Councillor George Davies introduced a report, which presented Members with the results of the consultation exercise for extending Wirral’s Selective Licensing Scheme to four more designated area in the Borough.  Those areas were known as:

·  Hamilton Square

·  Seacombe St Paul’s

·  Birkenhead West

·  Birkenhead Central

The maps and address lists were detailed in the updated Business Case in the report.

The Cabinet noted the reasons for implementing a Selective Licencing scheme in the four additional designated areas in the borough. There was a robust evidence base to justify the targeting of proposed areas and support for the scheme had been confirmed by 77% of respondents to a recent statutory consultation exercise compared to less than 12% who had disagreed or strongly disagreed. Furthermore evidence provided by the existing Selective Licensing Scheme had confirmed that private rented properties in these areas had an extremely low level of compliance with licensing conditions which further strengthened the case for rolling out this scheme to the proposed new areas. The report sets out the proposed changes to the existing Licence Conditions following operational and legislative changes introduced since the initial scheme was launched.  It was considered that these recommendations would improve living conditions and ensure well managed private rented properties in designated areas.

Based on the feedback from the consultation undertaken and the robust evidence used for the Business Case rationale, Members were asked to approve the extension of Wirral’s Selective Licensing Scheme for all tenanted private rented properties within these four designated areas under Section 80 of the Housing Act 2004.

Members were also asked to approve changes to the existing Licence Conditions  ...  view the full minutes text for item 24