I was perplexed with the letter by Ngaire Sharples (Your say, April 8) on landlord licences who cites that it is not a lot of money because it is a buy-to-let business.

Do they know the cost of renting before they make such wild claims?

Most people do not understand how much cost landlords have to incur, and additional burdens such as the licence scheme will only make it worse.

People also do not recognise the fact that majority of the problems of antisocial behaviour comes from the council tenants.

The majority of my tenants are social tenants from the council, and some of them do create trouble, some are very good.

As such, the council’s ill thought scheme defeats the purpose if the council keeps housing problematic tenants in private rented property, and expect landlords to pay for a scheme.

In reality, the landlords should charge the council a licence fee for renting out to social tenants to cover the cost of problems some create. In my experience, the majority of social tenants are good and create no problems.

I agree with Arif Mohuddin’s views, and there is no doubt rents will increase as a result of this scheme, and I for one will pass on all the cost of the scheme to the council and my tenants.

All that the council has done is increase their social housing costs on the fallacy that the scheme will generate extra revenue because landlords will pass any extra cost back as rent increases.

We have seen this happen in Newham.

Pity the council does not have the vision or the desire to see the bigger picture.

ASHEN LI
Address not supplied