Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Flight and Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I may not be visible, but I rise to move Amendment 18 and speak to Amendment 27 in this group. Amendment 18 is about local authorities operating an accreditation and licensing scheme for private landlords and it would require local authorities to do it. A number already make this part of their work. In Leeds it has been particularly successful, with 332 landlords accredited, providing nearly 15,000 bed spaces. In a parallel scheme with the universities, some 20,000 bed spaces are covered by an accreditation scheme—so near enough 35,000 people are covered by such schemes. There is expense involved in running them and, in the present financial climate, it would be difficult for local authorities to progress the proposal in this amendment, unless there were government backing in the form of some funding. As I have already indicated, some funding is currently available. My own authority has benefited from it and, no doubt, others have too. Perhaps the Minister can clarify the position but I suspect that this has so far been something of an experiment to see how effective such investment might be. If these schemes are proving successful, I hope the Government will look at extending the programme elsewhere.
Amendment 27 is of a different kind. It would create a register of all private landlords and privately rented properties, to be maintained by local authorities. It simply registers where properties are so that local authorities know which properties are rented out and who the owners are. They can then use that information to inform landlords of their duties under housing legislation and under the recent, rather difficult requirements of immigration legislation, which, I suspect, is a considerable burden on landlords. It is also good property management practice.
The noble Baroness and I have not exactly crossed swords, but we have occasionally discussed the progress of the duty on owners to provide carbon monoxide alarms in their properties. I speak with some feeling about this, since my own carbon monoxide alarm has fallen down three times in the last couple of weeks and I cannot persuade it to stay in position. Better organised people no doubt can—and they certainly should when they are letting out properties. The programme that the Government launched in the summer was done without very much publicity or very much time. I understand that the Government intend to review matters only several months into the current year. If the Government —or, more specifically, local authorities—knew which were rented properties, they could direct the publicity to known landlords, rather than in general terms through the media. They could do this potentially in other contexts. It would be a very useful tool in assisting the good management of properties by responsible landlords. Otherwise, they may simply not come across the publicity around carbon monoxide or smoke alarms, for example. There is the potential here for the Government to create a situation in which councils and landlords can work together in the interests of tenants and, ultimately, landlords. It is not much use to a landlord having a property that has been exposed to fire or other damage, let alone the dreadful consequences of carbon monoxide poisoning.
I hope that the noble Baroness will look sympathetically at both these suggestions. They are designed to make sure that standards are maintained and to assist good owners to carry on responsibly the business in which they are engaged and thereby to protect their tenants. Ultimately, of course, it also protects their own property interests. It is in everybody’s interest that progress along the lines of these two amendments should be made. I beg to move.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register, and will speak to Amendment 21, whose objectives I trust will command broad support. These are, in essence, to provide practical and low-cost measures to enforce existing laws to protect tenants from criminal landlords. If measures along the lines of this proposed new clause are adopted, I also believe they would avoid the need for new regulations.
The private rented sector has already become larger than the social rented sector, and PricewaterhouseCoopers estimate that, by 2025, 25% of UK households will be private rented homes. Such large increases argue strongly for greater scrutiny of how the sector operates. One of the main reasons for a lack of effective enforcement of existing laws is that there is no clear and systemic way of identifying the landlord of a property and how they can be contacted. This needs to be readily available, if both the enforcement of existing regulations and the taxation of landlords are to be effective.
There are also a number of other government policies which will work only if there is a way of knowing how to contact landlords. For example, the Government’s right- to-rent scheme—making landlords legally responsible for checking the immigration status of their tenants—needs the name and contact details of the landlord to be readily available for the Home Office to tell a landlord if a tenant is in the country illegally.
Within the Housing and Planning Bill, how can government expect their proposed rogue landlord database to work if there is no systemic way of identifying such landlords? How can HMRC seek to claim tax for which a landlord may be liable if there is no ready way of finding him?
The case for a clear and systematic way of identifying landlords is, I suggest, compelling. A national register of landlords has been suggested as a solution to this issue. The problem is that it would be only the good landlords who readily identified themselves. What landlord, flouting his legal obligations, would voluntarily come forward to make himself known?
In 2014, a report on the regulation of private rented housing was produced by Michael Ball, professor of urban and property economics at Reading University. He noted that such registration schemes fall back on the threat of penalties for those who fail to register to try to ensure that higher numbers do so, but that such threats are unlikely to impress the worst landlords because of the more draconian penalties they would be likely to face if their poor practices were found out. They are thus unlikely to co-operate.
Ministers have claimed that the Bill already includes measures that will allow local authorities to access information held by tenancy deposit schemes to assist with the enforcement of regulation. This is certainly a welcome move to better use the data which are already available. However, councils will be expected to pay to access such information, which may deter many authorities. Also, the measure would not help local authorities find landlords who do not abide by their legal obligations as they relate to tenancy deposit schemes. Recent research has found almost 300,000 landlords still not complying with deposit protection rules.
The solution is, in essence, to ask the tenant. That is what this amendment is about. Something similar was promoted by Dame Angela Watkinson MP, in the other place. The amendment would make it compulsory for local authorities to ask tenants to provide on their council tax registration forms details of the property’s landlord or managing agent. Thus collected, the information should then assist local authorities to enforce all regulations pertaining to the private rented sector as well as support other government policies, such as the right to rent and the rogue landlords database, which require knowing where landlords can be contacted. Local authorities would also have an up-to-date picture of the size of the private rented market in their area, enabling better evidence-based policy. It could also be used as an invaluable tool to communicate with landlords.