I CANNOT understand why the letting agencies are so worried about Oxford City Council’s decision to force all landlords renting out properties to be licensed.

They say that they are worried because landlords won’t be able to get their houses up to the standard that the licensing requires before the council implements the new proposed law.

But surely any reputable agent would not have anything to do with bad landlords anyway.

Surely, all of the houses on their books are already up to standard.

I mean, surely they can’t have landlords who let out houses without fire alarms and adequate fire escapes, or without fire-proofed furniture.

Neither can they have landlords whose properties have running-damp walls with mould growing on them, where beds have stained mattresses, and the rooms inadequate heating, where curtains and upper, outside windows are not cleaned from one year to the next.

There also surely can’t be landlords who inform the tenants that the responsibility of keeping the garden tidy is in their contract and warn if it is not kept up they will lose their deposit – but then give them a handfork, trowel and a mower without a collection box to work with.

There can’t be landlords who charge exorbitant rent, but then build a basement to an already rented house, creating loads of noise and dust, yet won’t lower the rent to compensate for the disturbance the work causes to the students’ studying, and at the same time, using the tenants’ electricity without telling them, in order to use power tools for the building work.

And there can’t be landlords who take a normal family-sized house and, in order to squeeze in even more students to pay more rent, divide rooms into two with a non soundproof partition, turning them into rooms the size of a prison cell.

Surely none of the letting agents would have had anything to do with landlords like these anyway – or would they?

PAMELA WEBBER, Bullingdon Road, Oxford