Tonight at 6.30 Matthew Finn, Community Protection Manager at Rotherham Borough Council will address a meeting of landlords and landlords associations at the Holiday Inn, in Rotherham, regarding Selective Licensing of landlords

Apparently, Mr Finn attended a meeting in Maltby a week gone Friday on this same matter, though requests to Maltby Town Council for details have drawn a blank.

Whilst Rotherham meetings have been cancelled due to “disruption” as the council put it at one meeting,  various people are debating the issue from the point of view of  councillor landlords  and  friends of councillors who are landlords.  No one as yet  seems to be looking at the issue from a tenant’s view.

So here we have it :

Dear Matthew Finn,

I am extremely concerned about how the areas have been selected as suitable/eligible to be used in the planning of the “Selective Licensing”  scheme.

As a resident of a privately rented house in Maltby, I am particularly concerned as to how the areas have been identified. The area known as “Little London” and which comprises Morrison Avenue, Churchill Avenue and part of Greenland Avenue has long been identified as an area of deprivation, the quality of the environment is poor, the turnover of residents is high and there are always numerous empty properties which attract criminal behaviour and environmental hazards.

I believe that currently there are 3 landlords for this estate – one now letting properties as RMBC’s  Key Choices.  One landlord is Rivergrove Ltd, which has a London address to which requests for maintenance and repairs need to be made in writing, and a Salford address to make rent payments. A collector/agent is available for one hour every 2 weeks at a property on Morrison Avenue.

The construction of the houses (flat roofs and bordering on marshland) means that there is a constant need for leaking and damp coming from roofs, windows and floors to be repaired.

I have lived at this address since 2003 and have had to resort to informing Environmental Health at RMBC on a number of occasions to get repairs looked at and rectified. As secretary of the Friends of Little London Residents Association in the past, I know that most residents have had problems such as this over the years.

This is hardly a satisfactory situation for any tenant to be in. Private housing adjoining and adjacent to these properties are obviously also affected by the lack of maintenance and general ‘run down’ appearance of the area.

I have had no response from your department or from Maltby Town Council about the meeting which was held in Maltby over a week ago. I still require the information about this meeting as detailed in my previous email and shall request this again from MTC.

I am sending a Freedom of Information request to the appropriate persons asking how and why the areas have been identified as such, which criteria was used in the identification and why the “Little London” area is not, up to now, included.

Would you please make the contents of this email available to all at tonight’s meeting.

Thankyou