The London Borough of Islington is to expand its selective licensing scheme from three wards to ten raising the fee landlords pay for a licence from £800 to £850.

The council’s scheme includes Finsbury Park, Hillrise, and Tollington (pictured) but is to be extended to Barnsbury, Caledonian, Tufnell Park, Mildmay, Highbury, Junction and, Laycock. Two wards – Clerkenwell and Canonbury – were included in the original documentation but have been dropped.

Justifying the bigger scheme, which has been out for consultation since January, the council says tenants across the borough pay rents that are much higher than the national average (at £2,025 vs £850), while also “too often [facing] poor conditions and rising rents”.

Decent homes

Councillor John Woolf, Executive Member of Homes and Neighbourhoods, says: “Everyone in Islington deserves a decent, safe and genuinely affordable place to live. We’ve listened to residents, landlords and housing campaigners and we’re taking action.

“While many landlords in Islington act responsibly and maintain their properties well, we continue to hear from hundreds of renters who feel unsafe and unheard, while their rents keep rising.

“This new scheme is about giving renters the protection they need – and the quality housing they deserve.”

Islington is also renewing its borough-wide additional HMO licensing scheme covering properties containing three to four unrelated people, which is to run for another five years until 2031. Fees for the scheme will rise from £703 per property to £900.

Islingtoin is also sensitive to criticism that licensing is a ‘tax on good landlords’ as many campaigning trade groupings have been claiming recently and says its enlarged selective licensing and renewed additional HMO schemes will ‘create a level playing field for landlords who are fulfilling their responsibilities’.

The Islington scheme follows fellow central London borough Westminster’s decision to expand its selective schemes.