HMO landlords be warned – the government has announced that the law is to be changed from 6 April, introducing a new planning category for HMOs (the definition to be based on that set out in the Housing Act 2004): we have decided to amend the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) order 1987 as…
Last year I reported that the Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS) run by the Dispute Service had announced that they were going to increase their fees. They have now announced what these are. Or rather they haven’t, because the fees information page tells us that all TDS members fees are going to be calculated individually now,…
There have always been criticisms of the new Local Housing Allowance (LHA) scheme, for example see this report here I did in October 2007. Shelter have now issued further criticism of the scheme after surveying “more than 450 LHA claimants” (although perhaps not the most comprehensive survey – 1,000 would have been better). Their findings…
The National Landlords Association (NLA) and spareroom.com are both calling for the rent a room tax scheme tax threshold to be increased. It has been £4,200 since 1997 and since then prices have risen considerably. To quote the NLA: “The NLA supports the Raise the Roof campaign’s call for the Rent-a-Room threshold to be increased…
The National Landlords Association (NLA) conference is to be held this year at Birmingham on 20/21 November. I will not be there (having already travelled once to Birmingham, from Norwich, for the Landlord & Buy to Let Show I felt that was enough). However it looks to be a good event. Looking at the program,…
When speaking to Simon Gordon of the National Landlords Association (NLA) recently at the Landlord & Buy to Let Awards dinner, he was telling me about their lobbying work, and how they attend all of the party conferences. Well it seems as if all this has paid off as the conservative party have now announced…
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Tenancy Deposits – Lettings Today get answers from the CLG
There is a very interesting post over on the Estate Agent Today news web-site. It seems that back in November 2009 they asked a number of questions of the Communities and Local Government (CLG) department (whose remit covers the tenancy deposit scheme) about the workings of the scheme. After two reminders and three months later,…