To date Scottish landlords have spent £11.2 million in fees
and the Scottish Government gave a grant of £5.2 million to start the landlord
registration scheme. So in total £16.4 million has been spent and yet only 40
landlords have been refused registration compared with over 200,000 who have
been successful.
This is the type of scheme Labour leader Ed Miliband wants
to see rolled out in England and both the Welsh Government and the Northern
Ireland Assembly want to follow suit.
This could mean that landlord registration throughout the UK
would cost at least £98 million and have annual running costs of at least £1.8
million. At the same time we could expect to see just 240 rogue landlords
identified throughout the whole of the UK.
Scottish Tory
housing spokesman Alex Johnstone said: "This farcical programme,
introduced with the best of intentions, is failing to deliver at a tremendous
cost to the taxpayer.
"And
responsible people with aspirations to get into the property business are being
hit in the pocket because of this inadequate scheme.
"The private
rented sector is playing an increasingly important role in delivering solutions
to housing need in Scotland, and we need a robust an efficient mechanism to
help achieve that.
"These
figures suggest that, at the moment, the Private Landlord Registration Scheme
is not it."
The question has to be asked whether or not the amount of
time, effort and money this scheme has cost represents good value for money for
the Scottish Private Rented Sector and whether, based on these figures, there
is any justification for rolling landlord registration out throughout the rest
of the UK.
