PRIVATE landlords will be able to vet potential tenants thanks to a new council scheme.

The Tenant Management Scheme involves Middlesbrough Borough Council working with landlords and tenants in the private sector to set up a bank of references.

Landlords will be able to consult the bank for a small fee to check how a prospective tenant behaved in a previous tenancy.

More than 90 landlords, covering 600 properties in Middlesbrough, have already expressed interest in the scheme.

Landlords taking part will tell tenants that a reference on them will be supplied to the register and shared with other housing providers in the town.

It is hoped that the scheme, funded by the Single Regeneration Budget Streets Ahead project, will cut down on nuisance tenants.

Project worker Carolyn Crean will administer the scheme and will also represent private landlords at nuisance meetings involving the police and the council.

She will also help to set up community agreements between landlords and residents to ensure neighbourhoods are kept quiet and clean.

Council spokeswoman Marilyn Davies said: "Agreements can be specific and ask every resident to sign up to certain rules.

"We are not out to deliberately exclude tenants, just ensure that they are aware of and abide by the rules that have been established by other residents in the street.

"The aim is to make life easier for landlords, tenants and other local residents, to remind them that they have mutual obligations to each other and the general wellbeing of the community in which they live.

"We expect the schemes to reduce the number of minor complaints of nuisance and harassment."