Private Rented Sector
Debate between Jim Cunningham and Clive Betts
Mr Betts
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and I thank him for putting that clearly on the record. That is exactly what the Committee agreed. Some of the changes will be incremental and there will be opportunities for either this or a future Government to come back and look at the totality of regulation and legislation, which I think would be helpful for everyone involved.
On raising awareness, the Government have accepted some of the recommendations. The Committee called for easy-to-read fact sheets and model tenancy agreements. The Government have already produced a draft tenants charter and we look forward to their model tenancy agreement. That is entirely in line with what the Committee recommended, which was to try to make things easier, particularly for people who do not easily understand legislation and regulations, and to have something that is easy to operate. We felt that that would really help not only tenants, but many landlords, particularly non-professional, occasional landlords who have a few properties and would welcome such an approach.
We asked for a review of the housing health and safety rating system. Again, it is valued by many professionals, but it is very difficult to understand for many landlords, let alone for tenants. I do not think that the Government are prepared to go so far as a wholesale review, but we note that they are now trying to produce guidance for tenants and to update the methodology. There are problems in relation to local authorities wanting to act against a property if the tenant is elderly, but not if they are young, and landlords can get confused about an authority requiring them to do work simply because they have changed tenants. It is certainly worth looking at that complication in the new guidance and new methodology.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Years ago, we had what was called a rents officer, which would surely be one of the better ways of enforcement whether in relation to private landlords or higher rents in general. Rents are now escalating because the supply of housing is very low. Did my hon. Friend and his Committee consider that?
Mr Betts
We did, but I will come on to rents later, if I may, because that is a separate issue. We did refer to that matter, but the main point of our report concentrated on standards, which is what I am trying to address now.
As we all know, the reality is that some of the worst standards in housing are in the private rented sector. That does not mean that every such property is bad and we should not give all private landlords a bad name, but as well as some of the worst properties, the sector has some of the most vulnerable occupiers, and that juxtaposition should really worry us. Some landlords simply want to sit and do nothing, while others blatantly break the law and think that they can get away with it, and we particularly want to bear down on them. There was general agreement about how to bear down on the really bad landlords without putting extra burdens on the good ones, and about how, at a time of financial constraint for local authorities, to enable them to take action against such private landlords and ensure that they can use their resources and recover their costs.