The massive growth of the private rented sector in recent years has shone a spotlight on some of its problems. While most private rented homes provide a high-quality and flexible form of tenure, the sector faces major challenges when it comes to property conditions. When 35 per cent of the market fails to meet the ‘Decent Homes Standard’ and one in five is classified as having a serious hazard, you know there is still room for improvement.
A new report by the LGiU and the Electrical Safety Council shows that local authorities are taking note. In a survey of 178 councils of all political persuasions, nearly eight out of 10 expected to take on a more active role in relation to the PRS in future.
House Proud: how local authorities can raise standards in the private rented sector, draws on our research to make recommendations for both central and local government. It finds that red tape is currently holding councils back from ensuring minimum standards are met locally. There is no one-size-fits-all model of engagement with the PRS, but councils should be given the tools and capacity to respond to conditions in their local area.
Raising standards in the private rented sector requires a coordinated response, including: freeing councils to address local needs; supporting good landlords to champion accreditation; ensuring that enforcement activity can be effectively funded; and empowering tenants to understand their rights. However, two points in the report particularly speak to Labour’s recent policy review, Private Rented Housing: improving standards for all.
More freedom to use selective licensing. Beyond the statutory licensing of Homes of Multiple Occupation, councils can only license the PRS if there is evidence of either low demand or antisocial behaviour in the area in question: licensing cannot be linked directly to poor property conditions. Licensing won’t be the answer in every locality, but if councils are to respond to local need, the criteria for introducing licensing must be widened. With this in mind, Labour’s commitment to ‘review the conditions through which local authorities can establish a licensing scheme’ is particularly welcome.
Making better use of data. The difficulty councils find in identifying private rented properties in their local area was regular theme of our research. Without this information it is hard either to support good landlords or take enforcement action against those who fail to meet legal standards.
Labour’s policy review suggests establishing a national landlord register, which would be one way of approaching the issue, but may bring its own challenges. The worst landlords are unlikely to sign up voluntarily, so unless there is a rigorous and fully funded system of enforcement (one of the weaknesses of the current system) you could simply create a new and expensive structure that charges responsible landlords, but fails to address the underlying challenge of rooting out criminality.
Another method would be to review the existing sources of information available to government and find a reliable, standardised mechanism for identifying private rented properties without creating a new register. The Energy Performance Certificate register and data from national tenancy deposit protection schemes would be a good place to start.
As manifestos for the next general election are drawn up in the coming months, differences in housing policy will come into sharper focus at a national level. We hope our report will prompt further discussion and eventually translate into firm action from both national and local policymakers. By working together we can ensure the PRS provides our communities with the decent housing that everyone needs and deserves.
———————————————————
Lauren Lucas is policy manager at the LGiU
———————————————————
Labour’s Policy Review is a useful document.
People have to remember (1) that the private rental sector is a business for the owners of properties, not a public service; and (2) that the housing market, for many years, was a honeypot for participants (largely due to incautious lending, with over-optimistic borrowers playing their part).
The result has been that the price of houses in many areas is way above what it really ought to be.
The unwinding of this position could cause great anxiety for property owners, because of the ghastly equation: House price rises = Pension pot.
Radical remedies may exist but are hard to implement.
One which ought to be considered is the State providing index-linked annuities (i.e. inflation-proofed), including deferred ones, for pension savers. Nobody else can do this to any great extent.
If the Government can bale out the banks, I don’t see why it cannot do the same for savers. NEST is all very well, but it involves risk that some people don’t want and comes with no guarantees (other than pious hopes) as to the ultimate purchasing power of one’s savings. It is, therefore, providing a flawed product.
As a footnote to the above, let me state that infrastructure and similar spending should be able to provide the necessary haven for savers’ funds. It should not be necessary to have the inntermediation of private equity funds and all the other nonsense of today’s capital markets. It just needs politicians with integrity.
Those areas of concern do matter, but some of us are more focussed on tackling the professional criminals and getting them out of the landlord business.
New law is required to make it a crime to offer a tenancy
1) in premises that are not lawfully a dwelling
2) in premises the person making the offer is not entitled to let
Penalties must include:
1) confiscation of the criminal asset (meaning the freehold)
2) prison sentences
Trying to tackle professional criminals by enforcing the building regulations and the Planning Acts is far too slow and expensive.