Part of Renters’ Rights Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 2:15 pm on 5 November 2024.
David Simmonds
Opposition Whip (Commons), Shadow Parliamentary Under Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
2:15,
5 November 2024
The measures for selective licensing have been in place for some time, and we certainly see lot of learning from the local authorities that have operated them. On the whole, those have tended to be in high-density urban areas. Clearly, a concern for the Opposition is how that interacts with the new measures introduced in the Bill, whereby there will be a nationally procured database with a set of accountability measures operated by the Secretary of State. That could interact unhelpfully with local databases. I hope that the Government are determined to learn the lessons from those existing selective licensing arrangements. The Opposition’s view is that given the measures introduced by the Bill, selective licensing in the way that it is currently undertaken would no longer be necessary nor appropriate.
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