Renters' Rights Bill (Second sitting)

Sam Carling Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Amos]

Q So that would be the control?

Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed: Yes.

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

Q I wanted to pick up on a couple of points from your written evidence on joint tenancies. Under the new Bill, if one student leaves, you have the problem where the whole tenancy might end up collapsing. Do you have any thoughts about what the Bill could do to address those concerns, save the arguments that you have already made about having a specialist student tenancy? Also, on that point about the student tenancy, would you agree that there is a bit of an issue at the moment wherein quite a lot of students drop out of university, which is an issue in and of itself, but are locked into tenancies? Would this Bill address that situation?

Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed: The joint tenancy issue is problematic, and there is no way to get around it. If you are in a joint tenancy, all the tenants are essentially treated as one. If one tenant gives notice, all the other tenants, in theory, could be asked to leave at the same time. I think landlords will be pragmatic about it and seek to manage that process actively. Unless it is in their interests to regain possession of the whole property, I think most landlords will try to smooth things out and find a resolution.

Typically, the remaining tenants are liable for the rent on the room that has been vacated, and I think it would be very difficult for landlords to backfill, so the remaining tenants may find that the rent increases. That is going to cause quite a lot of rupture and disruption in the student market. We think about half of tenancies are on a joint basis at the moment, and that is going to be really disruptive. I cannot think of a way around it. Unless there was some sort of ability to have a fixed term, I think it is going to be really difficult. Sorry; I have forgotten the second bit of the question.

[Sam Carling]

Q It was about the point that quite a lot of students drop out of university, so there is an issue, on the flipside of some of the points you made before, about those students being locked in. Would you agree that this Bill addresses that?

Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed: Yes. I think a lot of landlords release tenants, certainly in the PBSA sector. If somebody leaves university or their circumstances change, I think a lot of landlords release tenants. I think it is right that if somebody leaves university, a landlord should seriously consider releasing them, perhaps with two months’ notice, and letting them leave. I think that would be a very good element of a student tenancy. Unipol is a landlord, and we release tenants if their circumstances have changed. It is a relatively small number of students who require that, but it is difficult. That would undoubtedly be an advantage to the students who need it.

[Carla Denyer]

Q I have a specific question on the new grounds for possession that we were just talking about. I interpreted the wording of the new ground that specifically gives the power to recover possession between June and September as potentially an oversight. One of the written statements we received—RRB 04, for Committee members—highlights that as well. The ground seems to fail to consider other kinds of students, such as people on a one-year Masters that starts in January, or nursing students who are often studying over the summer. I know, as I am friends with some of those people, that they found it hard enough to get housing on a non-traditional term as it was, without giving landlords a particular power to kick them out halfway through the summer when they are halfway through their course. Do you share that concern, and do you have suggestions for whether that should be changed?

Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed: There are significant numbers of students—I do not know the exact numbers, but more and more are starting with January start dates. Some universities have five points in the year when you can start a degree or a Masters. It is problematic for Masters students whose course goes on until September or October, when they are having to write up, or PhD students. That can be difficult. I think there should be more flexibility in the current timetable of June to September, and perhaps in the ability to give notice at different points in the year for student properties.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Amos]

Q I was interested to hear the rest of your points. One area that is not regulated in the Act is the regulation of letting agents. Is that something that Acorn would like to see happen? Feel free to expand on your points.

Anny Cullum: We would like to see letting agents regulated. Especially with the issues around bidding wars and discrimination when you enter a new home or the private sector for the first time, in the majority of cases that will be about your experience with your letting agency. We as Acorn suggest mystery shopping, like when Trading Standards sends kids into shops to mystery shop and sees whether they will sell them alcohol. Maybe we should be sending people into letting agencies and seeing whether they are being discriminated against on the basis of any protected characteristic, but particularly on the basis of being benefit claimants. That part could be strengthened in the Bill.

[Sam Carling]

Q Picking up on the point you made about illegal evictions, is there anything we can do with the landlord database to help with that and some of the other issues you raise?

Anny Cullum: I think the landlord database will be excellent. It is important from our point of view that the landlord database includes information for tenants on previous enforcement action that has been taken against landlords, because you can then make an informed choice as a tenant about where you would like to rent. That will be another way to deter landlords from behaving illegally because they know they will have a mark against their name on the register. We hope the register will mean that, rather than tenants trying to compete for homes at the moment, landlords are competing for tenants by behaving in a good way and providing a good service. Having that sort of information on the database would be incredibly helpful.

[Carla Denyer]

Q I want to ask about one of the things in your submission, so this may help you to expand on it. I thought your proposal on the right to withhold rent for serious disrepair is interesting: it sounds quite radical on the surface, but in any other sector, if one party was breaching a contract and failing to deliver a service, it would be quite normal to withhold payments. Can you expand at all on how that would work in practice or how you envisage it working? What are Acorn’s views on the proposed regime for managing unaffordable rent hikes, and is it enough?

Anny Cullum: On withholding rent for serious disrepair, there are much-improved schemes and action within the Bill around the decent homes standard and improving standards for tenants, but a lot of the action set out to be taken if tenants are experiencing disrepair is retroactive or down the line. We know that councils can take a long time to act and that lots of tenants will not pursue things like rent repayment orders because they just do not have the time and energy. But if someone is living with serious disrepair—things like the damp and mould laid out in Awaab’s law, which we are pleased to see moving over to the private rented sector—we think there could be a mechanism whereby, if it is not fixed within the timescale set out by Awaab’s law, they could withhold their rent and pay it to a third party, which could then give the landlord another timescale within which to solve it. If they did not solve it, the tenant would get the rent paid back. If they did, the landlord would get the rent.

That would be an immediate incentive to do the work and stop leaving people in the dangerous conditions we see all the time. Landlords are not necessarily going to worry in the moment about a rent repayment order that a tenant may or may not put in for, which would take ages to go through a court—landlords sometimes do not even pay them anyway—whereas, if you can withhold the rent, that will speed along the process of sorting out mouldy and unsafe homes. So that is the mechanism we would think of. There are lots of considerations as to how it could work. If you consult on bringing Awaab’s law into the private rented sector, that will be a good place to think about the best mechanism to do it.

I think your second question was about rent hikes—rent rises.