Licensing as governance: the case of the UK private rented sector

Across the UK private rented sector, an increasingly prominent regulatory instrument has emerged: registration and licensing of landlords and property. Expanding from the most risky housing – HMOs – to encompass defined geographical areas or the entire sector, registration and licensing now appear to be key tools for managing the sector. This paper analyses the different licensing regimes operating across the UK’s constituent jurisdictions against the Webbs’ assertion that, “The function of licensing … has always included three distinct forms of control: the power of selection, the power of withdrawal, and the power of imposing conditions”. We add the power of the “platform” as a further form of control through reshaping and integrating regulatory architectures. The scope for (re)configuring these forms of control makes licensing a flexible governance technology, and we explore why governments have adopted such schemes and, in doing so, have varied their design. The paper draws on data from a UK-wide qualitative study conducted in 2018-20.