Parliament’s attack on landlords doesn’t go far enough

MPs are proposing that criminal landlords have their properties taken away, but campaigners suggest local authorities lack the resources to even enforce current law.

The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee (HCLG) has suggested today that landlords found repeatedly exploiting vulnerable tenants should face having their properties confiscated.

But for housing activists the measures, while well meant, do not go far enough. Mostly because even existing laws protecting tenants from bad landlords can barely be enforced due to lack of resources.

Speaking to Left Foot Forward, Generation Rent campaigns office Jacob Mukherjee said:

“The report doesn’t go far enough. It conceals that local authorities don’t have enough powers and don’t have the resources to enforce existing laws.”

Currently, local authorities in England and Wales can already take a property away from a criminal landlord through interim management orders. But councils can’t put them into force.

As Mukherjee explained:

“They don’t have enough staff, enough resources to do it. There are not enough housing enforcement officers. There are not enough tenancy relations officers. Because of austerity loads of those positions have been cut. They just can’t enforce the existing laws. So it’s all very well to give them new powers, but they also have to have the power to enforce those laws.”

The HCLG is calling on the government to tackle what it called a “clear power imbalance” between private landlords and their tenants, many of which have to live in homes kept at substandard conditions.

The Committee itself was aware that while newly brought in legislation strengthened tenants’ rights, the authorities have insufficient resourced and cannot enforce civil penalties of up to £30,000.

Generation rent director, Dan Wilson Craw, echoed his colleague Mukherjee saying:

“Too many landlords let out dangerous homes knowing that there will always be people desperate enough to take them. The law is supposed to protect tenants from these criminals but many won’t complain about squalid conditions out of fear that the landlord will retaliate with a rent rise or eviction.

“Having the confidence to complain is just one reason why the government should strengthen protections from eviction and rent hikes. Growing numbers of people living longer in the private rental market – including one in four children – need greater security regardless of whether their landlord is flouting safety standards, so the committee has missed an opportunity to go further in its recommendations.”

Generation rent propose that the same laws are adopted in England and Wales as in Scotland, where default tenancy contracts are set indefinitely. The group also lobbies for rent controls, under which landlords would not be able to hike their rents above inflation levels.

Joana Ramiro is a reporter for Left Foot Forward. You can follow her on Twitter for all sorts of rants here.

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