Clive Lucas in his letter “new zones will hit mortgages”

(Sep 7) scratched the surface. Selective licensing is non-democratic, discriminatory and wrong It makes no distinction between good home providers and bad ones, or good tenants and bad ones.

It suggests anyone who rents their home is antisocial and it uses manipulated statistics.

Areas designated by the council will become ghettoes with falling property values, landlord abandonment and degeneration.

Insurers will feel threatened and increase premiums, lenders will hesitate to lend and credit may be harder to obtain.

Residents within these areas need to wake up before it’s too late and reject selective licensing urgently.

Where does the figure of a £600 licence fee per property come from? Is this not a back door tax to finance yet another quango?

Southend Council suggests this fee be passed on to tenants, but who in their right mind will wish to live in a designated antisocial area, let alone pay more for it?

I have spent years building a small business. Myself and my tenants are honest, hard-working citizens.

Antisocial behaviour should be tackled wherever it occurs, not just in designated zones.

When will this council understand that simply charging more and more money for everything will not change society’s behaviour?

Richard Higgs
Pleasant Road
Southend