Licensing
What is a rent repayment order?
A rent repayment order requires a landlord to repay rent to a tenant or to a local authority, where specified offences have been committed — operating an unlicensed property among them.
It is the sanction that makes licensing failures expensive rather than merely unlawful. Repayment can cover a period of rent, and applications can be made by tenants themselves.
It attaches to offences including failure to licence, failure to comply with an improvement notice, and unlawful eviction. Licensing is simply the most commonly encountered.
The order is against the landlord, and in some circumstances against a superior landlord or an agent depending on who received the rent.
What goes wrong in practice
- Licensing treated as a low-priority administrative task, with the exposure unquantified.
- A lapsed licence not noticed, which creates the same exposure as never having one.
- Agents assuming the exposure sits entirely with the landlord.