House prices have been climbing sharply and outstripping growth in earnings – clearly buying a home is no longer an option for many people.  Low and average earners are turning to renting, but supply is not keeping up with demand. More people are looking for properties with less choice available, which in some cases may lead to people taking what they can get whether that is poor quality accommodation, just because they can afford the rent.  In these circumstances it feels like tenants have little choice and few protections.

A Private Members’ Bill aimed at giving tenants in the private rented sector greater protections is currently going through Parliament. The Renters Rights Bill put forward by the Democrats proposes some key changes to law it wants to make renting cheaper, safer and more secure for tenants.

What proposals are made?

The Governments Housing and Planning Act looked at agent fees and decided that transparency of fees would give consumers  greater choice and fairness – it requires all agents  to publicise a full tariff. This Bill goes further wanting to reduce the costs of moving for renters by banning letting agents charging fees to tenants. 

This is a hot topic amongst tenants, especially those in the Capital as the fees charged by Letting Agents can vary wildly and add up to staggering amounts when you take into account; referencing fees, administration fees, inventory fees.

Letting agents have some genuine costs in moving tenants into a property, but the appropriate payer of these costs is the landlord, not the tenant. It is the landlord who is the client, and most of the fees charged to tenants would be costs landlords would expect already to be covered in the amount they pay the agent.  However, there has been some argument that removing the fees would not see a reduction in payments as agents would simply seek to recover the costs in higher rents.

More information can be found here.

Mandatory Electrical Safety checks

At present landlords have a legal obligation to ensure that the electrical installation in a rented property is safe when tenants move in and maintained in a safe condition throughout its duration. There is no requirement for safety checks to be completed, although this is the only way to be CERTAIN that the property is free from electrical hazards and DASH already requires it's accredited Landlords to complete electrical safety inspections.

Access to the rogue landlord database for tenants

The Government have helped tenants by introducing legislation on rogue landlords in the Housing and Planning Act 2016, but they stopped short of giving real power to tenants through information so that tenants know who those rogue landlords are. The rogue Landlord database is not currently up and running, but current law only allows Local Authorities to access it. The Renters Rights Bill proposes allowing tenants to access the list, which could help them avoid rogue Landlords and Agents but the database would need to be managed effectively to ensure landlords and agents are not unnecessarily stigmatised. 

Prevention of rogue landlords from obtaining an HMO license.

Being a landlord is a responsibility in itself, but being an HMO Landlord is a much bigger deal and so preventing identified rogue landlords from managing HMO's is a good idea, as long as the database is managed effectively as discussed above.

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