Are you a landlord with a property located in the Stockton Borough? Would you like to know about the housing history of prospective tenants? Would you be worried to find out that prospective tenants have caused Anti Social Behaviour problems in the past?
If the answer is ‘Yes’ to any of these questions then why not join Stockton Councils Landlord Liaison Scheme? The key aim of the scheme is to enable landlords in Stockton to make informed choices when making decisions about prospective tenants. The scheme can not only identify the past three years of housing history from a prospective tenant it can also identify previous rent arrears, breach or abandonment of tenancy agreements and abandonment of property.
The free scheme is a referencing process whereby landlords can contact the team to find out any previous history of future tenants. The landlord liaison service will then check on references and working with the anti social behaviour team identify any incidents of ASB a tenant may have been involved in, within Stockton and the surrounding areas. Referencing tenants in this way will not only assist landlords by preventing problem tenants from moving freely around the Stockton Borough, but will prove a valuable tool in tackling ASB.
We would like to invite landlords to become members of the scheme; there is no charge for this service and the more landlords who use the scheme to reference their prospective tenants, the more successful the scheme will be! To date we have 408 members in the scheme, some members have one property and some have hundreds! From January – March 2011 we have already dealt with 986 references, and that’s 200 more than in the same period last year - a great way of clamping down on anti social behaviour!
Why not contact Jane Hodgson or Stuart Kell in the Landlord Liaison team on 527620 or landlordliaison@stockton.gov.uk to request a membership form. Don’t let your property become a hub for anti social behaviour!