September 21st, 2011 by admin
Ministers have been asked to reconsider regulating private residential landlords – but have made it clear they consider selective licensing in certain areas is the way forward.
In Parliament, Labour MP Chris Williamson accused housing ministers of allowing slum landlords to flourish.
But CLG minister Andrew Stunell made it clear that instead of regulating landlords, local councils could choose to introduce their own selective licensing schemes.
Williamson, who represents Derby North, said: “With more than one million people living in sub-standard privately rented accommodation, and with massive front-loaded cuts to council budgets making it harder to tackle slum landlords, the Housing and Local Government Minister is clearly failing in his responsibilities.
“However, as Henry Ford once said: ‘Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.’
“Will the Minister therefore adopt a more intelligent approach and abandon his laissez-faire attitude to regulation, which is creating a charter for slum landlords, by implementing the light-touch licensing system recommended by the Rugg Review, adopted by Labour and welcomed by the National Landlords Association and the Association of Residential Lettings Agents?”
The Rugg Review recommended compulsory licensing of all letting agents plus a mandatory register of all private landlords.
Stunell had earlier told another Labour MP, Graham Jones, who represents Hyndburn in Lancashire, where the local council’s bid to introduce selective licensing was overturned as being unlawful by a collective of local landlords, with RLA support, that the Government has not carried out any assessment of the effectiveness of selective licensing.
Stunell said that local authorities would be encouraged instead to carry out their own reviews.
Jones said: “The main problem with selective licensing, of course, is that it does not deal with stock condition, and we see many properties in selective licensing areas that are squalid. Can the Minister assure local communities that the Government will allow councils to include the most recent decent homes standard as a licence condition?”
Stunell replied: “Licensing conditions are matters for local authorities when they draw up their proposals.”
September 21st, 2011 by admin
Soaring tenant demand in the private sector is coming from people on benefit, says the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
The latest RICS quarterly rental survey, covering the quarter to the end of July, says that 13% of all new lets were to housing benefit tenants. The figure is up from 8% the previous quarter and is the highest since the RICS began its surveys in 1999.
Overall, new tenant demand again outpaced supply of rental property in the three months to July, as more people continued to turn to the lettings sector.
As a result of this, rents continued to increase, although the survey indicates that the pace of growth moderated slightly.
However, the imbalance between demand and supply is likely to persist, suggesting that further gains in rents are likely over the coming months.
The number of new landlords continue to edge upwards, albeit only modestly.
Surveyors report that where tenancies are coming up for renewal, some landlords – particularly those in London and the South-East – are now choosing to put their properties on the sales market, leaving fewer rental properties available.
RICS spokesman James Scott-Lee said: “The combination of strong tenant demand and a limited stock of good-quality properties on offer is pushing rents ever higher across much of the country. This is the case both for houses and flats.
“Moreover, with mortgage finance for first-time buyers likely to remain in short supply for some time to come, this imbalance is set to persist.
“The inevitable outcome is that rents will continue to increase
September 21st, 2011 by admin
News from RLA about rent direct to landlords
Nine out of ten social housing tenants want their housing benefit to continue to be paid directly to their landlord, a new study has shown.
Research from consultancy Policis found that 80% thought the Government’s proposal to pay housing benefit direct to tenants is a ‘bad idea’.
It showed that 35% of social housing tenants are not confident they would be able to keep up their rental payments.
The research, supported by the National Housing Federation, found that 71% of social housing tenants received housing benefit with almost all (92%) currently having their housing benefit paid to their landlord.
Department for Work and Pensions minister Lord Freud has now said, in a speech to the National Housing Federation’s annual conference, that the housing benefit element of the new universal credit would be paid to social landlords when tenants are in arrears.
The concession does not yet apply to private landlords, but pressure will undoubtedly be put on ministers to ensure there will be the same rules.