According to a report on the Shelter Scotland web-site, one in four rented properties in Scotland is not covered by the Scottish registration scheme, which came into force three years ago today. It is not all bad news. The report says that the registration scheme has been an impetus to set up landlord training and…
I was delighted to read a report that a campaign is being launched to help tenants who get evicted through no fault of their own, because their buy-to-let landlords have not kept up their mortgage payments. You can read more about it on the Citizens Advice Bureau site here. Long term LandlordLaw Blog readers may…
After having got back from holiday, settled back in, and dealt with the back log, etc, I have finally got around to reading what is the final report from the Law Commission on their housing projects. The new legal team on Nearly Legal got in ahead of me with a rather depressing report, taking the…
I have already mentioned in previous posts that the Law Commission are undertaking a massive review of housing law and practice. This started with their Renting Homes project, now completed, and continued with their project on Proportionate Dispute Resolution. The final stage is the project on Encouraging Responsible Letting. Both the dispute resolution and the…
An interesting snippet from the afternoon press briefing from No 10 for 28 June: “On the role of the Minister for Housing, whilst the breadth of her responsibilities would stay the same, clearly the fact that she was in Cabinet sent a very clear message about the much greater importance of the Housing Minister and…
The tenant’s dilemma, a new report from the Citizens Advice Bureau, states that tenants are put off complaining about their landlords failure to keep their property in proper repair because their landlord might retaliate by evicting them under the section 21 ‘loophole’. Government figures indicate, they say, that nearly one million private rented homes fail…
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New plans for landlords
Two reports in the press this morning on landlord regulation. The Times reports that ministers are considering introducing licensing (as recommended last year by the Rugg Report). They anticipate that the costs will be covered by the licensing fee, provisionally put at £50, plus there is also a suggestion that the scheme will help the…