Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, with reference to page 85 of the report, UK Poverty: Causes and Solutions, published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on 6 September 2016, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of the recommendation to devolve decisions about the implementation of selective licensing to local or combined authorities.

Since April 2015, government approval is required for selective licensing schemes that encompass more than:

• 20 per cent of a local authority’s private rented stock; or
• 20 per cent of a local authority’s geographical area.

At the same time measures were introduced to make targeted licensing schemes easier to introduce by widening the licensing criteria of low housing demand or anti-social behaviour to include: migration, crime, poor property condition and deprivation.

These changes were introduced to ensure that local authorities apply selective licensing in a targeted way to help address specific problems in the areas concerned.