Paul Oatt – författare

In recent years, the private rented sector has overtaken social housing to become the main housing provider with some of the worse housing conditions that are linked to preventable health inequalities. This book seeks to expand upon previous research in the area with a focus on selective licensing and enforcement, using a case study to illustrate changes in working practices that have been bought about through new powers being made available to local authorities to issue civil financial penalties upon criminal landlords.

The book examines the impact of this legislation on regulatory enforcement in the London Borough of Newham’s property licensing scheme, delivered in a multi-agency partnership across its private rented sector, and the outcomes of combining the use of licensing and traditional housing inspections with use of civil penalties in alternative to prosecution to address some of the worse effects of poor housing.

The study also considers the limitations of employing informal actions to address such issues as well as identifying both the barriers to collaboration and the most effective strategies for service delivery where agencies – such as the police, border agency, council tax and local planning, irrespective of inter-agency competition – work together to achieve individual and shared objectives in evolving partnerships. The findings here will be of keen interest to environmental health professionals, academics, and indeed those operating in local authorities themselves.

In recent years, the private rented sector has overtaken social housing to become the main housing provider with some of the worse housing conditions that are linked to preventable health inequalities. This book seeks to expand upon previous research in the area with a focus on selective licensing and enforcement, using a case study to illustrate changes in working practices that have been bought about through new powers being made available to local authorities to issue civil financial penalties upon criminal landlords.

The book examines the impact of this legislation on regulatory enforcement in the London Borough of Newham’s property licensing scheme, delivered in a multi-agency partnership across its private rented sector, and the outcomes of combining the use of licensing and traditional housing inspections with use of civil penalties in alternative to prosecution to address some of the worse effects of poor housing.

The study also considers the limitations of employing informal actions to address such issues as well as identifying both the barriers to collaboration and the most effective strategies for service delivery where agencies – such as the police, border agency, council tax and local planning, irrespective of inter-agency competition – work together to achieve individual and shared objectives in evolving partnerships. The findings here will be of keen interest to environmental health professionals, academics, and indeed those operating in local authorities themselves.

This book is an evaluation of the effectiveness of housing enforcement and tenant protection in England’s private rented sector using policy analysis to evaluate regulatory provisions and local authority guidance to identify the advantages and limitations of existing policies. From the environmental health practitioner perspective, the targeted health problem is occupiers privately renting from negligent or criminal landlords who are subsequently exposed to hazardous conditions arising from disrepair.

Paul Oatt’s analysis looks at the powers local authorities have to address retaliatory eviction when enforcing against housing disrepair and digs deeper into their duties to prevent homelessness and powers to protect tenants from illegal eviction. He then explores the potential for tenants to take private action against landlords over failures to address disrepair, before finally discussing proposals put forward by the government to abolish retaliatory evictions and improve security of tenure with changes to contractual arrangements between landlords and tenants, based on successive stakeholder consultations. The policy analysis looks at these aspects to define the overall effectiveness of housing strategies and their implementation, examining causality, plausibility and intervention logic as well as the unintended effects on the population. Equitability is examined to see where policy effects create inequalities as well as the costs, feasibility and acceptability of policies from landlords'' and tenants’ perspectives.

The book will be of relevance to professionals interested in housing and health, as well as students at universities that teach courses in environmental health, public health, and housing studies.