Stewart, Jill ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3031-8082, Humphry, Debbie, Egan, Matt, Seguin, Maureen, Marks, Dalya and Petersen, Jakob (2025) England’s private rented housing sector: evaluating selective licensing schemes to better understand and address social and health outcomes. In: Housing Studies Association Annual Conference 2025, 14th – 16th & 28th - 30th April 2025, Sheffield and online. (In Press)

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Abstract

Selective licensing is a discretionary tool to strategically identify and intervene in areas displaying poor privately rented housing conditions, high levels of anti-social behaviour, deprivation and crime and/or migration. Selective licensing may cover part or the whole of a local authority area and is currently the only means of offering an area-based approach to regulating the wider private rented sector (noting the other schemes exist for houses in multiple occupation [HMOs]). Schemes are normally delivered over a five-year period. There has been little evaluation of selective licensing’s social and health outcomes for tenants. Our current research evaluation is of particular importance since the sector has hugely increased in number with some 19% of households in England – including households with families – now renting privately, with major concerns about conditions, management and the sector’s regulation. Licensing offers an opportunity to regulate management and standards but it requires investment to establish, develop and lead new schemes with meaningful accountability, review and evaluation. Selective licensing schemes are complex and involve multiple stakeholders, organisations and processes to be effectively delivered. Developing our earlier research, our current project includes interviews with tenants, tenant-support groups, local government practitioners and landlords in case study sites across England. We explore and present some of our findings around the challenges and opportunities for equitable development and implementation of selective licensing schemes. We hope to inform more effective policy and practice around area interventions in the private rented housing sector that are able to deliver enhanced social and health outcomes.

Item Type:	Conference or Conference Paper (Paper)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	housing and health, selective licensing, private rented housing, England
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) R Medicine > R Medicine (General) R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > Institute for Lifecourse Development Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > Institute for Lifecourse Development > Centre for Inequalities Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > School of Human Sciences (HUM)
Related URLs:	http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/centres-...
Last Modified:	20 Jan 2025 10:37
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/49415

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