Nottingham council has launched a city-wide ‘good landlord’ accreditation scheme and offered those who join the scheme a 10% reduction on fees for its private sector licencing schemes.

The new citywide scheme, amalgamates its existing DASH and Unipol accreditation schemes, the former being for general landlors and the latter for those providing student accommodation within the city.

The new scheme is called The Nottingham Rental Standard promises to reward the ‘best landlords’ with both lower fees but also free training and other resources.

For example, un-accredited landlords pay £1,473 per property to register a property within Nottingham’s HMO licencing scheme costs £1,123 for accredited landlords.

Rental standard

Councillor Jay Hayes (pictured), says: “The ‘Nottingham Rental Standard’ elevates our work to create a safer and more reliable rental housing market in Nottingham.

“Bringing together the two previous accreditation schemes under one standard will make it easier for tenants to identify good landlords and easier for landlords to take part.

“Ultimately, we hope this will increase the uptake of the scheme and ensure more tenants have access to quality accommodation. We have a lot of good landlords in Nottingham, and there must be a mechanism through which tenants can identify them.”

The scheme also enables prospective tenants to check if their landlords is accredited before doing viewings or signing a contract, but leading local landlord Mick Roberts says the white-hot competition for properties within the city mean few do it.

“So landlords don’t bother signing up to these types of schemes, “ he tells LandlordZONE.