City of Lincoln Council Recognises Trusted Landlords

Following a crackdown on rogue landlords, the City of Lincoln Council has launched a Trusted Landlord Scheme for accredited landlords.

The scheme aims to advise and support landlords to provide good quality, well-managed private rented accommodation. It will encourage tenants to choose safe, good-quality housing and increase tenants’ confidence in the management of their accommodation. 

The scheme will allow the council’s officers to focus on those rogue landlords who give a bad reputation to the sector while reducing time spent checking the compliance of Trusted Landlords. 

The scheme also aims to reduce the impact on local communities of a large proportion of transient tenants and multiple occupied housing.

The Trusted Landlord Scheme is a standard badging scheme and is open to several accreditations including our Private Rented Sector Accreditation Scheme (PRSAS).

Suppose a landlord is meeting the requirements of their accreditation scheme regarding management, safety inspections and repairs, knowledge and professional development, and they encourage their tenants to be considerate neighbours. In that case, there will be no additional requirements for joining the Lincoln Trusted Landlord Scheme.

The landlord will declare all of the properties they own within the City to the Trusted Landlord Scheme. A sample of these will be inspected to check that they meet current standards and the code of practice of their accreditation scheme and that documents like gas safety checks are up to date.

Members of the Trusted Landlord Scheme will benefit from a streamlined HMO licensing process, the opportunity to deal with disrepair complaints before the council investigates, and exemption from proactive inspection programmes such as the Rogue Landlord Project, which in 2016 inspected 881 homes, carried out 110 enforcement actions and two dawn raids and resulted in 5 prosecutions.

Landlords will have preferential access to Choice Based Lettings to advertise available properties, tenant nominations and the bond scheme.   

For more information and to apply to join the scheme free of charge, visit www.lincoln.gov.uk/trustedlandlord.