A 'BEDS in sheds’ crackdown hailed as a landmark initiative to curb rogue landlords has fallen behind schedule.

Slough Borough Council’s much-publicised crackdown on dodgy outbuildings being used for accommodation 'could not deliver on its outcomes or objectives in the previous timetable’, a report has revealed.

The council planned to hit landlords with a £200-per-day fine if they did not have a valid energy performance certificate (EPC) for lived-in outbuildings – classed as 'full enforcement’.

But a change in national legislation, which removed the need of EPCs for small ancillary buildings just as the project launched, scuppered the plans. Officers resorted to using 'effective regulation’ such as referring landlords to the taxman for undeclared income or referring legal outbuildings to the valuation office so they can collect council tax.

The latest figures show since February, 38 outbuildings have been referred to the valuation office for council tax determination and banding. Eight cases have been confirmed, with two owners appealing, and another 28 require further investigation. That brings the estimated total referred to 153, the report read.

It states every outbuilding would bring in an extra £923,63 on average in council tax per year. The report also adds 613 landlords have been referred to HMRC, since the start of the project, to investigate the possibility of undeclared income.

The report is due to be heard before a neighbourhood and community services meeting from 7pm at Chalvey Community Centre, in The Green, on Thursday.

The council previously spent £24,000 sending a plane over the town, kitted out with thermal-mapping technology, which identified 6,000 possible 'beds in sheds’.