A CRACKDOWN on rogue landlords in Southampton is set to be rolled out to other areas of the city.

Thousands of shared homes in Southampton are already covered by the licensing scheme that sees landlords pay the council to assess whether they are safe and well-managed.

And the house of multiple occupation (HMO) licensing scheme is now set to be introduced to another four areas of the city amid concerns that many are being badly-managed.

Labour city council bosses first introduced the scheme to the Bevois, Bargate, Portswood and Swaythling wards in 2013 and since then there have been more than 2,500 applications for licences.

There are believed to be 4,500 shared homes in those four wards and so far 2,000 have had licences issued.

The council has also launched a crackdown on rogue landlords in the city with three successful prosecutions brought against owners so far.

One, Askar Miah, was fined £36,000 after inspectors found that one of his seven-bed homes in High Street did not have working fire alarms, while its escape routes were blocked.

A council report said that evidence showed a significant proportion of the 2,000 HMOs in Freemantle, Shirley, Bassett and Millbrook are “being managed ineffectively” and consultation on plans to introduce it to the areas received a positive response from the public although the National Landlords Association expressed concerns that some landlords may pass on the cost of the fees to their tenants.

The plans are now set to be approved at the council’s cabinet meeting on Tuesday (July 14).

To receive a licence, landlords will need to submit an application together with a fee.

In the first two months of the scheme the fee will be discounted, £240 for each HMO with three tenants, £320 for four tenants or £400 for five or more.

If approved, the scheme will be rolled out in the four wards from October 20, for five years.

Council housing chief Warwick Payne said: “One of the key things we wanted to achieve was to improve tenant safety – you are far more likely to die in a fire in an HMO than a leafy, detached house and Hampshire Fire and Rescue service have supported this.

“Most landlords in Southampton are very responsible and we welcome the properties they provide in the city.“Southampton’s property market quite simply wouldn’t function without them.

“The HMO licensing scheme aims to drive out the bad landlords from the city our encourage them to mend their ways.”

Roger Bell of South Hants branch of the Southern Landlords Association, welcomed the expansion of the scheme, saying: “The introduction of the scheme has been a good thing because what it has done is forced all landlords to realise that being a landlord is a serious business and not something which is just a pastime.

“The best thing it will do is hopefully remove those landlords from the industry who are not welcome by either professional landlords or the tenants with whom they do not have a very good relationship.”