If the promise of a better private rental sector is to be realised, councils will need new staff as well as stricter rules
T
enants need rights. Apart from food and water, shelter is the most basic human need and relevant to almost everyone all the time – unlike, say, healthcare, which most people do not use on a daily basis. A rebalancing of the law towards renters and away from landlords, which the government has done in its Renters’ Rights Act, was sorely needed. Failures and abuses of power have been ignored for too long.
With no-fault evictions outlawed from next May, and tougher oversight from a new ombudsman to follow, life should be about to get better for England’s 4.6m households in the private rental sector. But will it? Troubling analysis by the Guardian shows that two-thirds of councils in England have not prosecuted a single landlord in the past three years, while nearly half didn’t issue any fines either. Over the same period, fewer than 2% of complaints led to enforcement of any kind. Just 16 landlords were banned from letting homes – a shockingly low number, given the volume of complaints and what has been revealed about the sector by the worst scandals.
The hope is that this seemingly lackadaisical approach is going to be replaced with something far more proactive. The introduction of a mandatory decent homes standard for private rentals – to match that in the socially rented sector – is being consulted on, and remains a dismayingly long way off. But from next year, councils will be legally required to report on their enforcement activity. A new landlords’ register should be a useful tool, giving local authorities and other interested parties clearer oversight of what is going on in their areas. Most importantly, section 21 evictions – which require no justification other than that the landlord wants their property vacated – are being banned.
