For the sake of appeasing a handful of Tory backbenchers and shoring up the UKIP vote, the government may have just heaped another burden on already hard-pressed tenants.
It will be announced in the Queen’s speech later today that private landlords are to be made legally responsible for ensuring tenants have a legal right to live in the UK before arranging a letting.
Much like the government’s announcement over the weekend on pensions for foreign spouses, this latest policy proposal looks very much like red meat thrown out there by the government to fend of the threat from UKIP.
According to the Telegraph, the level of fines for those landlords which fail to properly check the immigration status of their tenants may run into ‘thousands of pounds’.
What, though, is to stop letting agencies and landlords passing this cost (presumably it costs something to check a person’s immigration status) on to already squeezed tenants?
According to a report which came out in January, rents in England are increasing by an average of £300 a year. As well as making increasingly swaths of the country uninhabitable for all but the most affluent, the cost of rent is also making it harder for young would-be homeowners to save the money to buy their first property.
As far as I can make out, there is nothing to stop landlords and lettings agencies tacking yet another ‘administration fee’ on to the initial cost of securing a tenancy when the government’s latest ‘get tough with the foreigners’ policy comes in.
Checking the immigration status of a tenant will undoubtedly cost landlords and agencies money, but it will almost certainly cost tenants more – much like the ‘administration fee’ levied by lettings agencies (£200 – £400 on average) at present tends to be higher than the cost to the agent of filling out and sending away a couple of forms.
For the sake of appeasing a handful of Tory backbenchers and shoring up the UKIP vote, the government may well have just heaped another burden on already hard-pressed renters.
8 Responses to “What’s to stop landlords passing the cost of immigration checks on to already squeezed tenants?”
Richard Gadsden
Why aren’t the same rules going to be applied to anyone who sells a house to an illegal immigrant?
Robert Kaye
Two probable reasons: one, you already have to show your solicitor proof of identity when purchasing a house which would presumably put off illegal immigrants; two, there’s no legal reason why someone who isn’t allowed to live here shouldn’t own a property here – they might for instance let it. So if the policy is to flush out people living illegally, checks on owning a property wouldn’t do it.
HenHarrio
The politicians pushing this idea are ignoring or ignorant of the
realities of being a private landlord with one or two properties.
Accommodation
and employment might both be important elements of an illegal
immigrant’s life in the UK which the government wants to target but
employers and landlords aren’t equivalent and landlords – particularly
unincorporated ones – shouldn’t be given this burden.
Nadhim
Zahawi (Con) and others were saying how this was ‘just one more check’
for landlords on the radio. They (wrongly) assert that private landlords
(including all types ranging from professional and large organisations
to the doing-their-best-with-granny’s-old-flat people) routinely carry
out credit checks, reference checks and identity checks where they take
copies of the identity documents (presumably using the photocopier they
don’t have in the offices that don’t exist) on new tenants.
With
all this experience, navigating immigration statuses should be no
issue. They’ll self teach themselves how it all works – perhaps with
help from the UKBA’s 89 page guideline for businesses.