets designed for HMO owners were often published as almost exact extracts of the Executive's Guidance - but as the Guidance says: " It is aimed at staff in all departments involved in the licensing process" (Scottish Executive, 2000b: 4). While copying the Guidance may have helped a consistent approach across authorities, the format, style and language was arguably, not appropriate to HMO owners' needs.
5.9 The subject of planning and preparation for the introduction of the scheme was discussed with the eight case study authorities. In the majority of the authorities, officers agreed that there had been problems in the period before and after the start of the scheme, some of their own making - poor publicity, delays in resolving lead department responsibility and uncertainty over standards to set. Stirling and South Ayrshire Councils accepted that they had " no effective publicity" campaign (only a newspaper advert). Fife Council had some local newspaper articles but no other publicity. Aberdeen City Council had only one _ page advert in a local newspaper " on a Saturday" and admitted it " was not good". Highland Council wrote to all landlords on the old Inverness District Council registration scheme (which was only one of eight former district councils that made up Highland Council) and worked with the Highland Landlords Association by involving its Chair in drawing up the council's 'Highland Standards' for HMO licensing. The Association had also written to its members but the council judged these efforts as " not that successful".
5.10 Glasgow City Council thought it had a " successful" road show with Scottish Executive civil servants present and a very good attendance. It had sent a letter to all appropriate HMO owners announcing the introduction of the scheme but its wider press advertising did not happen until after October 2000 because, it said, of the delayed release of the final Guidance from the Executive. A more significant factor affecting information and communication with owners was due to a major delay in establishing the parameters because of differences between building control officers and the Fire Authority over safety standards. Building control officers were initially working to the Guidance standards. Senior counsel's advice to the council was to follow the Executive's HMO Guidance as it was more recent than the Fire Authority's. However, the licensing sub-committee did not accept the advice and approved fire safety standards recommended by the Fire Master as the basis on which the scheme would operate. The lead officers acknowledged that this 'debate' held up the licensing programme until July 2001 and affected the information that could be given to applicants. Overall, Glasgow officers felt that the start of the scheme should have been postponed for a year to allow procedures, standards, training and co-ordination to be properly worked out at a local level.
5.11 Some authorities were satisfied with their promotion and introductory preparation for the scheme though it should be noted that some HMO owners in their area did not agree. Dumfries and Galloway Council felt it had " got off to a good start" with two public meetings and a " road show" before October 2000. Likewise, the City of Edinburgh Council believed it had run a good introductory publicity campaign with a road show involving Scottish Executive civil servant, letters to HMO owners, adverts on local radio, an extensive leaflet distribution and attendance at university Open Days with leaflets in students' packs. Meetings were also held with the Private Sector Landlord's Forum.
MEETING TENANTS' INFORMATION NEEDS
5.12 Liaison with tenants is discussed in more detail in Chapter 10 on Tenancy Management Standards but in terms of publicity aimed at HMO tenants, the research found that the extent and nature of the provision of information for, and communications with, HMO tenants was poor. Only 5 authorities (16%) said that they had contact with tenants at any stage of the licensing process, including at property inspections. Only 13 authorities (41%) said they had leaflets for tenants. From the interviews with 13 HMO tenants, 6 had been in residence before the licence for their accommodation had been approved and only one could recall receiving any leaflet, pamphlet or letter from the local authority about the scheme. None of the other 7 residents said they had seen any information material since they had moved in.
5.13 As part of the research, a request was made to local authorities to enclose copies of leaflets and guides with their returned postal survey. Possibly literature not submitted to the research would have done so, but none of the material received was dedicated to tenants. Information, where it was available, was a short paragraph or minor section of an HMO licensing leaflet targeted at owners' needs (e.g. covering timetable for submission, documentation, contact numbers, etc). The interests of tenants were not specifically addressed. Information was very general about the schemes and did not address what tenants could expect in the way of improvements to their personal safety or quality of accommodation. Nor did any of the sampled leaflets explain what the implications of the tenancy management standards could mean, what tenants should do if there was any harassment from their landlord and what their legal rights were in the context of licensing inspections, property upgrading, changes to their lease or accepting a written lease for the first time.
5.14 A co-incidental aspect of communication with tenants concerned their knowledge about their security of tenure. In the tenant interviews, one Glasgow HMO tenant who had lived in his bedsit for 9 years said he had never had any written tenancy agreement until, as a result of licensing, he had to be given a lease. He signed what he called a 'short assured tenancy'. If this were correct, in all likelihood, he would not have a short assured tenancy but an assured tenancy.
SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS
5.15 In the first year of the mandatory licensing scheme:
- Local authorities had produced leaflets and publicity material and held public meetings about the introduction of the scheme, some involving Scottish Executive staff, but the general consensus was that, with some notable exceptions, pre-scheme promotion and publicity and information for the start of the scheme was inadequate and poorly planned
- The critical attitude of HMO owners to the lack of clear information was often linked to their initial, personal experiences with authorities, particularly involving poor communication by authorities and what they perceived as inflexible attitudes by officers
- There was no single, over-riding explanation for the poor introductory promotion of the HMO scheme across Scotland. The main reasons identified by participants were: (1) the failure by authorities to give licensing sufficient priority and resource it with sufficient staff; (2) the closeness of the release of the final version of the Guidance to the commencement of mandatory licensing on 1 st October 2000, and (3) disputes within local authorities and with fire brigades about standards to apply and where the professional leadership of the licensing scheme should rest
- Publicity material about the scheme was targeted almost exclusively at HMO owners. Material designed specifically for tenants was absent. The material written for tenants was basic and incorporated as a minor section of leaflets designed for owners
- Apart from short, general leaflets, detailed information to HMO owners on rules, procedures and standards for licensing was very largely, uplifted from the Scottish Executive Guidance
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