Property industry urges better enforcement by councils in private rented sector

A plan to outlaw ‘retaliatory evictions’ will only work if matched by better enforcement of existing laws by local authorities, the British Property Federation has claimed.

The proposal is contained in the Tenancies (Reform) Bill, which has been put forward by Sarah Teather MP and will be debated on Friday.

The BPF argued that a recent increase in the private rented sector stock – to more than four million homes – had not been matched by an equivalent increase in enforcement activity.

There was “too much extra bureaucracy for ‘good’ landlords, and too few resources spent cracking down on the small minority who flout the law”, it claimed.

The BPF criticised local authorities that have introduced licensing schemes across their whole areas, “dragging some of the best landlords in the country into bureaucracy and huge fees, with no discernible benefit to them, or their tenants”.

It said such schemes should be better targeted if the system were not to fall into disrepute.

The BPF expressed concern that, with the Bill not imposing time limits on local authorities to respond to complaints, “a tenant could be stuck in a potentially-dangerous property indefinitely and landlords could face spurious claims by tenants – reducing the efficacy of any new legislation”.

Ian Fletcher, the Federation’s Director of Policy, said: “Sarah Teather’s Bill is well intentioned and we will be seeking to work constructively to ensure that it works for landlords.

“Whether an additional few months tenancy will encourage some of the most vulnerable tenants living in poor conditions to speak up remains to be seen. We also need to be clear that when we talk about rogue landlords or retaliatory eviction we are dealing with a small but highly disruptive element of the PRS.”

He added: “However, our primary concern with the Bill as it stands is that it doesn’t hold local authorities sufficiently to account on ensuring they are picking up complaints and processing them quickly. The sector is not short of legislation, what it lacks is enforcement of it, and there needs to be something in the Bill which holds local councils more to account.”

The BPF briefing on the Bill can be viewed here.