Housing and Planning Bill (Second sitting)

Teresa Pearce Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

Q 153 To follow on from that, you both give an unequivocal welcome to part 2 of the Bill. Presumably you are also keen that the database is effective. Looking at Criminal Records Bureau checks and their successor, it seems to me that a database mechanism has been as effective in driving up standards. Are you optimistic that it will do the same in this area?

Jon Sparkes: Yes, I think it will. I think the Bill can actually go even further. Certainly, sharing information about banned landlords and banned letting agents is absolutely crucial and will have an impact. You can see landlords going across local authority boundaries. Once a landlord or letting agent is banned, the professionalising of the sector by making sure they undertake accredited training before they are unbanned is important, so there are areas where we would even support amendments that would take it further—all of which is caveated with proper protections for tenants. If you are the tenant of a banned landlord, you need an awful lot of protection, otherwise you just become evicted by default.

Campbell Robb: I agree with all that. I want to put on record that we have one caveat to unequivocal support, which is about the clauses about abandonment. It may not be the time, Chair, but I would like to share that there are potentially some unintended consequences of bringing that forward and of the lack of court oversight or local authority oversight in making sure that the proposals achieve what is wished but that they do not give a licence to some landlords to use them in a way that we would not support. I just want to put that on record.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

Q 154 On abandonment, is legislation not already available for landlords to reclaim abandoned premises?

Campbell Robb: There is. Under section 21 of the Act.

[Teresa Pearce]

Q 155 So is this necessary?

Campbell Robb: We do not think it is. We think that landlords already have those powers and that we would not need to do this. If this is to go through, there are significant caveats we would like to add and areas, in terms of security, that we would like to strengthen.

[Teresa Pearce]

Q 156 On that point, if the clause goes through, do you think it will put additional pressure on local authority housing departments by people appearing evicted without due process?

Campbell Robb: There is a danger that without that due process, certain types of landlords may use this to create evictions. That might happen, yes.

[Chris Philp]

Q 157 You touched earlier on the question of affordability. Without going again through the comments you made then, do you agree that generally speaking, the best way to address any concerns about affordability is to increase supply and that, if we do increase supply as the Bill aims to, both rents and prices have a chance to just cool down a bit?

Jon Sparkes: I agree, inasmuch as it is about supply of the right kind of houses at the right kind of prices and the right kind of tenures. Simply building houses and diluting the supply of social housing will increase homelessness. So I agree, but it has to be the right kind of supply.

Campbell Robb: I would agree with that.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I would like to welcome representatives from the National Landlords Association, the Residential Landlords Association and the Association of Residential Letting Agents. Before I ask you to introduce yourselves, I remind you that we expect a Division in the Chamber at 4.40 pm—40 minutes from now—and therefore we will curtail the session at that stage. Could you identify yourselves for the official record?

David Cox: I am David Cox from the Association of Residential Letting Agents.

David Smith: I am Dr David Smith from the Residential Landlords Association.

Carolyn Uphill: I am Carolyn Uphill from the National Landlords Association.

[Teresa Pearce]

Q 205 Everyone agrees that rogue landlords are a very bad thing and something must be done. In the Bill, if certain criminal activities are undertaken by landlords, they can be subject to a banning order. Do you think that will result in improving standards? Do you think that a banning order is the right action?

David Smith: We support banning orders if they are used effectively to eliminate criminal landlords. One of the problems that we have identified at the moment is that enforcement action is not taken often and robustly enough by local authorities. There is a tension between banning orders and the new power in the Bill to create civil penalties, because if a local authority chooses to use the civil penalty route, it cannot then use a banning order because they are only possible when they prosecute somebody. What we are very keen to see is an amendment to the Bill so that local authorities do not continually issue civil penalties against landlords who should be prosecuted, issued with a banning order and removed from the sector.

[Teresa Pearce]

Q 206 Just on that point about civil penalties, do you think they are high enough?

David Smith: I think the size of the penalty is fine. What I do not want to see, or would be very unhappy to see, would be very serious matters being dealt with by a civil penalty, whereas the most serious matters should always go to court.

David Cox: We have to factor in that sales agents can already be banned, and have been able to be since the Estate Agents Act 1979 came into force. We would like to see the lettings sector brought under the Estate Agents Act. We support the concept of banning orders, but against individual agents, as in the Estate Agents Act, rather than agencies. One thing we would not want to see is an individual agent—maybe a new recruit—who has done something very stupid which could shut down an entire agency, particularly as some of the large corporate agencies employ tens of thousands of people, so we think that banning orders should be based on individual agents.

More importantly, however, at the moment the sales banning list is held by Powys County Council, by the national trading standards estate agency team, which bans sales agents, but at the moment still allows them to practise as letting agents. When these banning orders come into force we need to make sure there is joined-up work between whoever is the body that will be dealing with the banning orders for letting agents and landlords, and Powys’ national trading standards, so that we do not end up with a situation where somebody can be banned as a sales agent but still practise as a letting agent, or banned as a letting agent and still practise as a sales agent. We suggest either that the two come together as one overarching body, or that they speak very closely and regularly, to make sure that we do not end up with unintended consequences.

Carolyn Uphill: The National Landlords Association is broadly supportive of these measures and the intention of the Bill, because part of our value statement is that bad practice and criminality should be driven out of the sector. As a landlord, it is not good for my business to have criminals operating within the sector. Whether banning orders on their own would drive the criminals out is a question of them actually being used. That relates, as my colleague said, to the use of fines and civil penalties. We need enforcement action to drive these people out of the sector. In principle it is an idea we would support, but in practice we would welcome consultation with the stakeholders, to make sure we get it right and there is a good right of appeal, so that the right people are driven out of the sector. As landlords, it would do us all a great deal of good to drive the criminals away.

[Teresa Pearce]

Q 207 So without further investment in local authorities, do you have confidence that local authorities could actually undertake this work?

Carolyn Uphill: If local authorities had the ability to keep the proceeds of any fines or civil penalties they levy, we would fully support that; we would like to see them ring-fenced to be used on housing matters, so that there is a real incentive to make the polluter pay—make those causing the problems pay for them. Perhaps they should be able to refund or rescind some of the licensing schemes, which are just a cost on the good landlords. Get the polluter to pay and use that money to improve standards. Then there would be a strong incentive to do it. The evidence is that in the last six years, 2,006 landlords were prosecuted under the Housing Act, whereas every week we are fining 3,000 people for not having a TV licence. Somewhere, we need to put more emphasis on this.

[Stephen Hammond]

Q 208 Ms Uphill, in your written submission you raised concerns about privacy. First, can you set out in depth what you think those are and, secondly, following on from your last answer, do you think that local authorities have the ability to construct the database so that privacy is protected?

Carolyn Uphill: Are we talking about the database for rogue landlords?