Letter: How will landlord vetting work?

Unfortunately he is too lost in his attack on Cllr Emma Wallis to bother explaining how this would work, and who would pay for it if not the landlords themselves.

Is he naïve enough to think the bad ones will volunteer their names and offer to pay?

Reading the Advertiser, the reports about CSE, and most importantly simply walking around parts of our inner town give the lie to his proposal for selective landlord licensing.

Parts are quite simply a mess — dirty, drug-infested centres for prostitution. Places where racketeer landlordism, while not the rule, is all too common.

If readers want an illustration I suggest a quick visit to parts of Eastwood, although don’t linger or go after dark.

The reality is that councils have very few tools with which to reduce criminality and clean up the rougher inner town areas.

Regulations, whether it be taxi licensing and in cab CCTV, littering bylaws, consumer protection and now private landlord registration are the few arrows they can fire.

Why does Cllr Vines want to water down something that will benefit the many in his own ward?

Maybe it is because he wants the power and influence over voting intention that Labour has traditionally monopolised by appeasing the landlords and their families.

As to why Cllr Wallis is leaving Eastwood for Rawmarsh?  

Well, probably precisely because her support for stronger taxi driver and private landlord registration has irritated the people Cllr Vines is clearly now trying to attract and who form a powerful lobby within the Eastwood Labour Party.

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