Renters (Reform) Bill (Fourth sitting)

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 16th November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)]

Q Thank you to our panel of witnesses. We have spoken a few times about ground 8A. What would you say to someone who said that it is unfair for landlords to suffer multiple breaches of rent arrears? And on a completely separate thing from ground 8A, we are introducing a new ombudsman to the private rented sector. How do you think that ombudsman can work? Would you say that it can help to reduce the pressure on the court system?

Liz Davies: I will start with the point about multiple breaches of rent arrears. I think that the answer to that is to trust the wisdom of the courts. The courts have the mandatory ground at the moment under ground 8—again, the concern is gaming and you have heard Simon’s answer on that—and they have discretionary grounds for possession under grounds 10 and 11. A well-advised landlord who wants to ensure that they can get a possession order from the type of tenant you have just described will ensure that they plead all the rent arrears grounds available to them, including ground 8A, if you put that through.

When you get to the court hearing, courts are perfectly capable of identifying somebody who has got into arrears in the past but has made them up or is in a position to pay current rent and to pay off the arrears within a reasonable period. Courts deal with people in financial hardship day in, day out; they are very good at scrutinising budgets and knowing whether or not an offer to pay is realistic. They are equally good at looking at a rent arrears history, no doubt prodded by the landlord, and saying, “Hang on a minute. You’ve just told us when your payslips were and you were not paying rent at that time. You really have been abusing the system.” And they will make an outright possession order.

Case law on suspended possession orders on the basis of rent arrears requires that a suspended possession order, as an alternative to an outright order, can be made only where the court is satisfied, first, that the current rent will be met in the future, and secondly, that if there are arrears at the date of hearing, those arrears will be paid off over a reasonable period. There is some case law, depending on a landlord’s circumstances, about what a reasonable period is. Courts are very sympathetic to the point that private landlords in particular need that money paid back to them, so they are not going to approve an unrealistic repayment offer. I think that all the appropriate safeguards are there in the courts now. Of course, they are not currently used by private landlords because of section 21, which means that they do not need to. I think that those safeguards are there against the scenario that you have just suggested.

On the ombudsman, I will leave Simon and Giles to develop that point. All I would say is that an ombudsman is a very good thing. Access to justice through the courts is also a good thing. It would be wrong if some of the matters that courts deal with on behalf of tenants are then solely dealt with by the ombudsman. You have to have two opportunities.

Giles Peaker: Briefly on the ombudsman, in principle it is a very good thing, but it generally tends to depend on the ombudsman. It really is a question of somebody actually being able and willing to take a serious and proactive approach. I think that there has been quite a market change in the social housing ombudsman over the last five or six years, and performances have really turned around. An ombudsman is not necessarily an answer in and of itself, but it can be a very good thing and, in the right hands, it can be extremely useful.

Simon Mullings: We heard Mr Blakeway’s land grab earlier in the week—he fancies a crack at it. As Giles said, Mr Blakeway has done extremely well in the social housing sector, and, as Liz said, the ombudsman will do well in the jobs that it can do. It is not fair for landlords to face that situation, but it is also not fair for landlords to face a ground for possession that, whether they use it or not, will incentivise tenants to stop paying rent. I really believe that that is what 8A will do in certain circumstances.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q Currently, the tribunal on rents is to make a determination of whether the rent could be reasonably expected to be made in the open market, and it therefore looks at new rents and not necessarily existing rents and other factors. There are some things that are disregarded and some things that the courts must have regard for. Is that enough, or should the courts have a stronger regard for other factors, in terms of a reasonable rent?

Liz Davies: Entering into a new tenancy at market rent is one thing, but there is a real worry about rent increases to market rent. Although it initially plausible sounds—why should rent not go up to the same level as elsewhere, if it was a new tenancy?—the problem is that you may then end up with an unaffordable rent for the tenant, who had entered into the tenancy on the slightly slower rent, and they then leave voluntarily, but as a result of economic pressure; and when I say voluntarily, I do not mean entirely voluntarily, but it is not due to a notice served or a court order. The Renters’ Reform Coalition is certainly suggesting that the tribunal’s power should be limited to inflation or local median wages to increase rents, along, of course, with the prohibition on increasing them more than the landlord has proposed. I think that must be right. I understand that landlords are conducting a business, but they have let the tenancy initially at rent x; it is not that unfair for both landlord and tenant to have certainty that rent x will increase only by inflation or median wages, rather than out there in the open market.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Simon or Giles, do you have anything to add?

Giles Peaker: I do not have much to add, but I am not sure whether we have detailed information about what in-tenancy rent increases look like, as opposed to new tenancies, and what the comparator would be. Are in-tenancy raises usually reaching new tenancy market rents, or do they consistently remain at a lower level across the lifetime of a tenancy? I do not think we have that information.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q I suspect that the property portal will suddenly tell us that information, if it is collected. I also wanted to ask about deposits. At the moment, deposits are held in a deposit protection scheme. The deliberation as to whether or not it has been fairly withheld is done privately, and the only recourse is to appeal in the courts, which is quite a high burden. Is there a better way that some of those deposits could be handled? Could they be covered by the ombudsperson, or should there be a process whereby deposit disputes at least have to published? We do not even know the outcomes of deposit disputes at the moment.

Liz Davies: Three lawyers silent! I throw the question of how back to you, but I think there is something quite important about publishing the principles under which various disputes are determined, and therefore the exact cases. You may or may not provide the names and addresses, although, with the property portal, we would say you should do; it would be the sort of thing one would want to know about a landlord.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q So deposit complaints should be included in the property portal?

Liz Davies: I am thinking about it; I had not thought about it before, and it is a good point. However, on the process of determining a dispute between a landlord and tenant about whether or not the tenant has been in breach, whether the deposit can be returned and whether in whole or in part—there is something to be said for that to be published, whether that is by the current providers or within the property portal. The property portal would allow future tenants to know whether they might have difficulties getting their deposit back.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Simon?

Simon Mullings: I have nothing to add on that.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Q Can I ask for your views on the Government’s intention to delay the abolition of section 21 pending court reform? You are all litigators. Is that necessary, given the present state of play? What do you think the delay might entail? What reforms would be required in order to ensure that the courts were meeting the standard that the Government are setting?

Simon Mullings: No, it is not necessary.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Young]

Q That is what the Bill is trying to do. It is trying to prevent bad landlords, but bad tenants as well. One thing we are planning to introduce is a decent homes standard in the private rented sector. Is that something that you would welcome?

Ben Leonard: Absolutely. It needs to be robust, free of loopholes and properly enforced. There are two key ways to do that. The first is properly funding local authorities. It would be no use granting the powers to local authorities to enforce a decent homes standard—we all know the state of local authorities and their finances at the moment—if they do not have the resources or a duty to enforce. It just will not happen, with the best will in the world.

The other thing, which has been discussed already, is incentivising tenants to do it: creating an army of enforcers who are properly incentivised to report landlords who are not up to scratch. The property portal can play a big role here. More transparent information inherently gives renters more power to put pressure on and see when their landlord is lying to the authorities. If a landlord says, “We have met these standards” on the property portal, a tenant can look at it and go, “Well, that’s not true, and I can point to all the problems that exist,” and then there is an incentive for them to pursue it. I speak as someone who has pursued a rent repayment order in the past. I won 80% of my rent back, but it was a long, gruelling and difficult process, with no access to legal aid. The financial incentive was quite strong, but there were times when I felt like giving up. There are many ways to solve that problem, but making the process straightforward for tenants and properly incentivising and supporting them in it, alongside local authority enforcement, are important.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q I have a few points, if I may. You mentioned that the property portal needs to be available to tenants, but their access to it is not explicit in the Bill. Is it your view that it should be available to tenants or to the wider public?

Ben Leonard: Ideally, it should be publicly available information. You should not have to move into a property to discover that there are issues with it or that there are issues with the landlord; you should be able to check up a property on the portal before you move in. You should be able to see what it has been rented at in the past and compare that to the rent today. Has the landlord just done a massive rent increase, with no real improvement to the property? Do they have a history of improvement notices from the council? I would like to see that on there as well. In fact, any disciplinary action against the landlord should be available there. Nobody, whether they are a family, an elderly person or a student, should have to move into somewhere to find that they have a rogue landlord and a house that is falling to pieces.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q The power of public pressure and the market might be more than the courts’ in that case. You have raised some of the fears about loopholes in grounds 1 and 1A. What protections could be put into 1 and 1A to make them work? Should there be a payment or other form of redress to the tenant if they are being evicted for no cause whatsoever?

Ben Leonard: To prevent abuse in the first place, there should be a high bar of evidence so that landlords have to really prove they intend to move into or sell the property in order to evict their tenants, and significant penalties for abusing that as well. We are talking about significant disruption to people’s lives that can have serious, knock-on consequences as well.

I do not want to go on too much of a tangent, but the consequences for children’s entire lives of having to move school frequently are profound; there is a lot of research that shows reduced economic, education and health outcomes for frequent school movers. Landlords need really seriously to prove that they intend to do it, and there should be significant penalties if they abuse the possession grounds, including fines and, for repeat offenders, complete bans. There should also be a no re-let period of 12 months: if a landlord decides that they need to move a family member in, then they do not need to any more, they cannot let the property for 12 months. There needs to be a serious deterrent to abusing those grounds. What was the second part of the question?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q The second part was about whether there should be some sort of recompense for tenants who are moving out, even if it is legitimate that they are moving out, through no fault of their own.

Ben Leonard: Definitely. That could take a lot of forms. It could be a simple payment, like a rent repayment, to help with that transition, or it could be that, from the moment the notice is issued, it is illegitimate to collect rent on that property and no further rent needs to be paid. That would go some way to, first, put off rogue landlords from abusing the power and, secondly, make the circumstances of the tenant’s life more liveable. Moving house is a massive hassle, especially if you have dependants, so if that is being foisted on you by an outside force, there is no reason why that outside force should not support you in some way.

[Jacob Young]

Q To explore that final point you made about not charging rent having issued a notice to vacate, when someone has gone through that process, for a landlord that would mean two months of not getting rent from the property plus three months when the property could not be let again through one of the section 8 grounds. In the event that the landlord was intending to sell the property, but was unable to sell it and had to go back to market to re-let it, they will have gone five months without rent. Do you think that is fair? I appreciate that we would both agree that we want to stop bad landlords, but for a good landlord who wanted to sell their property but was unable to, is that fair, to be in the situation where they have five months’ rent withheld?

Ben Leonard: I think it is fair to place a reasonable barrier to the abuse of those grounds. These things are always a balancing act. Would it be fair for someone to have to continue paying rent while having to uproot their life and sort things out? They are not really getting what they are paying for in those two months, because those two months are spent preparing to leave, moving their children’s schools or saving for a deposit. They need to pay for all those sorts of things.

For the landlord, it comes down to the cost of doing business. Landlords make a hell of a lot of money on those properties, and I think it is reasonable that sometimes there are times when the amount of money they are getting in will dip because of such things. If it is a choice between landlords’ profits coming down for a series of months and tenants potentially being impoverished, I would choose the former.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q Thank you, Ms Field, for coming to give evidence to us. I have two related questions, which are quite broad, to get us into the issue. Do you think the Bill as it stands takes sufficient account of the particular needs of every aspect of the student market, which is not uniform? There are different people starting courses at different dates and people renting different types of houses. Do you think it takes account of that? Then, specifically on the Government amendment that was tabled on Tuesday for a new mandatory ground for possession for student houses in multiple occupation, do you have any concerns about that? How workable do you think that is?

Chloe Field: I do not think it takes sufficient account of the student rental market. People forget how unique and diverse students are and the student rental market is. As you just mentioned, students do not always do their courses in the typical September to June time. We have postgraduate researchers who study and work throughout the year. We also have mature students and students who have families and who will live in properties with non-students. There are things there that need to be taken into account regarding students in the Bill.

We also have the fact that the student rental market is very precarious. Renting in that market is rushed; you are expected to sign a contract about nine months before you move. That means that students end up having to pay really high prices because there is such a rush and people just accept the first house they find. It also means you cannot do sufficient research into the house you are about to sign the contract for. For example, is there mould? Is the quality of the house any good? Those are the unique factors of the student rental market.

In terms of the student exemption, our position has always been that it is incredibly dangerous. It sets a precedent that students will not be afforded the same rights as other renters and sets a further precedent for any future reforms and future exemptions for students. Like I said before, students are not a homogeneous group. They are not just 18 to 21-year-olds doing an undergraduate degree. They come in all types and different forms. It is one thing to make an exemption for purpose-built student accommodations, which is a type of accommodation, but it is another thing to create an exemption for a demographic of people who are studying. We are worried about that.

Also, the reasoning is that landlords are threatening to leave the market. As the previous witness said, landlords should not be renting in a market where they cannot accept that there are slight reforms and accountability for landlords. We consistently see exploitative landlords in the student market. I do not think we should be left threatened by those rogue landlords who cannot accept any form of regulation. Those are the main things on the student exception, but we accept that if there is that exception, it has to be carefully curated to fit the student rental market.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q The Government have tabled an amendment that would create a ground 4A, which is what you were just talking about there. Have you had time to look at that and do you think it is tightly or too broadly drafted? Are there particular things, such as requiring accommodations to be rented by the university or something, that might give that level of protection, rather than it just being that there happen to be students in that house?

Chloe Field: If I remember it correctly, it is good that the amendment specifically acknowledges term times and stuff like that, but it specifies a certain time in the year and, as I said before, not all students fit into term time. It does not sufficiently recognise that different types of students rent in different ways; they are not a homogeneous group of people. Some students live with non-students and families, and it does not fully recognise that.

An idea we have floated is if there is an exemption, it should potentially be done like a council tax exemption: HMOs with a certain percentage of students are exempt from council tax. We think that kind of specification will be really important. Without more specification about the exemption, for a lot of students, especially those living in family homes, there will be the threat of back-door evictions if they have started their studies.

Your idea about universities renting out accommodation is really good. It would provide a bit more accountability if the institution that provides the education and has a form of duty of care is responsible for the accommodation. I think that is really important, but if that is the case, we would have to take it further. Right now, prices for university-owned accommodation are going up. Universities are trying to bring in more and more students to make more money because their incomes are so precarious right now, and that is not sustainable. We would have to look at the higher education model as a whole if we were thinking of doing anything like that.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q A lot of the reforms in this Bill will advantage people who are in the property for a long period of time. They will be able to enforce their in-tenancy rent controls better, and will hopefully be able to take the landlord to task if it is not a decent home. When someone is there for only a year or two years, or whatever the time period is, that is much harder. Do you think there are things that should be put in the Bill to ensure speedy enforcement in some of these areas and the ability for students to seek redress?

Chloe Field: Yes, I do. I do not know exactly how that kind of speedy enforcement will be put in place, but I definitely think it is necessary. One of the issues we often see is that students feel like they do not know how to hold their landlords to account or complain about them. Especially if they are a first-time renter, they will not have the knowledge or experience to hold their landlord to account or make sure they are complying with the current laws. There is a lack of knowledge there, and the information and the routes are not very accessible. Alongside their studies, students work part-time jobs more and more so they do not have the time to take their landlords to court. There are a lot of those issues.

The short-term nature of a lot of student rentals means that landlords bank on the fact that students often do not complain and tend to suck it up because they know they will leave in May. I had the same issue: I had a lot of mould, and the landlord was not doing anything. I thought, “Well, I’ll go home to my parents’ for a bit to prevent myself from getting ill, and I’m leaving in May, so it’s fine,” but that meant that the landlord could just paint over the mould and sell it to the next person. Accessibility and speed is vital in those cases so that students have an easy route that they can go down quickly to complain about their landlords.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I have another question, but I do not want to hog all the questioning.

[The Chair]

No, you have another two minutes.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q At the moment, the student market seems to be moving towards a place where people have to choose their accommodation up to nine months before they move into it. Some people have welcomed that, but it does not seem to work very well for students. Does moving to a situation where the properties will not become available on the open market, apart from two months before the start, actually help or hinder students in selecting their accommodation without having to have done it months in advance?

Chloe Field: There are multiple things going on. I think it could be helpful if it were nearer the end of the academic year, so that people actually know if they are going to do another year of study, and they have more established friendships and stuff like that. I think that would be useful.

Also, because the current market has been neglected and unregulated for so long, I think that this panic instilled by landlords would still happen even if it were two months before. Landlords purposely drop their housing on the same day so that people feel that they have to rush and get it. With student intake numbers getting so high right now in cities and areas that cannot actually provide accommodation, there is this rush for similar properties that drives up prices. I think that could be helpful, but there also needs to be a lot more done to control the market so that landlords are not allowed to run truant, dump their properties and increase their prices. Universities also have a responsibility to look at what housing is available for students before they increase their student intake.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q So you think there should be some restrictions on universities?

Chloe Field: Yes.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q I would like to go back to ground 4A being proposed by the Government. It makes it a very binary choice between there being students in the accommodation or no students in the accommodation. You have mentioned that many students live in mixed accommodation. Is there sometimes an advantage for students in being able to extend contracts when they become no longer a student to actually provide stability in local communities that are often saturated anyway?

Chloe Field: Yes, 100%, and that is something else that we believe: just being able to have that freedom to not feel like you are chucked out of a house, then you are meant to find a job, and then a house—or you move back to your family house, which can be quite isolating for a lot of students. It is even just that freedom to stay a couple of months. It also means that students who like the community and the area that they are living in are allowed to invest more into that community because they know that are they are not just going to leave once they graduate. They can remain there, find a job and work there, and also invest in that community. We consistently see the town/gown issue, where residents do not like students being in the area and students do not like residents and fall out with them—not always, but there is a lot of contention there. I think this would really help to meld the community together.

On a separate point about building community, if students are exempt from aspects of the Bill, then a lot of rogue landlords will go into the student market because they will take advantage of the lesser regulation, which means that more houses in multiple occupation are going to be built in residential areas, again furthering those divides between residents and students and moving residents out of their local areas. It can create that distinct divide instead of creating a harmonious community where both students and residents live together.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Finally—we have a few more minutes—on Tuesday we heard that the two-month notice, meaning that someone can give notice and then move out within two months basically on the first day, could be bad for students because sometimes they do not get on with their flatmates. But when you force them together for two months, they then suck it up and get on with it. Is that a fair description of what happens, or would you describe it in a different way—that ability to move out if something has gone wrong very quickly?

Chloe Field: First, it allows people who do not get along with each other to leave; again, with the rushed market, a lot of people are forced to live with people they might have only known for a couple of months. Also, if they have signed their contracts, moved in and then three months later there is black mould everywhere, it allows people to leave, which puts the balance of power back into the tenants’ hands. That means that tenants can leave and also puts pressure on landlords to actually have their home up to scratch, because they know that the tenant could leave at any point. I think that would be a really important thing for students. Also, if you want to drop out of uni because your mental health is bad and you are not enjoying it, you have the freedom to leave. You are not stuck in a contract and paying tuition fees and rent in a place where you do not really want to be.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much for your evidence. That was Chloe Field, the vice-president for higher education for the National Union of Students. Very useful indeed, thank you.

Examination of Witnesses

Samantha Stewart, Linda Cobb and Roz Spencer gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Young]

Q I am interested in your view on the principle of blanket bans and the measures we are taking in the Bill to stop them.

James Munro: Blanket bans are a good thing on paper, but in practice they can be very difficult to enforce. Obviously, the enforcement is where I am coming from with this. That is what we do with estate and letting agents at the moment, and with landlords in respect of the Tenant Fees Act 2019. We are the leading enforcement authority under the Estate Agents Act 1979 and the Tenant Fees Act. It is very tricky when you start putting blanket bans on things—for example, on saying, “No pets”, “No children”, or “No DSS”—because ultimately it is up to the landlord to decide who he or she wants in the property. It is very difficult to prove that that decision has been taken to directly discriminate against somebody with a pet, with children or in receipt of benefits.

While I am on that subject, I think the legislation would benefit from always including the words “prospective tenant” when dealing with issues around discrimination. Clearly, at the point at which someone is being discriminated against, they are not normally a tenant—they might well be a tenant at some stage, but at that point they would be a prospective tenant. It is important to have consistency throughout the legislation in that respect.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q It seems difficult to enforce blanket bans. Is there any way forward in which these bits of information are not disclosed and cannot be asked about in any form, directly or indirectly, until after a tenancy has been verbally agreed?

James Munro: That could be a way forward. It just goes back to the fact that it is very tricky to work out, because discrimination can be written, verbal or non-verbal. It can be incredibly difficult to prove, unless it is recorded in some way, and then it is down to the investigatory powers, the sanctions available and, ultimately, the impact of that discrimination on someone, because it will be considered in line with all the other local authority priorities.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q On standing enforcement, a lot of local authorities use the selective licensing resource to help to pay for their enforcement. Is there an argument—perhaps the opposite argument from the one made by my colleague—that the property portal could allow the roll-out of selective licensing more freely in all places where there is then, in effect, a small charge for enforcement?

James Munro: It could work. In theory, what we are trying to achieve is to get greater resources to local authorities. I do not really have a view of how that is done; it is more about getting those resources to local authorities and about ensuring that local authorities prioritise the work correctly. At the moment, there are huge differences in enforcement across the country—the so-called enforcement postcode lottery—and, depending on where you are, it could be a different priority for that particular local authority.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q We touched on rent repayment orders previously, where tenants are motivated to take their own enforcement because they could receive their own rent. Could those offer an option to relieve local authorities from having to enforce some of the more minor cases and allow them to focus on the most egregious breaches?

James Munro: I agree that that would be a way forward. It comes back to the points that have been made before: it is about the education and knowledge of the tenants, so that they understand, first, that they can take that action and, secondly, that they take the action and get the relevant support to do it. Tenants are woefully unprepared. They do not have the knowledge, the expertise or the help to take action forward where necessary. You will see examples of that being done generally, where either people have done it because they had that specialist knowledge, or they get the specialist support, which might be available in certain areas but not in others.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Do you think the property portal might provide an opportunity not just for information holding, but for information dissemination?

James Munro: Yes, but the property portal will only disseminate that information to those who are registered on it, and the challenge—as with a lot of things with this Bill—will be to ensure that, in the early days, in year one or year two, everyone gets up to speed with this, and not just the landlords but the tenants and prospective tenants. It comes back down to education. The question was asked earlier, “How do we get the message out to people?” You need to teach it at school. We leave school not knowing how to buy a house, buy a car, rent a house or anything like that.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Some of us push very hard for citizenship lessons and wider lessons like that in schools, but that is another debate. You might not know about this, but when the deposit protection scheme was rolled out, there was a big information campaign with local authorities and with charities and non-governmental organisations to inform tenants about their ability to get rent repayment orders if deposits were not secured. That seems to me to work very well. Do you have any views on and learnings from that process?

James Munro: Yes, that process has worked well, but I think that is because it is a process that benefits all parties. It is very strictly controlled. The sanctions and penalties are clearly set out. I think it is something that works very effectively. Redress scheme membership, for example, works very effectively. The Government obviously issue the “How to rent”, “How to buy” and “How to lease” guides—all the different how-to guides—and I think they could play a very useful part, but obviously you have to get them into the hands of the tenants. Again, it comes down to the point that was discussed earlier, especially with students. Students just want to get their hands on the property—they will sign anything just to get their hands on it. They do not necessarily understand, realise or appreciate any rights or obligations that they may have under that agreement.

[Helen Morgan]

Q I just want to go back to that point. Earlier, I used the word “unprofessional”. What I meant was amateur rather than negligent or wilfully reckless. There are a lot of accidental landlords out there—I am talking about people who do not use a letting agent. They will need to be aware of their responsibilities under this legislation. Who do you think is the right person to manage the information campaign to ensure that they are aware? Is that the local authority? Is it the charitable sector? Who should be ensuring that landlords are aware of their responsibilities under this new legislation?

James Munro: I think it is a combination. You have the National Residential Landlords Association; you have various trade bodies and various professional bodies that represent landlords. They are the first port of call. I also think local authorities and charities—all those third sector organisations—could get that information out there. The challenge is that the landlords who have perhaps one property are, for all intents and purposes, treated almost like private individuals. For tax purposes, they are virtually treated as private individuals, so there is no real avenue to find out where they are. That is going to be the challenge—to reach out to them but also to get them to comply with the requirements.