Letting agent safeagent has set out a manifesto for the private rental sector ahead of the General Election on 12th December 2019.
The company has made the following requests:
– Bring empty homes back into the private rental sector using incentives as well as just enforcement measures. There are currently 205,000 empty homes in England.
– Invest in re-aligning Local Housing Allowance (LHA) with the lower end of market rents, bringing an end to the current LHA cap. This would help to ensure that tenants on benefits do not face unfair disadvantage when trying to access the private rented sector.
– Rather than scrapping them, reform local authority licensing schemes to be more cost effective for the public purse, easier for councils to enforce and clearer for landlords and agents to understand. Licensing should be targeted at specific problem neighbourhoods and substandard properties, as well as at rogue landlords and agents.
– More funding to enforce powers that local authorities already have. They should be supported to use data already available to them, including council tax, benefits, tenancy deposit and electoral roll information, and take a fair, accountable and robust approach to compliance.
– Lettings and management agents should be regulated, while minimum qualifications should be introduced. The aim should be to focus efforts on the minority of non-compliant agents and landlords that bring the sector into disrepute to raise standards across the sector as a whole.
Isobel Thomson, chief executive of safeagent, said: “With 20% of all households now living in the private rented sector, the importance of this sector cannot be underestimated.
“We want to see standards raised across the board, professionalising the sector through minimum qualifications for agents, and supporting the good landlords to provide much needed homes.
“If we want to ensure a safer, fairer PRS for all, the new Government must make regulation and properly funded enforcement a priority to root out the small number of rogue landlords and agents.”
