Industry news
Council unveils drone service to survey roofs
in the city of dreaming spires. Oxford Direct Services (ODS) is the service and
A
delivery arm of Oxford City Council. It will offer a variety of drone based services including roof and building surveying, land mapping, aerial photography and filming. Its first job is to inspect the roofs of 7,800
homes it maintains for the council. ODS claims it is the first time a local authority-owned organisation has brought drone services in house. ODS also said using drones will save time, drive down costs and “reduce the health and safety challenges typically encountered with this type of work”.
The organisation has acquired a DJI Phantom 4
Advanced quadcopter drone to carry out the work and has a Civil Aviation Authority licence to offer commercial services. Simon Howick, managing director at ODS, said:
“Hiring a drone firm costs between £300-£1,000 to survey a roof, so with scaffolding expensive and cumbersome it made total sense to invest in the drone equipment, flight training and licensing and add this skillset to our portfolio.”
Government's rogue landlord list still empty after six months
An investigation has found the Government’s much vaunted rogue landlord database has not got a single name on it and it is not available for public scrutiny. The database went live over six months ago and it
was intended to be a key tool in tackling the worst behavior of private sector landlords. But work by The Guardian newspaper and ITV News has uncovered a complete failure of the system to work as publicised. It appears only convictions for offences
committed since April this year can be used to ‘name and shame’ an offending landlord. And even when rogue landlords have their details entered on the database, it will only be accessible to people who work for central or local government. Not allowing public access to the list is a major flaw and appears to undermine commitments given during the consultation phase.
Because of flaws in legislation it also means
that landlords banned from one local authority area can still let out homes in other areas, while they are also free to operate in the locality where they have been banned provided they use an approved third party. The news agencies were forced to use Freedom of
Information Act inquiries to find out what is and is not happening with the database, as it appears the Government is understandably embarrassed by the inadequacy of this ‘flagship’ scheme to improve conditions in the private rented sector. The Guardian provided details of some notorious
landlords, many of them who are still operating despite having a string of convictions for housing offences and being blasted by council officers and judges for their appalling treatment of tenants. The secrecy and absence of information on the Government’s database contrasts sharply with a
separate rogue landlord database run by the Mayor of London’s office. The London version allows the public to view
prosecutions of rogue landlords in the capital’s boroughs for a year after the conviction date. Data available includes the nature of the offence, the landlord’s address, their fine, which council prosecuted them and which property the offence was committed at. David Cox, chief executive of the Association of
Residential Letting Agents slammed the situation, saying “This is a truly ridiculous piece of legislation. How on earth is a tenant supposed to know if a landlord has been banned?” The Ministry for Housing, Communities and
Local Government said it was “exploring further options for making information contained with the database available to prospective and existing tenants”.
council-owned organisation is to start a new drone-based service by surveying the roofs of almost 8,000 local authority homes
Social sector league tables expected within two years
League tables for social landlords are expected to appear within two years and they will include housing associations, councils and ALMOs according to the sector’s regulator. The prospect of using tables to rank social
landlords by their performance was included in the Social Housing Green Paper published a few months ago. It provoked a series of angry protests and warnings that they could be counter productive by encouraging landlords to chase targets for performance indicators.
Simon Dow, interim chair of the Regulator of
Social Housing has said critics have no “compelling case for what to do instead”. Jonathan Walters, deputy director of strategy
and performance at the RSH, said: “If we are asked to develop a suite of metrics we would want to take the time and work with others to make sure we were coming up with the right metrics. I think it doesn’t really matter who your landlord is as far as tenants are concerned. It shouldn’t matter whether it’s a local authority or a housing
20 | HMM November 2018 |
www.housingmmonline.co.uk
association, it would be the same metrics that apply.” “With regard to league tables, I think the
question is what government is trying to achieve with that and I think there are two things really. The first is that league tables are trying to achieve transparency, so tenants can see more about what their landlords are actually like. The other thing is that no one wants to be at the bottom of the league table, so this would persuade people who aren’t doing well to do better,” he added. “And if you really don’t like the idea of league
tables, what you need to do is accept the outcome that Government is trying to achieve and come up with an alternative system that can meet those aims and help social landlords do better.”
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