Manchester has extended selective licensing to another 1,863 rental properties across the city.

The new licensing schemes across six wards include: Cheetham (flats above shops and Esmond/Avondale); Crumpsall, Enver Road; Harpurhey, Whiteway Street; Longsight, Heathcote/Sanby Road and Northmoor Road; Miles Platting & Newton Heath, Droylsden Road and Scotland Street; and Moss Side, Viscount Street and Heald Grove.

The council explains that it has specifically targeted homes based on property condition and antisocial behaviour linked to waste management problems.

Councillor Gavin White (main image, inset), executive member for housing and development, believes that there are fewer regulations and therefore less protection against poor housing in the private sector than social rent properties.

Wider community

“This means that there a minority of landlords who we have found do not take the responsibility for their property, the safety of their tenants, nor the impact of their property on the wider community seriously enough,” he says.

“This is by no means every landlord and most work hard to make sure the properties they let are safe and of a good standard. But selective licensing is one of the ways we can hold landlords that don’t to account and drive up standards for our residents.”  

There are about 90,000 private rented homes in Manchester, where nine selective licensing schemes already cover 2,000 properties across eight wards, with 3,550 properties having been fully licensed since licensing started in 2017. White adds that it has seen the impact of its interventions, with more than 1,700 hazards removed from the city’s private sector homes since then.