There’s been a steep rise in the costs of landlord joining a compulsory licensing scheme operated by Labour-controlled Nottingham city council.

The scheme has already proved controversial because of its size (it is the largest outside of London) and because of the red tape involved in its introduction.

Now from March next year the landlords of some 32,000 properties in the city will have to pay £670 per property if they are accredited and £890 if they are not.

This is up from £480 and £890 respectively.

Landlords have already warned that the indirect cost of this will be borne by tenants faced with higher rents to cover the owners’ costs.

A council spokeswoman is quoted in the local media saying: “We are increasing fees for individual house licences. The scheme is self-funding and the council has reviewed the licensing process and found it wasn’t recovering all of the costs, so fees have to increase to reflect that – but it remains the case that we are not allowed to make a profit from licence fees.

“Over 18,000 landlords have already applied at the lower rate and we will work to engage with landlords who are not registered for the scheme – we would urge any of them to apply before the price rise at the end of March.”