A new service that provides social landlords with an online database of 'bad' tenants has been met with condemnation from tenants' groups and civil rights organisations.

Having been operation in Australia for more than 6 years, the Tenants Information Centre Association (TICA) has just launched in the UK, marking the moment by offering a free two year membership to social landlords - saving them the normal £160 annual fee.

TICA stores a database of blackmarked tenants that have previously been reported by landlords for a variety of 'offences', such as defaulting on their rent, breaking a tenancy agreement, absconding, paying with cheques that bounce, forcing the landlord to serve notice on them, bankruptcy, keeping unauthorised pets, failing property inspections, causing noise complaints or subleasing without.

Landlords are encouraged to add details to the database of any tenants, past or present, that have done such things, adding details of their name, age, date of birth and passport number to a description of what it is they have done. This database is then used by landlords to vet potential tenants before they allow them to move in to a property. Tenants are also able to use a helpline service to find out why they may have been blacklisted, but this is available at the premium rate of £1.50 per minute.

• A number of concerns have been raised by one major tenants group about the service, with the Briget Stark of the Camden Federation of Private Tenants (CFPT) highlighting the following points:
• The onus of proof is on tenants to disprove allegations made against them.
• The phoneline that allows tenants to find out if and why they have been blacklisted is excessively expensive.
• The length of time that even minor offences are held on file is too long.
• The number of possible reasons for being blacklisted is excessively lengthy.

Speaking to Property People Magazine, Roger Bingham from civil rights group Liberty, said: "This is potentially a very dangerous scheme, You have to have proper safeguards and controls to implement something like this. You need absolute transparency. TICA is open to all sorts of abuse. The implication is that you are guilty until proven innocent. In this country if a person has a court judgement against them - that information is already in the public domain."

It must be pointed out that tenants wishing to find out what information is stored about them are not compelled to use the rather costly helpline. The company, TICA (UK) ltd is registered with the Data Protection Commissioner under the 1998 Data Protection Act, which means that they are obliged to provide you with full details of the information that they have on record should you request it in writing, and also means that you can request that your records be removed from their files.

http://www.ticagroup.com/