Private Rented Sector Housing
Debate between Karen Buck and Gary Streeter(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that what is needed is a centralised national landlord register that ensures accountability, so that tenants know before moving in whether their landlords have been compliant, especially in relation to health and safety?
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Before the hon. Lady continues, it might be helpful to say that she is rushing, but she does not need to: every speaker can have six or seven minutes if they want, rather than four or five.
Ms Buck
I am grateful for that, Sir Gary; I am always anxious not to take too much time.
I certainly agree that one of the issues in the private rented sector is that we do not actually know where it is, other than when it comes to those claiming housing allowance in the private rented sector. There are landlords who are renting and we do not know who they are, so it is quite hard to enforce against them.
We have a patchwork of enforcement services. That requires resources from local authorities, which have been hammered over the past 10 years of funding cuts, and also political will. The situation needs a clear steer from the centre, together with good local knowledge—local authorities are in the best position to understand something about their own local markets. It also needs individual capacity for enforcement. We have just come from a statement on legal aid; one of the issues we should be very concerned about is the significant shrinking of the housing legal section’s capacity in recent years, with fewer providers and less capacity for access to services that put individual tenants in a position to enforce their own rights.