An agent has won a significant victory which has major implications for all local authority licensing schemes.

Paul Brown, of Eafield & Maple estate and letting agents, challenged his local authority, Hyndburn Borough Council in Lancashire.

The challenge, heard by a residential property tribunal, was to conditions imposed by the council.

As a result of the case, three licensing conditions have been removed altogether and five have been amended to be less onerous.

Brown, who has had to seek licences for 124 landlord properties plus two of his own at £780 per licence, is now calling on other agents and landlords to make similar challenges.

Brown said: “Some councils are imposing even more onerous conditions than Hyndburn. For example, Newcastle is insisting that agents – or the licence holder – must inspect each property every month.

“But if an agent in Newcastle, like me, has 500 properties under management, how would this be possible without going to the expense of employing outside contractors?

“It is bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy – and outside what the law demands.”

Brown’s battle with his local council goes back to when Hyndburn first introduced a large selective licensing scheme.

He and other landlords successfully challenged it in the High Court on the grounds that the council had not followed protocol.

After losing the case, the council then announced the introduction of another scheme which it suggested would be done by the book.

Following its introduction, Brown applied for a licence for one of his two properties on November 30, 2012. It took, he says, until January 13 this year for the council to issue the licence.

He says that the council knew he would be challenging the conditions, which he claims is why it dragged its heels for so long.

He launched his challenge on several grounds, but notably over the requirement by Hyndburn to make landlords or their agents have electrical safety certificates.

“As responsible landlords we are not averse to this and indeed, carry out regular electrical safety checks,” said Brown. “However, nowhere in law is there a requirement for landlords to carry these out.

“The extra costs would also be significant. While waiting for my case to be heard by the tribunal, I made certain that I fulfilled all the conditions required, and paid £1,400 for electrical safety checks on my two properties. I also carried out remedial work at extra cost which was recommended but not required.”

Another challenge was to Hyndburn’s requirement for each landlord to give the council a copy of each property’s EPC certificate.

But, said Brown, EPC certificates are available for inspection online: “Yet, if a landlord or agent had failed to provide something so readily and freely available, they could have been criminalised.”

Brown says the case has important ramifications for landlords and agents in 20 or so other local authority areas including Newham – the London authority which was the first to introduce blanket licensing of all private rental properties.

One of Brown’s successful challenges was against Hyndburn’s insistence that every property should be inspected every three months. Newham insists on inspections every six months. However, the tribunal said that annual inspections were sufficient.

The Hyndburn landlords, including Brown, will now be asking for a reduction in the licence fee on the basis that with conditions removed and lightened, there will be less work for the council to do.

The council had tried to impost 15 of its own restrictions on top of the five mandatory ones in its licensing regime, so just over half have now either been removed or toned down.

Brown said: “They were just trying to introduce local byelaws on the back of a licensing scheme, that went well beyond what the Housing Act says.”