In this article we highlight three key points from the press release for landlords and letting agents.
This follows on from the proposal for a Tenants’ Charter as announced earlier this month.
Redress Schemes
Letting agencies and property management companies will be required to join a compulsory redress scheme.
Having had limited success in encouraging voluntary registration through measures such as The Mayor’s Housing Covenant, choice is being removed.
We hope that a single standard applies across approved accreditation bodies so that “forum shopping” does not occur.
We note that there is no mention of a requirement for landlords to register with an accredited body. This is surprising given previous statements of principle (such as the London Rental Standard) that proposed that accreditation would be of benefit both to professional letting agencies and private landlords.
Given that regulation to require letting agencies and property management companies to be accredited has been promised, in the next few days we expect that mandatory accreditation for landlords will follow.
Code of Practice
The Government is due to develop a Code of Practice that applies to all property management companies. The stated aim is to ensure that this code provides a statutory grounding from which tenants will know their rights.
We hope that this Code of Practice includes not only the rights of tenants but also their responsibilities. We fully support the need for there to be a central reference point, written in plain English, to underpin the rentals process.
We believe that avoiding disputes is preferable to resolving them. For this reason we suggest that sufficient funds are set aside by Government to educate tenants on their rights and responsibilities.
In addition to advertising the Code of Practice, we suggest that there is a requirement that the Code of Practice is appended to each tenancy agreement (whether an AST or the proposed Model Tenancy Agreement).
Maintenance
Maintenance and property safety are to form key parts of the reforms.
The proposals include the rights of tenants to raise repair requests without fear of eviction; the ability of Councils to penalise landlords who provide sub-standard accommodation; and rental properties to have a centrally set minimum standard of repair.
We consider that it is advisable that in formulating its proposals, the Government requires that:
- All repair requests are required to be submitted in writing;
- All repair requests are accurately time and date stamped; and
- Acknowledgement of repair requests are provided within a certain period of time.
These requirements will help to underpin the repairs process by providing certainty to both parties.
The proposals of the Tenants’ Charter, including fee transparency and longer tenancies will be explored in a later article when detailed proposals are published.
.jpg)
Comments