Clause 57 - Licences: general requirements and duration
Housing Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Keith Hill (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Streatham, Labour)
I congratulate the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings on an excellent recovery.
Clause 57(1) provides that a licence must not relate to more than one HMO. A licence is valid for a period that is specified in it, but for not more than five years—although it may be brought to an end earlier if there is non-compliance with a provision of the licence. A licence is non-transferable, and upon the death of a licence holder a three-month temporary exemption would automatically be granted in line with the provisions of clause 51.
Amendment No. 274 provides that a licence would be for five years in all cases. That returns us to the argument about providing flexibility for local authorities. In practice, we expect the vast majority of licences to be granted for a five-year period. If a licensee does not agree with a decision to grant a licence for a shorter period, they can appeal against that decision and a local authority will have to explain why a shorter period is appropriate. However, flexibility may be advantageous in a few circumstances: for example, if a local authority knew that an additional licensing designation was going to end on a particular date, they could grant licences that would run to that date, and therefore would not have to go through the trouble of revoking each licence individually.
The hon. Member for Poole mentioned the implications for local authorities and environmental health officers of the bunching of start dates. The Government do not expect the licensing of properties to occur simultaneously. The assessment of such properties is a complex task. I remind the Committee of some interesting data: the local authority in Nottingham reckons to bring 100 HMOs a year into registration. I am not saying that it would be impossible to bring more HMOs into schemes during
the course of a year. However, we expect the implementation of both the licensing regime and the health and safety rating system to take place over a year. We want the exercise to be conducted in a reasonably finite period, so we do not anticipate such a bunching effect.