I refer to your report on the proposal by Enfield Borough Council to license the landlords of some 27,000 privately-rented properties in the borough (‘Landlords on the attack’, Enfield Independent, May 7). I would like to expand on this.

The proposal is, in my view, one of the most ill-thought-out to see the light of day in my 28 years experience on Enfield Council. It relies on legislation passed by the Labour Government in 2004, and was one of their failed solutions to anti-social behaviour (ASB).

I say ‘failed’ because in nine years only 14 councils in the country have used the powers at all, and only one in London, Newham, on which Enfield Labour seem to have based their proposal, which introduced a borough-wide scheme in January 2013. In Scotland, where a national scheme has been running for six years, 25 per cent of landlords, almost certainly the “bad” ones, remain unlicensed.

The theory of Labour’s proposal is their entirely fallacious and arrogant, not to say dangerous assumption that ASB is rife in the private-rented sector throughout the borough, an assertion which their own report flatly contradicts. As I told the committee, it is dangerous because it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, since if you dumb down the reputation of the borough as a hotbed for ASB, beware what you wish for.

Enfield is on the whole relatively free of real ASB when compared with the likes of Newham, Brent, Barking and Dagenham and Waltham Forest, all mentioned in Labour’s cabinet report to support the argument for introducing the scheme in Enfield, but to make those comparisons is highly irresponsible. I suggest it is also a grave insult to the vast majority of our hard-working, law-abiding residents.

ASB sadly occurs across all housing tenures, including owner occupation, and the notion that it can be significantly reduced or eradicated by introducing a borough-wide licensing scheme flies in the face of common sense and reason, and is not supported by their own independent research.

Everyone needs decent housing, and poorly managed and/or overcrowded housing, whether in the private or public sectors, is quite simply unacceptable. The notion, however, that licensing landlords will achieve that goal or that it is a panacea for ASB is frankly nonsense, because licensing of itself doesn’t improve bad housing – like turkeys, bad landlords do not jump the queue to register – and moreover, there is no proven link between bad housing and ASB. On the contrary, ASB occurs across all forms of housing tenure, and is often the result of cheaply available drink and drugs.

So we have Labour’s revenue raising (£500 per property, yielding £10million over five years) and hugely bureaucratic experiment that will deliver little benefit, while actually adding to costs and inevitably lead to higher rents across the sector.

If Labour are really concerned, as they should be, to get on top of the minority of bad landlords, why have they not used their extensive powers to do so which do not depend on a licensing scheme. Targeted and rigorous enforcement is the right answer to bad landlords, not Labour’s age old remedy – tarring all landlords with the same discriminating brush, and in doing so driving good landlords away from the area, leaving even more tenants without decent homes.

Cllr Terry Neville OBE JP

Conservative lead for finance

Con/Grange ward, Enfield Borough Council