Selective licensing scheme launched in Enfield
After much deliberation and uproar, which included a petition from landlords in the borough, Enfield Council introduced the Selective Licensing Scheme for certain wards.
The Scheme aims to improve housing conditions, factors that make deprivation and inequality worse and addressing anti-social behaviour.
The Scheme covers 14 wards, in addition to HMO Licensing and Covers private rented properties occupied by single households or two unrelated individuals.
Landlords can apply, which costs £600 for a five-year period
Cllr George Savva, Enfield council’s cabinet member for licensing and regulatory services announced:-
"This licensing schemes will help protect private renters and also ensure that conscientious landlords are rewarded. There are a great many responsible landlords in the borough and schemes like this help to level the playing field.
“The Selective Licensing Scheme has been introduced in areas where evidence shows there is a large number of rented properties that have poor property conditions and standards, high level of deprivation and a significant and persistent problem caused by anti-social behaviour.”
Ikigai - What that means to me
I’ve been asked the same question over the last , well, almost 3 years since I started studying the GDL - Graduate Diploma in Law in 2018. Why are you studying something so complicated at your AGE? The reply was often a jumbled response - because I can, because I’m a life-long learner, because, because,because. It wasn’t until I actually graduated, that I realised studying, learning new skills, research was part of my DNA.
Studying the GDL and now the LPC became my way of perfecting the quasi rustic knowledge I had gained over 14 years as a trainer- advisor, in order to formalise not only what I had learnt but be trained in a very formal way. It was tough especially when the Pandemic hit and it meant that I would not see the inside of a lecture theatre for just over a year. Whilst I am a self-motivated learner, I regale in the engagement that takes place in a training room, classroom or lectures- not only is the camaraderie great, the psychological aspects assist with the learning process - bouncing ideas off one another, Q& A without interruption or tech issues, relating to lecturers who provide a much more convincing performance in person than they do online.
Demand for Rental Properties creates Bidding Wars
The only thing worse than being gazumped on a home you want to buy is being gazumped on a home you need to rent. Bidding wars may be commonplace in Britain’s frenzied sales market, but they are becoming the norm in lettings too.
The post-pandemic landscape has changed. Landlords are selling to make the most of record house prices or they have pivoted to letting their properties on a short-term basis on platforms such as Airbnb to escape taxes, regulations and make money out of the staycation boom. The result? Fewer properties available to let long-term and tenants are having to outbid each other on the monthly rent to find a place to live.
Social media is full of tales of rental heartbreak. Tracey Pearce(@elementalturtle) wrote on Twitter how she lost out on an £1,800-a-month house for which she had bid £2,000 a month after it went to a tenant who made an even higher offer. She wrote: “We were facing homelessness with four kids as our current landlord had sold our rental but the letting agent thought it was a game and got angry when I cried.”
Another Tweeter, B (@BeeSansMerci), wrote: “We put in an application on a house, landlord picked us, we were on our way to estate agents to sign and put down the deposit and in that time one of the rejected applicants offered an extra £50 a month and the estate agent gave it to them instead. Cried for days.”
There are stories of letting agents telling tenants not to bother applying unless their salary is 40 times the rent. Tenants say that letting agents have even led group viewings that ended with a bidding war in the garden.
Imogen Tew, 25, has rented in London for seven years, but she was first asked to make an offer for rent in June 2020 after the first national lockdown when she was looking to move in with her boyfriend. Tew was outbid on one property in Blackheath, southeast London, and another went to a tenant who could move in quickly, so she realised that she had to up her game.
A Level Results Day with a Difference for the Second Year Running
Today was A Level Results Day and for the second year running, exams were not how grades were decided, instead it was through the process of “Replacement Grades” that dictated the outcome for all A Level students across the UK.
Statistics showed that top grades for A-level results for England, Wales and Northern Ireland reached a record high - with 44.8% getting A* or A grades, and in Scotland the grades were slightly higher than the pre-pandemic levels. And whilst the method of “testing” may have been distinctly different pre-Covid, students have been put through their paces with constant testing. Simon Lebus, interim chairman of the exams watchdog, Ofqual, said: "We've always said outcomes from this year were likely to be different," said but he assured students they had been "fairly treated" and grades, based on teachers' judgements, could be trusted.
Whatever the challenges are for students moving from A Levels to University, it is obvious that there is no possible way to compare the last 2 years to any other.
The cohort of students will never have sat an exam in the traditional way and may have spent a great deal of time navigating their studies via Teams and Zoom; they will have developed a skill set that may be quite alien to those who studied A Levels pre-Covid. Being self sufficient and making sure that they were able to meet set deadlines without a teacher breathing down their necks. And whilst their parents, guardians and carers may have been working from home, they too would have to adapt from the transition from school to home and back again, ensuring that they understood the requirements of Covid Protocols.