Baroness Grender
Main Page: Baroness Grender (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Housing and Planning Bill
Baroness Grender Excerpts
Baroness Grender
“( ) A banning order must specify how many tenants are thought to be affected by the banning order and what arrangements will be put in place to mitigate against those tenants becoming homeless.( ) A banning order must specify that a local authority has given due consideration to issuing a management order to ensure existing tenancies are continued, wherever possible.”
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, these Benches welcome moves in this Bill to deal with rogue landlords, but this amendment deals with what I believe to be a possible unintended consequence which I think the Government and the Committee should consider.
When a landlord is banned what happens to any existing tenants of that landlord? This Bill lacks clarity in this situation. In Clause 16(4)(a) the implication is that existing tenancies will normally need to be brought to an immediate end with the following wording:
“A banning order may… contain exceptions—
to deal with cases where there are existing tenancies and the landlord does not have the power to bring them to an immediate end”.
On the face of the Bill, this seems to suggest that the preferred route in these circumstances would be an immediate end to all other tenancies. The danger here is clear. An immediate end to a tenancy of someone already in the precarious situation of renting from a rogue landlord means for many the threat—or maybe the reality—of homelessness or rooflessness. My amendment tries to provide a safety net for any tenants who will be in danger of becoming homeless as a result of a ban.
We also need to assume, in a worst case scenario, that the banned landlord has two options. First, he could transfer property to another party. In spite of the list of exceptions in Clause 26, let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the address book of this rogue landlord is not littered with responsible social landlord friends and acquaintances to whom he wishes immediately to transfer his property. The second option is immediate eviction and a quick sale of the property.
This brings me to the tenant. If they are living in appalling conditions, with a bad landlord, but know and understand that their complaint will result in eviction, will their fear of this outcome reduce their likelihood of making use of this welcome change in the law? Will local authorities in turn worry that to ban a landlord will result in more people being accepted as unintentionally homeless on their books? Is there a danger that these tenants will be classified by local authorities as intentionally homeless because of mandatory possession under Section 8 of the Housing Act 1988? The risk of that increases with buy-to-let mortgages when landlords get Section 8s in situations of mortgage arrears and repossessions.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank the noble Lord, not for letting me off the hook but for deferring the hook. I will write to him about that. I request that the noble Baroness withdraws the amendment at this stage.
Baroness Grender
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this discussion and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for his support for continuing to examine this area. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, who raised property transfer and the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Greaves, for commenting on where the resource goes, about which we have already had much discussion. The Minister said that we would find some answers and reassurance for tenants in Schedule 3. We will continue to scrutinise this issue to make sure that there is absolutely no threat of a tenant being made homeless as a result of the activities of a dreadful rogue landlord. That is the main aim of this amendment and we will continue to review that as the Bill progresses. However, at this point, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.