Tenant Fees Bill (Second sitting)

James Frith Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 7th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Just to push you a little on that, in quite a lot of other industries you do pay for the time. For example, if you get a parking charge you will get charged for all the associated legal stuff if you have bailiffs enforced against you. In lots of other industries you do get charged for the time. I wonder how you see your proposal being interpreted. Would it be for the courts to decide what is reasonable, eventually, or would you want a defined list?

Rhea Newman: In regulations we would like a defined list of the types of fees that can be charged. In terms of what comes down to reasonableness, it might be difficult for that to be set out in regulations. I guess there are already some protections in the Consumer Rights Act around what is considered fair or unfair. I think reasonableness is about what a reasonable person would expect to pay in those circumstances, which is the cost the landlord actually incurs.

It is the combination of the reasonableness with the evidence. The landlord sets out the evidence and shows what the costs are. The tenant can then look at that, potentially get some advice, and challenge it. The problem is that by just saying that it is limited to a landlord’s loss, landlords could try to put lots of extra things in there. We have been asking some of our supporters and staff about things that they are potentially charged for at the end of a tenancy. For replacing items such as a dustpan and brush you could be charged £45 because an initial procurement fee was put on to it as well. That is the kind of thing that we are trying to guard against.

[James Frith (Bury North) (Lab)]

Q This has slightly been touched on, but does Citizens Advice, or anyone else who wants to answer this, have an example of landlords taking the mick when it comes to default fees and incidental fees? We have discussed the loss of keys, but there is some concern about incidental fees, as well as the range of fees that are applied, being increased as an opportunity to recoup some of the earnings that agents or landlords might be losing. Are there any examples of that?

Katie Martin: I am sure our advisers see examples of that every day. I am afraid I do not have any off the top of my head—I do not know whether other panellists do. We know that many tenants are being exploited by landlords. Not all of them—many landlords are totally fair and reasonable, but some are not, and we think that the legislation should prevent those unscrupulous landlords from being able to take advantage of tenants. I do not have examples off the top of my head.

Rhea Newman: I was going to pick up on a point that was made earlier. Garden maintenance could be quite a good example: what is expected of a tenant in terms of maintaining a garden? If you give landlords and agents the potential to do so, some—it is only some—might attempt to write in quite creative things that put unfair expectations on a tenant, and then charge them for not meeting them.

The existing examples we see that we are particularly worried about are the letters to chase late rent as well as emails, phone calls and so on. If they are charged at, say, £60 a time and there is no limit on how often a landlord or agent can send those letters or emails, that might be considered an unfair term in the Consumer Rights Act, but as we have said, it is actually quite difficult for a tenant to challenge that. That is why we think there need to be clear provisions up front about what is chargeable and what is reasonable.

Dan Wilson Craw: We have a couple of examples. We asked our supporters for examples like this and someone was required by their landlord to have their chimney swept once a year even though their fireplace was completely out of action.

There was another whose landlord would not fix a broken extractor fan in the bathroom, so the bathroom got very damp. By the end of the tenancy, one of the cabinets had got water damage, so the landlord tried to claim for that. The tenant successfully argued that that was the landlord’s fault because of the extractor fan, and he was awarded his deposit back. But the point a lot of our supporters made was that in these cases they knew their rights and knew that they were in the right, but they felt that a lot of tenants in a similar situation would not have the confidence to take on the landlord, or perhaps could not have a deposit just held in escrow for months on end while that gets resolved.

Katie Martin: In terms of transparency, it is required that any of these incidental fees default fields are written into the contract, but we know from our research that a quarter of tenants receive their contract on the day they are moving. So they have already paid the deposit and committed without having seen the contract. We think that is far too late for those things to be made clear to them.

Rhea Newman: It is also potentially very difficult to identify charges in a contract, depending on how they are written in, and it is very difficult to negotiate. That is a really good point about when you receive the contract, but even if you received it earlier, if you want a particular property and you know that queues of tenants are trying to get it, you are in a very weak bargaining position.

[James Frith]

Q My other question is about whether holding deposits are needed. You raise an interesting point, Katie, that essentially the landlord and agents feel assured that the tenant is moving in because they have paid a holding deposit, but then they do not follow up with their own obligations and issue a contract on time. Is that what you are saying?

Katie Martin: I am saying that they do not see the contract. I am not sure about the exact requirement for when they are supposed to see it, but we know that in reality they do not see it until the point when, as I say, it is too late to challenge.

We do think there is a role for holding deposits, but we think they should be limited. We also think that the terms on which they should be refunded should be really clear. It should only be in the case of misinformation—

[James Frith]

Q So the holding deposit coming off or being the first month’s rent is the scenario for getting it back.

Katie Martin: The holding deposit is separate from the deposit that you keep for the course of the tenancy. I think the holding deposit would be capped at a certain amount. It is not something that we have looked at closely.

[James Frith]

Q So you think it should be more commonplace. It is not universal, is it?

Katie Martin: No, indeed.

[James Frith]

You think it should be.

Katie Martin: No. We can see the case for when they might be needed.

[James Frith]

Q But they should be refunded pronto.

Katie Martin: Absolutely, yes.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Q Katie Martin, I will ask you a question I wanted to ask our previous witnesses about who the best people are to try to work with tenants when there are issues effectively of breaking the law. We heard from previous witnesses that they had real doubts about vulnerable tenants turning to people such as trading standards and so on for help.

In my experience, quite a lot of tenants will turn to housing departments with questions, particularly on environmental health issues. For example, I have noticed a huge increase in the number of young mothers who go to the city council complaining about mould or damp properties. It is true that those tend to be more for housing associations than for private tenancies, where maybe the tenants feel more secure. However, do you think that if second-tier councils’ housing departments had responsibility for enforcing the measures in this Bill, tenants would be more likely to raise issues with them?

Katie Martin: I think you have hit the nail on the head about people in social housing feeling much more secure. Tenants in the private rented sector hesitate to come forward with complaints because there is a huge fear of retaliation, which is one of the reasons why we think that all of these problems should be pre-empted in the legislation rather than having to be picked up later. People do not feel like they are empowered. They are very worried about what action the landlord might take, such as not renewing their tenancy and all kinds of different things. That is definitely problematic for renters.