A United Nations investigation into UK housing has sharply criticised the private rented sector, reigniting a controversy about the right of the organisation to probe our industry.
Last year LAT reported how the UN's special rapporteur for housing, Raquel Rolnik, visited this country for 12 days and described government policy as retrogressive', earning a sharp rebuke from Conservative party chairman and ex-housing minister Grant Shapps.
Now Rolnik has written a 22-page report - dated at the end of December but published in full for the first time on the UN's website this month. Her call for the abolition of the so-called bedroom tax grabbed the headlines in the national press this week, but her many other criticisms include several about the private rented sector.
She says there are significant problems, such as insecurity of tenure, poor management practices and discrimination against specific population groups by landlords and letting agents. In areas of high demand, like London, these problems can be severe.
In another part of the report she writes: Weak security of tenure is often the rule, with typical contracts lasting 12 months, after which tenants can be evicted or confront price hikes. The law permits longer tenancies but this is not standard practice. One source notes that, due to the nature of the assured shorthold tenancies that operate in England, tenants often find themselves with very few rights and little security when it comes to tenancy.
Although Rolnik, a Brazilian, praises the UK government's proposed Tenants' Charter, the Conservatives have again criticised her findings with housing minister Kris Hopkins describing the observations as a Marxist diatribe.
Next month Rolnik presents her report to the UN Human Rights Council in New York.
Comments
I hate this security of tenure argument that is being banded about. I have been in the industry for 10 years and dealt with thousands of tenancies, and I can count on one hand the number of tenants who have been happy signing a tenancy longer than 12 months. Many tenants who want long term lets want flexibility, and so long fixed terms that tie them in to a property is not what people want, all they really want is to stop the landlord from increasing the rent and asking them to leave.