Ahsan Ashraf's petition to Cabinet on Selective Licensing

My name is Ahsan Ashraf, I have been a resident of Firvale for 34 years. I have no rental properties that fall within the selective licensing area but have come today to object to the 75 page report which is to be approved today.

Let's first talk about the financial cost of the scheme. Section 8.16, (page18) mentions this scheme has been a loss making scheme in other authorities.

Section 9.2, The recommendation to implement licensing has financial implications for the Council in terms of cash flow. The majority of costs are new and not within existing budgets.

Section 9.4, Money obtained from licence fees cannot be spent on the recruitment of housing inspection/enforcement officers. Later it mentions in section 11.1 that additional staff are required to administer the scheme, a cost that cannot be paid for by the licence fees so will have to come from another budget.

9.15. The scheme comes with a level of financial risk to the council as a number of assumptions have been made.

At a time of real financial hardship on the Council and the fact that future cuts from central government are on the way, which caused the council to put a media alert out last year. Should such a scheme be run on a few streets at the detriment on budgets for the rest of Sheffield?

Now lets consider the Human impact of recommending this report today.

The report identifies the conditions imposed on a landlord in order to acquire a licence. See Appendix D

1) No more than 4 people can live in a 2 bedroom house. A person is deemed to be anyone above the age of 1. This will lead to evictions of families in order for the landlord to meet the conditions of the licence. A unexpected pregnancy will force a family of 4 to be evicted on the grounds of overcrowding or a grandparent coming to visit may take the numbers above the allowed numbers specified by the council. How many families are we going to put on the street to satisfy the people writing and approving this report? Local families impacted include <names removed> and their families as soon as these reports are approved. Real families from Sheffield being made homeless or requiring council rehousing.

2) Reference conditions. Two references are required to confirm a person has no anti-social behaviour issues and lives by the agreement of a tenancy. Where a reference can’t be obtained, a meeting may be allowed between the council, tenant and landlord. As we are talking about 350 rental properties, there could be a need to have more than 300 possible meetings? What a drain on resource and cost.

3) A landlord must pass a fit and proper test. The conditions of which have not been specified in the report. How can this Cabinet pass a scheme without knowing the detail on what criteria is used here ?

4) The equalities impact document on page 73 states the policy may have a negative impact on new migrants from the EU and may result in increase homelessness cases.

5) Page 74 states the policy has the potential to impact on homelessness.

6) Page 70 Page hall and the people experience high levels of deprivation and selective licensing has the potential to increase evictions and increase vacant properties and impact on homelessness.

Now if this is passed today, then let it be on everyone conscience, in this room, the number of poor families that will be made homeless through no fault of their own as they may not be the families causing the problems in the area. Families that have suffered just like the rest of the community but are now easy targets for eviction as they are grouped together with people that cause problems in the area. Lets not also forget the financial cost the people of Sheffield will have to pick up as a result of this policy

What would I do?

My recommendation is that the £145,000 government fund allocation the Council has acquired from the ‘Rogue Landlords’ budget specifically for this area (see page 2 of the report) is spent on a housing enforcement officer to work in the local Pakistani Community and Advice Centre for a period of 3 years specifically targeting the rogue landlords and tenants using the Anti-Social behaviour Bill of 2013 which provides greater power than a licensing scheme that essentially is a housing scheme.

The Councils own report states that 78% of people said the one thing they wish to improve more than anything else is the litter in the area. Selective licensing cannot do anything about litter but the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill does allow you to achieve that objective as well as the objectives of the licensing scheme.

The legal implication highlighted in section 10.3 states the Council must not administer such a scheme if courses of action allow the objectives of the scheme to be achieved.

If this policy was in force when we were growing up it would have led to Councillor <name removed> family being evicted (as I understand she came from a large family), My family would be made homeless as my parents lived with four children in a 2 bedroom house. Today those children have grown up to be a teacher, heart and lung specialist nurse working in the Northern General Hospital and a IT Professional looking after the worldwide IT systems of one of the largest global financial institutions.

My fight against this policy will continue.