RLA : RPI : Highlights of a busy year

News from the Residential Property Investor, the bi-monthly magazine for RLA members

other artilces from the May / June 2005 issue

Highlights of a busy year - May / June 2005

By Alan Ward - Presenting the RLA Annual Report 2004

First of all I want to welcome new members to our actionled landlord association. Thanks also to the many long-standing members who continue to support the RLA. This has been a landmark year, marked by the Housing Act and the peak of the buy-to-let market.

Your association has never been busier, especially on the national scene where our Parliamentary lobbying has achieved significant amendments to the new Act. The work is not yet done, with many details to be implemented.

We anticipate that this will increase demand on our help-lines due to the uncertainty that change always brings and we are gearing up our resources accordingly.

Parliamentary affairs

During the year, we had 14 formal meetings with government departments in addition to private meetings with members of both Houses. We gained six amendments to the Housing Act and were asked by government officers, together with the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Front Bench Spokesmen in the House of Lords, to draft amendments.

No other landlord association has done as well.

There now seems to be a desire to extend mandatory HMO licensing as much as possible. The Government seems also to have discovered a lack of resources and a wish to implement the legislation quickly, from October onwards, with some local authorities attempting earlier dates. This covers selective licensing in low demand areas as well as mandatory HMO licensing. A potential disaster is looming.

It is dawning on tenants’ groups that the market will respond by withdrawing from the sector, with a resulting loss of affordable HMO accommodation.

There is still uncertainty about which properties will be caught by HMO licensing, but basements and attics will be included for the purpose of working out the number of storeys.

The Management Regulations will apply to all HMOs, not just those needing to be licensed. They will be in a similar form to the present arrangements. They will not deal with antisocial behaviour, which will be dealt with by licence conditions.

Issues are arising over the levels of amenities and discrepancies between different types of accommodation, and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has agreed to further discussion.

Landlords should be aware of costs likely to be foisted on them by local authorities who can recover the full cost of setting up and running the new regulatory services. We have told the Government that it will be unfair to load good landlords with the cost of regulating the bad ones. We await developments.

The HHSRS regulations, Tenants’ Deposits Schemes and the new Disability Discrimination Act are all on-going areas in which the hardworking Parliamentary team of Richard Jones, Mark Butterworth and Chris Town continue to apply pressure.

The RLA remains affiliated to the British Property Federation where Mark Butterworth is a member of its Council. He was for many years chairman of the residential committee.

Helpline and training

Research shows that one in five members joins for our help and advice. The RLA provides an immediate source of advice on all topics with the exception of financial advice. Through its dedicated local rate (0845) advice lines, as well as email, post and fax, our advisers resolved thousands of problems.

Our training team of Dave Absalom and Demir Mustafa have presented some 20 courses during 2004, all in partnership with local authorities where our training is recognised for its quality. Our ‘exit poll’ from participants is consistently high.

RLA websites

The RLA sites are the market leaders with over 6,500 page referrals from other web pages.

Our site traffic is now in excess of 100,000 page visits monthly. The busy Forum attracted over one million views in the year and gets on average 100 posts a month, up 25 per cent in the year.

Searches across our 26 separate pages of documentation totalled over 110,000 – more than 2,000 a week. Introduction of the Suppliers Guide will further increase traffic as well as provide a valuable new resource.

See the box for details of the most popular references.

Financial services

By moving the RLA insurance scheme to RGA Group last July, members now benefit from dealing direct with the insurer, rather than a broker. With on-line quotes and payment, the service has improved considerably.

Members using the RLA insurance scheme now add over ten per cent to our revenues through commissions from RGA Group Ltd – a contribution helping us keep down subscriptions.

Towards the end of 2004 we began negotiations to improve the offers available from Paragon, our longterm mortgage partner, and re-launched this early in 2005 with a considerably enhanced range of financial products.

Magazine

At the end of 2004 the association welcomed a new team led by editor Rosalind Renshaw to produce Residential Property Investor. Rosalind is an experienced national newspaper journalist and magazine editor, specialising in property, and the first edition demonstrated the positive new direction in both design and content.

Our advertising revenue, amounting to £50,000, offset our production costs. Circulation is to members and opinion formers such as MPs and local authorities, and the magazine has a vital role to inform members and others.

Public relations

We retained two consultants: one for Parliamentary advice, Geoffrey Lawler, a former MP; the other, a general consultancy, Powell PR. We appreciate their work and achievements.

Last year over 22,000 column centimetres of positive media exposure was generated on behalf of the RLA, in major national and regional daily media, weekly titles and national and regional broadcast media, drawing attention to issues affecting our membership.

It is vitally important that the RLA is seen to get its share of voice in the continuing debate for fair treatment, and we welcome information from members for consideration as part of our PR campaign.

Membership

Membership grew last year by some 50 per cent. With marketing models in place, we plan to continue this rate of growth.

Subscriptions

We have introduced direct debit and continuous payment authority (CPA) for members who prefer to pay by credit card or renew online.

To streamline our administration, we are encouraging members to use one of these methods, and personal membership rates will remain at £75 for members paying by these means. The new subscription when paid by cheque will be £95.

The corporate rate will rise to £150. However, payment by direct debit or CPA on credit card will reduce this to £125.

In addition, access to the helpline will be increased in order to support members running more than one office.

Management

Your board has put through a new constitution at the EGM and the directors offer themselves for re-election at the AGM on April 19, 2005.

They are: Mark Butterworth; Lee Dribben; Tony Flatt; David Melen; Chris Town; and Alan Ward.

During the year, the planned acquisition of a Midland association failed to proceed through lack of disclosure of material information, and as a result the four co-opted directors resigned in February.

We also received the resignation during the year of two directors, following lengthy periods of responsibility: Nigel Howarth, who stood down as treasurer, and Martin Moylan as chairman last April.

We have appointed as paid advisers, but not directors, Robert Newey as financial adviser and Richard Jones as company secretary.

On your behalf – as members – I also record my thanks to the staff of the association, who work with such dedication to administer and deliver our services, and to my codirectors who, without remuneration, have contributed enormously.

Alan Ward, Chairman,
March 2005

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