Renters' Rights Bill (Second sitting) Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
David Simmonds
Main Page: David Simmonds (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)Department Debates - View all David Simmonds's debates with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Renters' Rights Bill (Second sitting)
David Simmonds ExcerptsTuesday 22nd October 2024
(2 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Renters' Rights Bill 2024-26 View all Renters' Rights Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 22 October 2024 - (22 Oct 2024)
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
Q
Justin Bates KC: Obviously, the best people to ask about the FTT’s resources and whether it is ready will be the FTT staff, the president and so on. I simply note that Parliament has given the first-tier tribunal a lot of new powers over the last few years, and I am sure it would welcome additional funding to enforce all these things. My impression, as a practising barrister, is that the FTT works better than the county court system; my experience is that it is generally faster and more responsive. But you are giving it a lot of new work to do, and I am sure it would be grateful for any money you can send its way.
Giles Peaker: The ombudsman would have to answer the question on the ombudsman. My impression is that the ombudsman—the social housing ombudsman as it is—is currently receiving a lot of complaints and there is some impact on the timescale in which they deal with matters. Clearly, if there were an extension or a new ombudsman, the resourcing of that would have to be looked at. I do not think any of us could say that the county courts are not under strain at present—they are, across the board. How much of an increased workload there would actually be as a result of the Bill, though, is more of an open question.
Liz Davies KC: I just add, in respect of the county court, that part of the problem with litigation at the moment is litigants in person. There are new rights in the Bill that tenants will want to rely on. Housing legal aid is in crisis, there are what are called housing deserts across the country, and frankly, it is more efficient for tenants to be able to receive early legal advice so that they know whether there is or is not a point to take to the county court. I suppose one message to you, although it is beyond your remit, would be to try to increase legal aid as well. It would make litigation more efficient.
David Simmonds
Q
Liz Davies KC: I am concerned about mandatory grounds 1 and 1A. Clearly, they bring an end to no-reason evictions, with the end of section 21, but they are still no-fault evictions as far as the tenant is concerned. It is helpful that the period will be one year and that there is four months’ notice, rather than the two months’ notice in the previous version of this Bill, the Renters (Reform) Bill. But I am concerned that the balance is not right.
Mainly, I am concerned about the idea of a court being faced with mandatory grounds when the tenant has done nothing wrong, and there may be incredibly compelling circumstances about the tenant but the court cannot look at them; it has absolutely no remit and no jurisdiction. So the tenant might say—I am sorry to have to say this—“Myself or a member of the household has a very serious terminal illness. To ask me to move within four weeks or two weeks, or what have you, is going to have an appalling effect on that.” They might say, “We have a very severe disability and so it will take us longer than other people to find somewhere to live.”
My preference would be to make all grounds discretionary, because I think that does provide the balance. But even if Parliament were to reject that view, it seems to me that courts ought to have the opportunity, in exceptional circumstances, to look at the tenant circumstances and to either reject a possession order, or have the flexibility to make a possession order that is suspended for a certain period of time—postponed for a certain period of time. It seems to me wrong in principle that a court cannot consider any circumstances of the tenant, whatever they are. That is my concern on 1 and 1A, and I think Justin will speak about 6A.
Justin Bates KC: Can I ask you to also look very carefully at ground 6A when it comes to scrutiny? Ground 6A is the new ground for possession, where the landlord needs possession, because they are on the banned landlord database or because they are operating an overcrowded house in multiple occupation—the landlord is effectively a criminal landlord and needs possession to deal with the consequences of their criminality. Presently, that is a mandatory ground for possession. I understand why, because I can see that there is a difficulty with one arm of the state saying, “You are breaking the law and you will keep breaking the law if we don’t act, and we won’t allow you to get people out.”
Can I flag two concerns? First, there is a concern among those in frontline tenant services that it will act as a disincentive to people reporting their rogue landlords, because if you report your rogue landlord to the local authority and it then puts them on the banning order list, you face a mandatory ground for possession.
Secondly, it strikes me as odd that a tenant who has done nothing wrong—save had the misfortune to have a criminal landlord—is required to move with no compensation and no provision of suitable alternative accommodation and so on. I can understand why we need 6A. I understand that we do not want to leave people committing crimes because a judge will not give a possession order, but it strikes me that you could look at some sort of compensation scheme. If you were minded to do so, the model is section 34 of the Housing Act 2004, which already gives the tribunal the power to order compensation when people have to leave because of prohibition orders. You could steal lots of the language from section 34, put it into ground 6A, and you would have much less scope for the unfairness that seems to me to be evident.
Giles Peaker: On the broader question of whether a balance is struck, I think it is a political decision as to where the balance falls, but broadly there is one. I do have specific concerns about 1 and 1A, as well as those raised by Liz, which are in terms of the evidencing of a mandatory ground. If the ground is the landlord wants to sell, or the landlord wants to move in or move in a family member, what standard of evidence is required for them to demonstrate that? In terms of the current wording, it would probably be enough to simply express an intention to do so. My sense is that there needs to be at least a level of formality—a signed declaration of truth on a statement or a particulars claim signed by the landlord—in terms of bringing possession proceedings on the back of that.
But there is also what follows on from that, and I think this issue has come up in Scotland, where there is a similar sort of provision. If a landlord re-lets a property within the 12 months proposed, the potential enforcement is great: it is a criminal breach, with a prospective civil penalty, and a prospective rent repayment order application by the former tenants. That is all great. The question is how you get from the possession order being made to action on the breach. As it stands, it appears that the only way in which that could possibly happen is if the ex-tenants realise that the property has been re-let—heaven knows how, and heaven knows where they will be in the country by that point—and then notify the local authority, which can take enforcement action. It strikes me that there should be some kind of recording that that ground has been used—a landlord database might be a place for that. The local authority can be aware that that ground has been used, and if it becomes aware of a re-letting, the full enforcement apparatus can kick in.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
Q
Could I ask you to draw out a bit further how you expect this to work? In a sense, when we talk about discretionary grounds, we are always told, “Let’s trust judges”—that was certainly the case with the previous Bill. In a sense, what we intend to do here is trust judges’ judgment on whether those grounds have been used appropriately, and we would expect the type of evidence that they look at to include things like a letter instructing solicitors or an affidavit. But do you not expect the courts to operate in that way on the basis of the Bill? Do you expect them to act in a more light-touch way, as you have suggested? It is not usual practice for Governments to force the courts to consider certain types of evidence, and if that is the case—if you accept that—where do we go to try to influence the courts to look at certain categories of evidence, to ensure that these grounds are being used appropriately?
Giles Peaker: In terms of how you can specify things, to some degree, it is a question of wording. Grounds 1 and 1A are expressed as an intention, and if the intention is there, the ground is made out. If a landlord has written to the court to say, “I intend to sell”, it seems quite difficult for the court to go behind that, unless the tenant has evidence to the contrary. So partly it is around language. Intention—settled intention—needs looking at. But with different wording, a different evidential requirement may well follow—so potentially, as you say, the landlord would have to evidence engagement with an estate agent or a solicitor on a sale, or would need evidence from the relative who was intending to move in, to the same effect.
The Chair
Order. I am going to stop you there, because this is an opportunity for Committee members to ask questions of the people who have come along as witnesses. We have limited time and once we start opening up a debate with other Committee members, it will be at the expense of being able to hear what we hope is, and is likely to be, very valuable evidence. If you have a question for any of the members of the panel, I shall be happy to take it, but if not, I suggest that you have your arguments with other Members when we get into full line-by-line consideration, when there will be plenty of opportunity for you to intervene on another Member with whom you disagree.
David Simmonds
Q
I know there is some pressure around issues such as tenants with pets and making sure that they have a right to occupy. A landlord may discover that the cost of insurance is significantly higher because of the pet or because of some other circumstance relating to the tenant —for example, they might have a poor credit history and are therefore not insurable for failing to pay the rent via the landlord’s normal insurance company. I am interested in how you see the Bill dealing with that issue and ensuring that tenants are not effectively barred from applying to rent particular properties because of those insurance issues and also that landlords do not find that the insurance they must have is so expensive as to effectively make their business as a landlord impossible.
Giles Peaker: My understanding was that the tenant could be required to have pet insurance. It is a permitted payment.
Liz Davies KC: Or the landlord has the insurance and the tenant refunds them. You have made a broader point, but just looking at clause 11 on pet insurance, the tenant will refund the landlord, so it becomes an exempted permitted payment under the Tenant Fees Act 2019. On the cost of insurance, I am sorry, but that is certainly beyond my legal expertise.
Giles Peaker: In terms of that situation, it is hard to see an impact on building or contents insurance. For insurance for unpaid rent, you would have to ask the insurers, but my immediate sense would be to ask why it would be different from now, when the tenant will face possession proceedings for rent arrears if the rent is not paid. But that would have to be one for the insurers.
David Simmonds
Q
Giles Peaker: Deposits are already capped.
Justin Bates KC: You cannot do it through deposits, because paragraph 2 of schedule 1 to the Tenant Fees Act 2019 will stop you doing that. You can presently do it through rent in advance, because the Bill does not prevent that, although I query whether it should. You could not do it by increasing the rent above market value, but you cannot do that anyway because section 13 as it stands would kick in.
Liz Davies KC: Is Giles’s point not right that this is a current problem in any event? Sorry to be asking you questions, but he is suggesting that it is alleviated because of the mechanism of section 21.
David Simmonds
Q
Liz Davies KC: So it is the rent-in-advance point. We would have to look at what the Bill says about guarantors. I am sure the Minister knows, but that would be the answer—something around advance rent or guarantors. It negates the point earlier, I accept that. This needs some thought.
Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)
Q
Liz Davies KC: The fact that landlords are required to be registered will raise the bar for good landlords. We do not yet know what information should be on the database. I cannot remember whether it is in the Bill or the explanatory notes, but it is assumed that any enforcement action or rent repayment orders they have had to make—anything that affects their quality as a landlord—will be there. That must raise the bar and set a minimum standard for landlords, which we currently do not have. Tenants, frequently those at the bottom of the market, are then subject to the consequences and disadvantages of that, so having that bar is really important.
The other thing is that making the information, when we know what it is, publicly available is extremely important because it holds landlords to account. Finally, it also affects the local authority’s ability to bring the various enforcement measures they have under both the Housing Act 2004 and the Bill.
Justin Bates KC: I did not hear Ben Beadle’s evidence this morning, but if you get the right details on the database—so that it is a publicly searchable database that shows you whether your landlord has done anything in a list of prohibited things and so that it has details about the safety of the building, for example whether the gas safety certificate has been uploaded or not—I would have thought that he and the NRLA would have been crying out for something like the landlord database. It gives them what they have always wanted: a way of differentiating the good landlord from the bad landlord and a simple way for a tenant to identify the good landlord and the bad landlord. If I put your name in and it comes up on the database that you are subject to a banning order, I probably should not rent from you. If I put the property address in and discover a prohibition order—those are registered on the database—I probably should not live there. That is what you should be able to do if you can get the database to work properly.
The way you have done it, for obvious reasons, it is all at the level of principle. The critical information is what you will do in secondary legislation about what is accessible. But if you get the database right, you go a really long way towards helping tenants to make informed decisions and helping good landlords to drive bad landlords out.
The Chair
Welcome; please introduce yourself.
Judicaelle Hammond: I am Judicaelle Hammond, director of policy and advice at the Country Land and Business Association. We represent 26,000 members in England and Wales who own and run land-based properties. We estimate that our members account for about a third of properties in the rural private rented sector.
David Simmonds
Q
Judicaelle Hammond: Unfortunately I do not think the Bill is going to make it much better in the sense that the main issue is the availability of housing full stop, and particularly the availability of affordable housing. Our members are doing a great deal already to provide that. We reckon that 23% of our members’ properties are let out at less than 80% of market rates, but at the end of the day there probably is not enough to go round and therefore we see the changes to the planning sector as the key. What the Bill might do, particularly with the demise of section 21, is to make it more difficult for people to enter or want to stay in the private rented sector, which is an issue. Again, as I said, it is by no means the only issue. I think the real key is supply.
David Simmonds
Q
Judicaelle Hammond: Yes. The main issue is the ability of the courts to deal with the extra cases that might be coming their way. One of the solutions, perhaps, is to look at some of the mandatory grounds and make them paper-based. That might improve things.
In terms of section 21, I should make it clear that among our membership the average time that the tenancy lasts is 7.5 years, which is nearly twice as long as the national average. Our members are responsible landlords; many of them will have had tenants who have been there for decades. We are not in the business of evictions or fast turnaround. We are not using section 21 very much, but when it has been used—it has included, for example, issues about antisocial behaviours—we have had some horror stories of members waiting for 12 to 18 months to get their properties back.
Without section 21, in the courts I think it takes at the moment 24 weeks from application for possession to actual possession, and some members are taking far longer than that with county courts that have closed. Digitisation might be a good thing, but how long will that take? There is an issue for us about reducing, unwittingly perhaps, the supply of private rented sector properties in rural areas as a result of the Bill.
David Simmonds
Q
Judicaelle Hammond: We are grateful to the Government for the new ground 5A, which deals with incoming agricultural workers. That will help—no question about that. And we are grateful for the new ground 5C, which is a ground to get property back because a job has ended, where the property was limited to the employment.
There are a couple of other grounds that are not covered at the moment and would be needed for rural businesses. The vast majority of rural businesses are not linked to farming or agriculture, but there might still be times when—we hear this from our members all the time—the provision of accommodation is necessary to attract or retain people, particularly when there is nothing else around. They could be in a really remote rural area or it could be because, for example, the person in that job needs to be on call, which would apply to security, caretakers or vets. Or it could be for people working antisocial hours in hospitality, for example, or at a wedding venue, where there is no longer public transport available at the time they are meant to finish or they need to start really early to set up before the wave of tourists come—and so on.
Increasing and expanding ground 5A to include service occupancies in very defined circumstances would be really helpful. To avoid abuse, there are definitions of what that could cover in other legislation that could be referred to. That is the main ground.
The second ground that is needed for agricultural workers is a new ground for what is known as suitable alternative accommodation. Some categories of agricultural workers have protected tenancies under existing legislation—the Rent (Agriculture) Act 1976—and assured agricultural occupants are also protected under the Housing Act 1988. For example, you might have a retired dairyman or indeed their widow who is still in the main dairy. You need to recruit somebody to replace that dairyman. If you have more than one property, it would be useful to have a ground to get it back, in order to then move the retired dairyman or the widow in that property. Obviously, if you have only one property, it is game over, but in the case that you have a small portfolio, it would be really useful to have that, because you have a legal obligation to rehome that person but you need the property in which they currently are.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Judicaelle Hammond: Yes, sure. I think it needs updating because it was designed for problems in the social sector. It might or might not be applicable to the private rented sector. It also does not deal very well with older properties, which is the vast bulk of what our members have. To judge the private rented sector against the decent homes standard as it currently is would be, I think, misleading, and it would have all sorts of unintended consequences. For example, in small cottages in rural areas, there are typically very small kitchens and so on. They would not necessarily fit, and it would destroy the character if you were to change that—
The Chair
Straighten your ties, because we are now going to be on Zoom. We have until 3.20 pm. Please can you introduce yourself?
Anna Evans: I am Anna Evans, director of Indigo House. We are a housing consultancy based in Scotland, but we cover the UK in terms of affordable housing research and consultancy.
David Simmonds
Q
Anna Evans: I am here as an expert on the Scottish private rented tenancy and the reforms that have happened in Scotland, so I do not think I could necessarily answer the question about what the Bill could do. So far, the legislation in Scotland, through the private residential tenancy, has failed to address anything on affordability. It brought in rent adjudication and what were called rent pressure zones, which local authorities had the power to determine. Those failed due to a lack of data, and the rent adjudication system has been effective for only about 230 tenants out of the 300,000-odd households in the private rented sector. The Scottish Government are looking to address that through the current Housing (Scotland) Bill, rent regulation and rent control, but to date, the legislation has done nothing for affordability.
David Simmonds
Q
Anna Evans: We have not examined that particular question, but in terms of supply, new build in the private rented sector in Scotland has probably stabilised rather than grown. Most of the growth in the private rented sector has been through the existing stock, and of course, there is growth in purpose-built student accommodation. There has not been a huge amount of new build and regeneration in the private rented sector, certainly over the last five years, but I do not think you could necessarily attribute that lack of growth solely to new tenancy. A huge number of other things have been happening in regulation in Scotland, and there is obviously the wider tax regime, too.
David Simmonds
Q
Anna Evans: For tenants, the positives are a new foundation of rights and there should be more legal security. Tenants in Scotland enjoy open-ended tenancy and specific grounds for eviction, and there are longer notice periods. It is gradually moving to more of a contractual, rather than a subjective, relationship.
I should say, though, that there are very considerable differences in satisfaction between the general population of private rented tenants and the lower end, where lower income tenants or those who are more vulnerable are still disadvantaged. That is because of the overriding demand-supply imbalance. There is a fear among tenants about challenging, if they know that there are very few affordable alternatives on the market.
For landlords, I would say that they are generally settled with the private residential tenancy now—it has been in place for over five years, and they can see the consistency in practice and greater clarity in rights and responsibilities. Clearly, it is less flexible, but the difficulties that landlords have in Scotland are to do with subsequent legislation, and in particular, rent control.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Anna Evans: Yes.
The Chair
The acoustics in this room are notoriously bad, so it would help us all if you were able to keep your voice up, please.
Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed: I will do.
David Simmonds
Q
Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed: I agree with that exemption. Purpose-built student accommodation exists for a very specific purpose. Therefore, operators of that kind of accommodation need to ensure that they are renting only to tenants—they need to have the means to regain possession. Often, they have planning obligations linked to the fact that they should only house students in that type of housing, so if they had a situation where students were able to stay for an indefinite period, they might start to have non-students living in the accommodation, which would be problematic for the ongoing management of the property.
David Simmonds
Q
Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed: Yes, that is problematic. Every year, about 700,000 students live in the kind of housing that you describe, which I will call off-street housing. I hope everybody knows what I mean by that: a shared student house or flat that is not in purpose-built accommodation. About 700,000 students rely on that type of housing every year. It is more affordable, and it is available when students need it, which is at the start of their academic cycle. We are concerned about the potential loss of that housing, and we are concerned that because of elements of the Bill, it could become more expensive over time. It is an affordable part of the student housing sector at the moment. Rents are generally much lower than for other types of student housing—about £130 a week, on average—so it supports students with lower budgets to live at university in a more affordable way. We are concerned about the loss of that type of housing.
David Simmonds
Q
Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed: In principle, I support the idea that landlords who are part of some sort of accreditation or recognised scheme should have an exemption for their accommodation in the same way as PBSA does. There are other ways of doing that. We at Unipol submitted some evidence with a suggestion that there should be a student tenancy for use in the off-street housing sector, which offers a fixed term with some other elements to it that would be very advantageous to students. Student housing is niche—it is very specific and has a very specific function—and certain practices and elements in there we think need special attention.
A fixed-term tenancy for students would allow landlords to regain possession but provide the security of a fixed term to students, as well as benefits to them that speak to their specific needs. For example, people should not be able to use guarantors for students—that is restrictive and difficult for students from low-income backgrounds —and students should be able to give notice in certain circumstances, such as if they have left their course. If they are no longer at university, it would be very handy if they could give two months’ notice and that is that. We think that would be right.
We also think that there is a real problem of early renting in the world of student housing—students who might need a tenancy from July end up renting places in September and October, because of pressure in the market. There is a shortage of student housing, and that is a real issue, so students rent earlier and earlier to get ahead of the market. We think that a cooling-off period should be attached to a student tenancy.
Those are real pressures and difficulties that students experience, so we think that they need special treatment in the Bill. As I said, there are 700,000 students, which is not an inconsiderable number. They should have special treatment.
The Chair
And Suzannah Young, who is joining us on Zoom.
Suzannah Young: Thank you, Chair. I am Suzannah Young, a policy officer at the National Housing Federation. We represent housing associations in England—social landlords providing 2.7 million homes to 6 million people. I will say a word about housing associations, if I may, because the Bill will have implications for them, as they offer assured tenancies. As they are not for profit, housing associations invest any income back into the development and maintenance of homes and into supporting residents and communities. They seek to provide tenants with long-term stability and security of tenure in good-quality, safe and affordable homes. We are a sector that has always offered assured tenancies and lower rents, and that delivers housing types unlikely to be found in the private rented sector, including three quarters of supported housing for people on low incomes with care and support needs. We therefore support the Bill’s aims to give greater rights and protections to renters.
David Simmonds
Q
Melanie Leech: Shall I kick off? Thank you for the question. The first thing to say is that we support the aims of the Bill and the drive to raise standards in the private rented sector. In particular, I would highlight measures such as the compulsory ombudsman—of course, many institutional landlords are already voluntarily members of the housing ombudsman service—along with the landlord database, which we have been calling for since 2008, the application of the decent homes standards and Awaab’s law to the sector, and recognition of the particular nature of the purpose-built student accommodation sector, which of course you have just been talking about.
Our major concern with the Bill is that the courts will not be ready for the abolition of section 21. A cross-party consensus that a better functioning court system is an essential part of the reforms has been a significant factor in maintaining landlord support for rental reform. Its importance has consistently been recognised in the political debate—by the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government in the last Parliament, which looked at the previous Government’s reforms, and by the Mayor of London in his work on a London model. However, despite serious discussions starting on rental reform in 2017, we have made almost no progress on court reform, which leaves landlords with little confidence that sufficient improvements will be made to make these reforms work well. That, of course, should be the objective: not just to pass these reforms, but to ensure they work well for both landlords and tenants.
One way of improving the court process is to digitalise both the process and the interface with claimants and defendants. We are really pleased that the Housing Minister is committed to continuing with the digitalisation project, but that is not going to deliver improvements any time soon. We are therefore heartened to hear the Housing Minister also talking about additional resource. This is essential because with section 21 gone, the courts will need to consider and process possession cases under section 8. Government data suggests that it currently takes just over seven months to process section 8 possession cases, including cases related to antisocial behaviour and rent arrears. It is worth stressing that that is an average. It is not uncommon to hear of cases taking more than a year.
There is also a huge shortage of court bailiffs in parts of the country. For example, in some London boroughs it can take five months to secure the services of a court bailiff, even when your claim has been vindicated. That also, of course, has consequences for people who cannot access those homes that would be freed up, for example in cases of poor behaviour and rent arrears.
While we recognise that improving the courts will not be a precondition of section 21 ending, at the very least we can call on the Government to outline what the justice system being ready means, both for tenants and responsible landlords; to commit to bringing waiting times down when it comes to the courts considering and processing legitimate possession cases; to ensure that the courts have clear and commonly agreed key performance indicators, which the Select Committee in the last Parliament recommended; and to improve staffing of the courts and tribunals, including recruiting more bailiffs.
We would also urge this Committee to scrutinise that aspect of the Bill in detail, and to consider calling for evidence from the Ministry of Justice—so far as we are aware, we have never actually heard directly from the Ministry of Justice, which is best placed to explain what procedures will be in place to make sure the courts are strengthened to deal with these cases—and to ask what progress is being made on digitalisation. We urge the Committee to scrutinise the justice impact test shared between the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Ministry of Justice—which will contain the projections on which the impact for this part of the Bill is based—so that we can all see that those have been properly scrutinised and that the court reforms that we need can be delivered.
Timothy Douglas: At Propertymark, we recognise that there is an ongoing cost of living crisis and there is huge demand for private rented property. We also recognise the manifesto commitments from this Government and the other parties to the changes contained in the legislation. We certainly acknowledge a drive towards improved standards, but we all have to recognise the unintended consequences and the impact of the changes on landlords, agents and the supply of property.
Certainly, our members are left wondering how this Bill will help to meet the huge demand for private rented property. Our data shows that on average there are almost 10 new applicants registered for each available property. One member in the west midlands, who has 13 offices across the region, has seen their lets—the number of properties—reduced from 5,348 to 5,006 since the start of the year, so we cannot underestimate the incentives for landlords or the investor appetite. These are significant changes. As has been said, we must get a commitment to reform the courts, the grounds have to be robust, and we must see enforcement of the existing rules by local authorities, never mind the raft of additional heavy-handed measures included in this legislation. We must retain fixed-term tenancies as an option where mutually beneficial for all parties, to retain flexibility and choice in the market.
The Chair
Suzannah Young, do you wish to add to your initial remarks?
Suzannah Young: In response to the specific question on the private rented sector, it is not an area where I have the most evidence to give, as my main area is the impact on housing associations. However, one thing I can say specifically is that we think that the proposed private rented sector housing ombudsman is absolutely right. Residents in the private rented sector should have access to an ombudsman. It is important that access is clear and easy to navigate for tenants, and that they have routes to redress where things have gone wrong.
From that perspective, and from the perspective of housing associations, we would like to ensure clarity about the remit of the new ombudsman. There is already an ombudsman service for social housing. However, some housing associations also provide market rent homes. It will therefore need to be clear what the expectations on housing associations are, in terms of reporting on their market rent homes, and it should also be clear to tenants which ombudsman they should go to. For example, sometimes there will be social and market rent tenants in the same building with the same landlord. We need clarity on remits so that there is no confusion.
I would like to comment on the points that Melanie Leech made about the readiness of the courts. Housing associations have experience of the impact of delays in the courts and the fast-tracking of possession cases during lockdown. Our members have experience that could be of use in the future. Our members report to us that there are already delays in the court system, which we heard earlier. It can take many months to get a possession hearing. That is a particular problem where possession is being sought, for example, for serious antisocial behaviour or domestic abuse, where delays to possession can increase the risk to tenants from perpetrators.
If the Government wish to implement, for example, a system of fast-tracking of serious cases, there will need to be a robust mechanism. If all cases are fast-tracked, we will be in the same position as if no cases are fast-tracked. We had some feedback from our members about how the courts could have helped with improving their capacity, such as increasing bailiff availability, increasing clerk availability to help to deal with the paperwork and logging of cases on the new online portal, ensuring training for district judges, and addressing the health and safety concerns of bailiffs. If the Committee wishes, I can also give some evidence, either now or later, on the impact on housing associations.
David Simmonds
Q
Timothy Douglas: I think more clarity is needed in the letting agent space. Letting agents are already required to sign up to one of the two Government-approved redress schemes, but those two schemes do not adjudicate in the same way. The property ombudsman will work to a code of practice, and the property redress scheme would work to that code of practice or common law in order to make the adjudication. We are adding an additional layer to that through a landlord ombudsman. Our recommendation would be that those landlords who are fully managing property should sign up to a redress scheme, but we realise that that argument is not necessarily in the legislation and has not been won.
We must look at the myriad management practices—let and rent collection, or fully managed. As a tenant, working with both a landlord and an agent, we have to get adjudication of this new scheme and the existing schemes, and get a code of practice in place for the sector, so that we are all working to the same standards and the same adjudication. Are we also expecting landlords, like agents, to have a complaints procedure that tenants have to work through? We need that parity before we even talk about tribunals and the other things.
We must use the existing schemes and that expertise in the sector. There are 19,000 letting agents in England, and roughly 50% of landlords use an agent, so 50% of landlords are already plugged into those schemes. They have knowledge and experience. Let us get a code of practice built in, so that we are all adjudicating on the same level. Let us get some sort of housing complaints portal across tenures, so that the tenant can make a complaint that is filtered to the relevant ombudsman. We must help the consumer. We are adding a layer of complexity and we need to iron out some of those issues first.
Melanie Leech: I will build on that, but by standing back slightly from the question, because I think this is a subset of a much broader set of issues around transition. This will be hugely complex. We have 4.6 million tenants who will need new leases. Some of them are sub-letting and so on. We have all those new agreements to draft. We are going to need lots of training for the professionals who are managing this. We will need new processes and guidance for agents and local authorities. We will need adjustments to insurance and mortgage policies. The lesson from Wales and Scotland is that a big bang approach does not necessarily work because you cannot get all of that right in one go. We are keen to work with the Government to start thinking now about the implementation strategy. Clarity for tenants and landlords about how the new system will work, where to go and so on is critical to that, but we need to start thinking about that now and to create an implementation framework, because if we do not, these new reforms will not work well.
Timothy Douglas: Scotland has been talked about as an example, but of course, it has phased in private residential tenancies—there still are assured tenancies working in Scotland. But Scotland has a long-standing landlord register, and it has letting agent registration and regulation. There is a tribunal that is free to use for both landlords and tenants. Scotland definitely had a 12 to 15-month phase-in approach for the PRT to kick in. From what we are hearing, we will have Royal Assent, three months and a commencement, and then all these tenancies will switch over. That is an issue for all agents, but certainly for our larger agents, who are managing thousands of tenancies up and down the country. A consideration of the impacts of the transition and extending that would be welcome before the implementation of this legislation.
David Simmonds
Q
Timothy Douglas: From Propertymark’s point of view, we want to see warm, decent homes. The agent can actually be a layer of enforcement, whether they instruct the landlord to take on that property or not, as well as mortgage providers. Unlike social housing, which is designed to specific specifications, the property redress scheme comprises a range of property without specification. The decent homes standard was argued about in the previous Session. It was consulted on by the last Government. There were numerous working groups with the last Government and, yes, it is going to be consulted on again.
From Propertymark’s point of view for the private rented sector, we have to link up with local authority assessments. We have to focus on fit-for-purpose. I know that local authorities—certainly a local authority in the midlands—will, without fail, change all the boilers every five years in their housing stock. I am sorry, but private rented landlords do not have the money to do that, and the social rented sector has received billions of pounds in eco funding as well. If we are to get that parity between the private and social rented sector, the private rented sector needs to see that funding come forward, certainly in the thermal comfort space—cool in the summer, warm in the winter. Why, for the 18 different archetypes of property across the country, are we going for a one-size-fits-all energy efficiency target? That is going to nullify older properties in England and Wales where the regulations extend and rural properties. Let us simplify the HHSRS as well. There are existing levers that we need.
Finally, on this point about extending decent homes and Awaab’s law, we welcome these steps as long as we get them right for the uniqueness of the private rented sector. In the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, which was passed in the last Parliament, there is a requirement for all property managers in the social rented sector to be qualified. We think that should be extended to the private rented sector to all letting agents as well. If we can get that code of practice in place through adjudication and redress, we can qualify our letting agents. We get parity, drive up standards and help enforcement. That would certainly go a long way towards the decent homes standard and Awaab’s law being implemented in this sector.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Melanie Leech: The first thing to say, as you know, is that institutional investment into the build-to-rent sector specifically is a growing part of the housing supply mix. It is bringing in genuinely additional investment, because it is the type of investment that does not typically invest in build to sell—you have people wanting to use large amounts of capital to generate secure income streams so that they can match against pension liabilities, insurance liabilities and so on. Probably the key word in that is “secure”. Anything that damages investors’ confidence that the income they will get from their investment is at risk will undermine our potential to unlock investment into homes and the rental sector. Currently, the peak year for build-to-rent delivery was 15,000 homes. We think that you can double that to 30,000 homes, with the right conditions, and some of my members would go further and say that you can double that again. We are looking at an investment stream that could be a very significant part of helping to deliver the Government’s aspirations to build more homes.
What I have already talked about, in terms of the ability of the courts to cope with the reforms, is an important indicator of confidence. Investors will look at that and think, “This changes the basis on which I have invested. It makes it more difficult for me to manage the property efficiently.” I think the issues around rent determination also have that potential, so there is nervousness around needing to use section 13 and rent increases. There is a suspicion that tenants have nothing to lose by challenging any rent increase, so it is about getting the framework right around how we define what an unreasonable rent increase might be and how we manage those cases that might come before tribunals. There are some issues around that that we would like to see more clarity around and redressed.
In general, we are really supportive, because in the part of the market that I represent the decent homes standard already would not cause us an issue in terms of implementation and so on. We are trying to raise standards in the private rented sector, and we are raising standards in the private rented sector, but the key thing is to implement the reforms in a way that does not undermine investor confidence, so that we do not inhibit the supply of homes.
The Chair
We have Dr Dawson here physically and Councillor Hug on Zoom. Could you please introduce yourselves briefly?
Dr Henry Dawson: Good afternoon. My name is Dr Henry Dawson. I work as a lecturer at Cardiff Metropolitan University and I am a member of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health’s housing advisory panel. I am here today to represent the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.
Cllr Adam Hug: I am Councillor Adam Hug. I am the Local Government Association’s chair for local infrastructure and net zero, which basically means its housing spokesman, among other things, and I am the leader of Westminster City Council. I am here at the LGA conference in Harrogate; apologies for that.
David Simmonds
Q
Dr Henry Dawson: Councillor Hug, shall I start and then pass on to you?
Cllr Adam Hug: Okay.
Dr Henry Dawson: At the moment, we have quite considerable extra burdens being placed on local authorities. The two major areas for that would be in the enforcement around the database and in managing the landlords who have either been rejected from or refused to join the ombudsman’s scheme.
In both cases, the fees that are available to be charged for the schemes will generate some revenue. However, national schemes, by their very nature, will have to be relatively low cost. Rent Smart Wales is a good example. It has an application fee that is little more than £100, so that allows for some intervention. However, the majority of the burden for the enforcement side of things under this new Bill will be placed on local authorities. If just 5% of a sector was to refuse to engage with one scheme or the other, a typical local authority would have around 700 properties that it had to carry out formal enforcement work on, and an awful lot of those would require civil penalty notices or prosecutions.
The CIEH is very keen to see that the funding for local authorities is linked directly to the fees for these schemes and represents the cost proportionately, with the additional burden being placed on the enforcement bodies for the private rented sector—environmental health and private housing enforcement teams.
The notable exception in the Bill is that the ombudsman fees are permitted to cover the cost for the ombudsman to enforce its statutory functions, but there is nothing specific in there, as there is for the database, for those funds to be passed on directly to a local authority.
The other thing we have found with previous legislation is that there is usually short-term additional funding from the Secretary of State’s general budget to support local authorities in introducing these new burdens, but then that sort of tails off. It is replaced with a whole miscellany of short periods of funding, which makes it impossible for local authorities to manage staffing and attract and train up new staff. We are therefore ending up with a situation where approximately half the posts we have for local authority enforcement teams in environmental health are going unfilled for more than six months. It has been a real hand-to-mouth existence for local government enforcement teams. If we could have funding proportionate to the size of the sector in a particular area coming directly from the fees for these national schemes, it would be very gratefully received by local authorities.
David Simmonds
Q
Cllr Adam Hug: To echo that, I think it is important to understand where we are starting from. We have seen environmental health teams in councils cut over the last 14 years, because of the financial situations councils find themselves in. Environmental health officer posts are one of the top three most challenging roles for councils to fill at the moment. It is really important that the new burdens doctrine is applied properly, with up-front funding to make sure that councils can build teams to deliver this as quickly as possible.
We welcome the proposed fine retention, but we think there may be a case for raising the upper limit for the most egregious cases from the current £7,000 up to about £30,000 to fully capture the impacts of some of the worst properties, but also to ensure that revenue can fund council services that are enforcing this. We welcome this, but we must make sure that local councils are properly resourced to deliver it.
Dr Henry Dawson: May I make one additional comment, please? At the moment, the Bill makes substantial use of civil penalty notices. We welcome the use of them. It is very welcome to see funding coming directly into local authority enforcement coffers, as it is something we do not get through prosecutions that are carried out through the courts. It is, however, worth pointing out that they represent the very thinnest end of the wedge for the enforcement activity of local authorities. We only use them where all the informal approaches—service of legal notices and so on—have been unsuccessful, and we are forced to resort to taking more punitive action.
In the majority of cases, we can resolve things informally with landlords, and the majority of landlords are good providers. It is just worth noting that while the penalties are a source of income, they are not predictable or particularly sustainable. Only around 50% of what we charge in penalties at the moment is collected, because of the difficulties in trying to capture the money at the other end of the process. I would just caution against assuming that they are a very reliable source that will keep us going. There are an awful lot of other things we have to pay for.
David Simmonds
Q
Under the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, local authorities are significant users of the private rented sector for people who would otherwise be at risk of homelessness. It is common for local authorities to pay rent-in-advance deposits and use various other guarantee schemes to secure private rented sector homes for people who would otherwise not be able to access a home. Councillor Hug, I am interested in how you think the Bill would impact on the performance of that duty.
Cllr Adam Hug: In terms of the ability for councils to procure accommodation, having stability in the rental market will help us in managing demand pressures. We are conscious that there is an interaction with the Housing Act 2004 requirements around the prevention duty. That is one of the major challenges created by this Bill, so we want to ensure that local authorities are properly resourced to cover the potential additional time beyond the current 56 days, where we are having to provide prevention support to people while enforcement happens—[Interruption.]
David Simmonds
Q
Cllr Adam Hug: Apologies; I was just saying that the biggest area of concern about our homelessness duties is ensuring that the increased costs to councils of providing the additional prevention duty over the length of time for which the section 8 notices are going through the court are properly captured. That, on the interaction with housing, is the area we are most concerned about, but it is all perfectly solvable.
David Simmonds
Q
Cllr Adam Hug: We are not aware that this Bill creates a particular problem in that regard. We can come back to you in writing if there is anything further, but it is not an area of particular concern to us at the moment.
David Simmonds
Q
Cllr Adam Hug: No, we do not think it does. The key thing for us is that you have the current selective licensing mechanisms, but councils face bureaucratic hurdles in terms of getting the Secretary of State’s sign-off for large schemes that wish to go down that route. In terms of ensuring decisions are made at the right level, in line with the Government’s commitment to devolution, we think that for selective licensing to really fulfil its potential we must ensure there is no longer a need for the Secretary of State’s sign-off.
Obviously, that sort of licensing can improve standards in the sector, help councils to recruit environmental health officers, beef up the function and make sure we are playing a proactive role in helping manage the private rented sector in a local area. Different councils have used it, but at the moment it is hamstrung by the bureaucratic hurdle of getting it up to the Secretary of State. Obviously, we have a Secretary of State who is probably more minded to support the use of such schemes than was the case in the past, but it still creates an unnecessary hurdle and a delay when councils could just get on and use these licensing schemes that are desperately needed.
Dr Henry Dawson: May I add some responses? At the moment, we have a maximum five-year duration for discretionary licensing schemes. Once the schemes have been brought into force, it takes a certain amount of time to create the partnerships with other organisations, such as waste and street scene departments, police and antisocial behaviour teams, and antisocial behaviour schemes within the council, other charities and NHS-related bodies. They usually take between one and three years to mature.
Local authorities are also required to entice enough staff to be able to immediately provide a strong inspectorate to run these schemes. That can be anything from five to 50 staff, depending on the size of the scheme. We find that the five-year duration of schemes is a significant impediment, so it would be much more welcome to see something like a 10-year timeframe. That would permit us to train up new staff through the existing one or three-year qualifications. It would also allow these partnerships to mature so we see some of the true benefits of the schemes.
The other thing is that a large private rented sector is required; that is a point that a local authority has to prove when it is setting up one of these selective licensing schemes. We see that as an unnecessary hurdle to their introduction. They are part of a package of measures to address a range of problems associated with housing conditions, crime and antisocial behaviour across an area, and we see that as being an unnecessary impediment to their execution. It is one more thing that the local authority has to prove.
Finally, discretionary schemes, and particularly selective licensing, are one of the few things that provide access to properties. Even though the legislation has been changed, with some regulations to expand the use of selective licensing to include dealing with poor housing conditions, under the Housing Act 2004 we are unable to enforce conditions relating to the condition and contents of a property. We can only change those in HMO licensing conditions; we cannot change them in selective licensing conditions. Therefore, this is the first opportunity that we have really had, with a piece of primary legislation, to amend the Housing Act 2004 to provide parity in what local authority environmental health officers can require in the conditions and contents of properties through selective licensing, in addition to HMO licensing.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
You mentioned the fines—£7,000 for first or minor compliance issues, and £40,000 for more serious ones— and they can be levied repeatedly. I just want to get a sense of how much of the cost of enforcement you think those fines can account for. We recognise that it will not be enough, and that the new burdens principle will have to operate, but have you got a sense of it in terms of, as you say, how many cases are resolved before it reaches that point? What will be the willingness under the new system to levy these kinds of fines, and what proportion of the enforcement costs do you think, on average, local authorities might see those fines account for?
Dr Henry Dawson: Thank you for your question, Minister. At the moment, we have the use of civil penalty notices, and I would defer to a report by the National Residential Landlords Association to provide a summary of their use over the period between 2001 and 2003. We see that approximately £12 million was given in penalties over that period, and around £6 million of that was recorded as collected through penalties over that period.
It is also worth noting that these civil penalty notices are intended to be an alternative to a prosecution through the courts; they are not intended to be a revenue generator. The licensing fees, the ombudsman fee and the database fees are where we can generate the revenue at the front end. These civil penalty notices are being used as a final, ultimate punishment for some of the worst offenders. Yes, we can administer £7,000 for the initial offence and £40,000 for ongoing offenders, but they really are intended to be a deterrent, as opposed to a source of revenue.
The majority—maybe 90%—of a local authority’s work is carried out through informal advice giving, with people ringing up and asking for guidance in what is a very complex legislative environment. That is certainly something that landlords and letting agents would like to have more of. We serve formal legal notices, but it is only when we have gone through a whole series of informal approaches that we move to a formal approach through a legal notice and, ultimately, a prosecution or penalty notice. Therefore, really, we are looking at maybe 5%—to pluck a figure out of the air—which is a tiny proportion of what we have got across the country, and probably the only national figures we have on this are those that have been pulled together by the NRLA.
The Chair
Anny Cullum, would you like to introduce yourself?
Anny Cullum: I am Anny Cullum, and I am the policy officer at and a founding member of Acorn, an organisation that has been running for the last 10 years. It has been operating like a trade union but on community issues, so we have lots of members who campaign on housing issues and operate effectively as a tenants’ union in around 27 places across England and Wales.
David Simmonds
Q
Anny Cullum: We are pleased to see stricter measures and penalties for landlords laid out in the Bill, and we are particularly happy that new burdens funding will be available to councils to enact them. However, our experience as a tenants’ union is that often councils are so overstretched trying to do the things that they already have to do that tenants are waiting months before getting the support they need. Often their landlords have been given very informal notices and long timescales to get things done, which is no good for a tenant living in a dangerous home.
A great thing about this Bill is that section 21s will be banned. Something that we have seen a lot—we had a member in Sheffield go through this recently—is a local authority coming in and investigating poor conditions in a home, giving an informal notice to the landlord, and the landlord then issuing a section 21; the tenant basically has to pay for the fact that they dared to complain. We are really pleased that that will end, but we think there should be more funding for local authorities, not just extra burden funding for the new things, but for the stuff that they already have to do.
Our union really supports landlord licensing. We have done campaigns in this area in 11 different places around the country. It is incredibly popular with our members; it came out as one of our top motions at our recent conference. If done well, landlord licensing can be self-funding, and—this is a great thing to think about—it gives councils the ability to inspect homes without the tenant having to raise the issue themselves, so you can find out about bad practice and malpractice without the tenant feeling at risk of complaining. Obviously, they will have fewer risks once this legislation comes through, but it will take a long time for tenants to feel comfortable raising their voices, which our organisation tries to help them to do.
We really support the points made by colleagues in the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. We have campaigned in a lot of places for city-wide landlord licensing, as it is something that our members really care about, but a lot of councils have told us that they are not willing to take the risk of trying to implement wider licensing schemes, because they can be turned down by the Secretary of State. They have said that the work you need to do to put that application in is quite labour-intensive, and they do not want to risk doing all that work for it not to come to fruition. In the spirit of devolution and supporting local authorities to do the job they should be doing, give them back powers to license as much of the city as they want, increase the term to up to 10 years, and do away with the bureaucratic hurdles and the evidence gathering they need to do to get the wider licensing schemes.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Anny Cullum: One area our Members feel particularly strongly about that could be strengthened in the Bill to ensure that it delivers the change we all want to see is measures against illegal evictions. It will be wonderful when section 21 is banned, but we know that there are lots of landlords who issue section 21 eviction notices in response to tenants complaining, because they do not want to maintain their properties. For that unscrupulous group, we are worried that illegal evictions might take the place of section 21 evictions once section 21s are banned. We feel that the Bill could go further to make sure that this is not an easy option for them to take.
Hardly any cases of illegal eviction ever make it to court. Safer Renting data showed that there were 26 prosecutions in 2022—the year we have the most recent data for—but it knew about 9,000 cases of illegal eviction. Even when illegal evictions get to court, the fines are £1,000. That is less than my monthly rent. It is not a deterrent for the average landlord. We would like to suggest some changes to make sure that this is not used as a back door to get around the legislation.
We would like to see local councils given a statutory duty and the funding to investigate all cases of illegal eviction. Recently we had a member in Leeds whose landlord kept issuing false eviction notices—ones that he could not go to his local council to ask for support with, so he stayed there. The landlord used many different underhand ways to try to force him out, including sending men with knives to cut the wires in his house so that he did not have any electricity. He has been on the phone for hours to his council and the police, and they have not been very helpful. We want to see those bodies empowered with both the duties and the money to act for tenants.
Police forces need more training. I have supported tenants who landlords have tried to intimidate out of their house. The police do not seem to know that this is a criminal offence or that they have the ability to act on it, so it would be good if there was training on that. We would also like it to be made easier for people and councils to take these criminal cases forward. It can be quite hard to meet the evidence threshold needed to get a rent repayment order, so we would like to see changes there, which I have laid out in our written evidence. We would also like the civil penalty notices that councils can use to be raised to up to £60,000. I know that sounds high, but being forced out of your home with your family is a horrendous thing to happen to anyone. We want to ensure that this is treated with the seriousness that it deserves.
Illegals eviction is one area that my members asked me to speak about. I have also spoken about landlord licensing. A further issue is rent in advance. We are overjoyed that this Bill will end bidding wars, which is something we have campaigned for in different places across the country. We have tried to get agents themselves to pledge not to do it and then mystery shopped them to make sure that they are not. But if you allow agents and landlords at the start of a tenancy to ask, “How many months up front can you give me? Someone else said they could give me a year”, that is another form of bidding war, just at a different point of the process.
We conducted some research at the start of this month and found that benefit claimants were three times more likely to be asked for a year’s rent up front than people not claiming benefits. We are pleased that the Government are keen to crack down on discrimination in the private rented sector against people on low incomes, but this is one way that it is happening and we feel that the Bill could do more on that issue. I have two more areas that my members want me to speak to, if that is okay.
The Chair
Minister, would you introduce yourself very briefly, please?
Matthew Pennycook: Yes. I am Matthew Pennycook and I am the Minister of State for Housing and Planning.
David Simmonds
Q
The first question is simply this: what advice have you received so far and what are the plans in respect of the interaction with the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017? That is the point I was asking Councillor Hug about—the Homelessness Reduction Act creating that opportunity for local authorities to act as a guarantor to pay deposits, including rent in advance, to secure a property that would not otherwise be available to that tenant. I ask that question in the light of some of the evidence that we have heard about the impact of guarantors and deposits within the Bill, which I appreciate is not yet a settled matter.
Secondly, I invite you to share your thoughts on enforcement authorities, which my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon highlighted, which are referred to in chapter two. I have an idea why this might be the case, but the Bill creates a specific measure, in clause 104(4), that says:
“A county council in England which is not a local housing authority may—
(a) enforce the landlord legislation;”—
The joy of local government: the Minister will know that county councils are not housing authorities, so it would perhaps be helpful if you could set out the Government’s thinking around that, and say how any advice or engagement may have taken place already with local Government to determine the way forward on that.
Matthew Pennycook: Did you say three or two questions?
David Simmonds
There are three questions, but I have forgotten the third one, so I will ask you those two questions and then find the third question and come back with it, if I may.
Matthew Pennycook: Let me take those two questions forward.
The point that I took from Councillor Hug was a very specific one about the trigger for homelessness prevention duties under the Bill. Currently the trigger is a section 21 notice; once the new system is in place, it will be a section 8 notice. In theory, that broadens the scope of the duty, if you like, and therefore we will consider new burdens funding for local authorities as a result, because it could increase the costs to them.
On the specific point about county courts, I want to make sure that I have understood the hon. Gentleman properly. I think it might be better if I write to him with the specifics, but I would assume that his question is linked to the fact that in many cases we need to look to assign a lead enforcement authority in particular parts of the country, because of the specific arrangements of governance in particular areas. However, I am more than happy to write to him with further detail on the point about counties.
David Simmonds
Q
I have a final point. A number of the witnesses today have made a point that clarity about what is permissive versus what is required is a significant issue for their organisations. In particular, we heard about that in respect of the ombudsman, the tribunal and the courts.
I am interested in hearing your thoughts about how this process evolves, and your degree of openness about bringing a higher degree of clarity, either through a greater degree of transparency about what may well find its way into the guidance given to those different organisations, or through those areas that you feel are more appropriate to becoming part of the Bill and then the Act itself.
Matthew Pennycook: On the database and the ombudsman, through this Bill we broadly mirror the provisions in the previous Government’s Bill, in the sense that the powers in the Bill are broad framework powers. A lot of the detail will come forward in secondary legislation.
There was a debate when we considered the previous Bill, which I think we will return to because it is a worthwhile one, about what prescriptive requirements, if any, you put in the Bill for either the database or the ombudsman. In general, my sense is there is a lot of value in putting most, if not all, of that detail into secondary legislation in a way that allows us to ensure over time that the database and the ombudsman evolve properly with changes to the sector, so you would not want to get too prescriptive. But we can tease out in the debates—I hope we do; we have today—the type of thing we expect the ombudsman to do, and the full range. The Housing Ombudsman made clear that there is a “must” and a “could” on the ombudsman side. Similarly, there is a skimmed and a full-fat version of what you might include on the database.
As I have said, some of my contributions indicate that I think the database in particular could be an incredibly powerful tool. We should therefore be thinking through what we might include on it that would help tenants to assess who is a good landlord and who they should be comfortable signing a tenancy agreement with, and give local authorities the relevant information they need to bear down properly on disreputable and particularly criminal landlords. I am happy to be relatively open about that. We can be, and I hope are, fairly open in some of the debates about the type of things we and our constituents might like to see in secondary legislation.
Jacob Collier
Q
Matthew Pennycook: That is a good question. Like a lot of the debates we have had today, it is slightly out of the scope of the Bill, but you are right to ask it in the sense that the Bill is one part of the Government’s agenda for changing the housing system. There are lots of things we have to do on the home ownership side. You will know from our manifesto that we are committed to a permanent and more comprehensive mortgage guarantee scheme and a first dibs for first-time buyers scheme. In general, the Bill will hopefully empower renters by giving them greater protections, rights and security so that they can stay in their homes longer, build lives in their communities, avoid the risk of homelessness and, in many cases, by bearing down on unreasonable within-tenancy rent hikes, have the opportunity to save, which many do not have at the moment.
In answer to your question very specifically, the Bill is part of a wider agenda and touches on the supply issues we have debated. The Bill is not our answer to affordability in the private rented sector, and it cannot be. There are things that go beyond the scope of the Bill. However, in terms of the security, stability and certainty it provides for private renters, who are mainly at the top end of the market but would have, under better circumstances, the chance to save and buy a first home, the Bill will help in a number of ways.