Purpose

To approve the revised Civil Penalties & Rent Repayment Orders
Policy, which was last approved by Cabinet in 2017.

Content

RESOLVED

That the Cabinet:

a)               
approves the proposed revised Civil Penalty and Rent Repayment
Order Policy as set out in
Appendix A of report
SHAP/096.

b)               
delegates authority to the Head of Strategic Housing in
consultation with the Head of Governance, People and Performance to
agree the sum of civil penalties to be issued on a case-by-case
basis in accordance with the proposed policy.

c)               
delegates authority to the Head of Strategic Housing in
consultation with the Cabinet Member for Public Protection to make
amendments to the policy as further changes to legislation and
statutory guidance are introduced or following a subsequent
review.
(Generic
Delegation 7 will be used to enact this recommendation).

Reasons for the
Recommendations

a)               
The revised policy strengthens the council’s commitment to
ensuring that private sector landlords operating unlawfully are
held to account and that it is financial disadvantageous for them
to do so.

b)               
Revised policies have been adopted by Mid Sussex District Council
and Horsham District Council in very similar terms and therefore
the adoption of this policy by Crawley Borough Council provides
consistency across the north of the county to the imposition of
civil penalties for housing offences.

c)               
There are two key changes between the current and revised policies.
The first is in response to recent case law and replaces the
banding model from which fines are determined, to the provision of
starting points, from which a landlord’s circumstances are
considered to identify any mitigating and aggravating factors and
determine whether the fine should be adjusted accordingly.

d)               
The second change relates to the number of rental properties a
landlord controls/owns/manages and how it impacts the level of
penalty imposed. The current policy differentiates between
landlords that control/own/manage one to five properties, and those
that control/own/manage six or more. The revised policy
differentiates between landlords that control/own/manage one or two
properties, three to five properties, and six or more properties.
This approach is more proportional to the scale of the
landlord’s business.