Foxtons has been ordered to pay a number of penalties over the years, but the estate agency will be hoping that company fines are a thing of the past, after teaming up with Kamma to improve their compliance.
The new partnership will give all of Foxtons’ agents access to Kamma’s compliance management and checking services, allowing their agents to stay up to date with changing regulations.
Earlier this year Kamma reported that licensing changes on average every eight days across the UK. In fact, almost 20% of all local authorities in England have at least some form of discretionary licensing scheme in place, including addition and selective.
Kamma’s data shows that 21, or over 65% of all London councils have one or more discretionary licensing schemes in place. Yet it is not always straightforward what properties are hit by certain schemes.
Complying with licensing regulations is an ongoing burden that agents must deal with to avoid fines. The fines for rogue landlords and agents have now hit £8.7m with average agent fines of £4,691 just in London, but Foxtons will be hoping that its new partnership with Kamma will help protect the business from receiving any fines moving forward.
Fran Giltinan, head of property management and customer experience at Foxtons, commented: “As the regulatory landscape continues to change, it’s essential that we stay ahead of the curve.”
“This partnership will give our agents the support they need to continue providing exceptional service to our clients while remaining compliant with the latest regulations,” she added.
It is not difficult to maintain compliance. Main fault I see is people don’t check to see if anything has changed. How often do I hear …. “I didn’t know” or put another way …… never looked or even worse, can’t be bothered.
All licensing regimes make it clear what the responsibilities are and that information is freely available. Admittable some are not that good at telling you of changes! However as licencing details are on the web, I suspect many authorities will argue, you should have looked.
Changing your liability risks to a third party only works if they are monitoring changes and taking correct action. That is very time consuming operation and how do you know if they are getting it right? They will be looking in the same place, you can readily look. If you can’t be bothered then if these companies get it wrong, you are still liable.
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