Housing conditions in the private rented sector
An interesting new housing report, prepared by Dr Stephen Battersby for Alison Seabeck MP, Shadow Housing Minister & Karen Buck MP, Shadow Work and Pensions Minister, has been published on housing conditions in the private rented sector (PRS).
There are three main conclusions to this report.
1. Local Authorities (LAs) work is currently ‘complaint let’, with no systematic attempt to deal with an areas problems as a whole. However this is not enough to discharge their statutory duty.
2. LAs need to keep better records as well as making better use of their enforcement powers. Otherwise how can the result of any action they take be known?
3. Government needs to review the statutory guidance, in particular to ensure that better records are kept.
Background
Local Authorities have special powers under the Housing Act 2004 to carry out inspections of properties (under a procedure known as the Housing Health and Safety Rating System).
If as a result of this, the properties are found to have ‘category 1 hazards’, the Local Authority have various enforcement powers they can use. These include serving improvement notices leading (if the work is not done) to prosecution, and they also have power to get the works done and charge this to the owner.
What the report shows
The report covers the three year period to 2009/2010 and only looks at the PRS because that is where most LA inspections tend to be.
Dr Battersby starts by referring to a number of reports showing that improvements in housing standards can result in massive savings elsewhere, for example to the NHS. (See also our posts here on poor housing and on poor housing in Wales.)
One report has estimated that every £1 spent on housing support can save £2 in reduced costs to health services, tenancy failure, crime and residential care. Low cost interventions can be particularly valuable in terms of health and welfare benefits.
However the information and records kept by LAs, are mostly inadequate, and are inconsistent across the country. Most interventions are ‘complaint led’, rather than LAs using their powers in a purposeful way to deal with their area as a whole.
So far as the hazards themselves are concerned, ‘crowding and space’ is becoming increasingly significant, although overall ‘excess cold’ and ‘falling’ hazards are the most common.
Information available shows that local authorities prefer to take informal action rather than formal enforcement.
Commenting on all this, Dr Battersby has a few things to say:
Record keeping
It is difficult to see how LAs can develop strategies or show whether their actions are having any benefit or not, if they are not keeping proper or consistent records.
“Vulnerable private sector tenants” he says “should reasonably expect a more consistent approach, regardless of the council area in which they live”.
Complaint led action only
LAs have a duty under the legislation to inspect properties in their area if they become aware of the likelihood of problems. However
‘in practice most local housing authorities intervene on the basis of complaint or service requests rather than as the result of any coherent strategic approach.
Given the lack of security in the PRS and reluctance to complain, it is probable that those who feel most insecure and vulnerable (and at risk of retaliatory eviction) will not complain and so local housing authorities may not be dealing with the worst housing conditions, nor the most irresponsible or worst landlords.
Reliance solely on complaint before intervening even increases the risk of retaliatory eviction when action is taken.”
Meaning if landlords know that LAs will only get involved if someone has complained, this will prompt them to get rid of the complaining tenant. Whereas if they know that the LA will be doing the inspections anyway they will be less likley to do this.
Only a low percentage of problem properties dealt with
The English Housing Survey (EHS) indicated that there is an average of 2969 properties in the prs with category 1 hazards but LA records show that only about 10%, at best, of these are being dealt with.
Although “with so much informal action it is also difficult to know if these hazards are dealt with adequately if at all”.
Reluctance to use enforcement powers
Dr Battersby comments that there seems to be a reluctance among LAs to use their enforcement powers, for example improvement notices, or even hazard awareness notices. All this ‘informal action’ makes it difficult for LAs to account for what they are doing or for us to have any idea of what, if any, action is being taken. He also points out that
“informal” action is not a course of action available for meeting the duty in Part 1 of the Housing Act 2004.”
The stronger powers available to LAs such as prosecutions or getting the work done themselves and recovering the cost from the landlord seem to be being used very rarely if at all, and most (80%) of LAs do not appear to have taken any prosecutions at all.
Housing benefit changes will make it all worse
The forthcoming changes in housing benefit look likley to just make things worse, as landlords will either pull out of renting to HB tenants altogether, or will attempt to crowd in more tenants so as to maximise their income. Cuts in legal aid are not going to help either.
“Who” demands the report ‘will protect the most vulnerable tenants?” There does not appear to be any satisfactory answer.
You can see the full report >> here. The picture above is taken from the report cover.
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(Note – landlords and tenants wanting to know more about the system and their respective rights and obligations, will find this on my main Landlord Law site)
Well thanks for spoiling my breakfast Tessa. Another week begins on a humpy note.
This is similar to the Shelter report on rogue landlords.
I could go on for hours about all of the above but I wont. I’ll just point to what happened a year ago, when council’s were ordered to cut loads of staff to save money.
In my borough there are 13,400 HMOs, most of them, like the picture of above. Because of cuts how many officers do we have to get around them? 2!!!
The report, like Shelter’s just looks at the stats and tries to push the blame onto already overworked council officers.
I dont disagree with any of the points raised but I wish, instead of sitting in their bloody offices compiling stats that they would spend a month in local authroity teams seeing the sheer amount of cases we have to deal with
Sorry Ben! I know a lot of it is down to finance. And I’m not getting at you.
However I think that the author of the report makes some good points which are worth giving an airing. Particularly this one on record keeping.
To understand a problem properly and take steps to deal with it on a national basis, you do need to have accurate records. If the records kept by LAs are haphazard and vary across the country, it is going to make it more difficult to prove the real state of things, which will make it more difficult to get anything done.
We all know how government is apt to deny that there is any problem at all if there are no factual records to prove it.
No offence Tessa it was tongue incheek.
Record keeping is totally slack I agree, no excuse for that these days with case management software.
It comes down to the same arguemnt as the rogue landlord one manly though. Staff shortgages and workload aside Environmental Health cant act in isolation. Our EH boys are lovely fellas who will go out at the drop of a hat but enforcement action is so legally tortuous, it becomes almost impossible to do. Look at the nonesense regulation on selective HMO licensing, the rules are so massively complex it becomes useless. I think there is only 1 local authority (Oxford?) who are having a go at introducing it and getting ripped to shreds by local landlords
Morning Tessa, Ben,
I read this with a keen interest as it coincides nicely with an-email I have just sent to my local authorities Housing Standards dept.
What I don’t grasp is the ease at which private landlords can secure benefit tenants without any checks and balances made as to whether they are ‘fit and proper’ to be operating as such.
For example, we have a private landlord on our block who just last week housed a tenant on LHA in one of the flats, with the full knowledge that the gas meter wasn’t working. Later that same day she smelt gas and got the gas emergency number from her friend, who rents another flat from the same landlord (complete with dodgy wiring). When an engineer attended he said that had she turned on a light there would have been an explosion! Even using a mobile could have had the same outcome so it was damn fortunate that she made the call from her friend flat.
The gas man was so horrified that now the landlord is in trouble with the gas company and he had the cheek to say to his tenant that she should have contacted him first!
No point in contacting a landlord who allowed her to move in without fixing the meter first as he’s hardly likely to satisfactorily deal with a gas leak!
I was also interested to hear that the other tenant made it clear to the council that she would not be able to meet the shortfall in the rent but was forced to take the property because if she did not, she would viewed as making herself deliberately homeless.
This is a sorry state of affairs and one which block management can do little about as we don’t have contracts with the tenants.
Whilst there is a distinct relationship between local authorities and HMO’S which require licencing, flats in private blocks have fallen even further outside the net!
Now, for these flats, Mr ‘fit and proper’ gets a rental of £1,200 and £1,000 respectively!
This landlord is not a ‘rogue’ he is a danger to his tenants and those of us around him. Something needs to be done about landlords such as these, and fast!
Kind Regards
Sharon
Something needs to be done about this situation and fast!
I agree Sharon. Something does need to be done fast, it has needed to be done for many years but I dont think it is fair of any of the current crop of reports to lay the blame totally at the door of the local authorities in many of the instances.
It is certainly largely the responsibility of the council’s to deal with these things but they have to have the wherewithal to do it. This report and Shelter’s is akin to criticising an old man for not eating his meals when you have confiscated his teeth.
That gas problem is a fantastic case in point that helps illuminate the situation I keep banging on about.
Homelessness is mainly a reactive service, dealing with emergency cases that turn up and having to provide temporary accommodation.
The method of deciding who is legally homeless hasnt really changed since 1977, so if people turn up, with the right set of circumstances, the council by law has to provide temporary accommodation.
A couple of years back the government said all councils must get their temporary accommodation figures down by 50%, but they didnt change the homeessness criteria, so what do you do? They also said that families shouldnt spend any longer than 6 weeks in B&B, but the numbers approaching didnt drop.
So you have to bring in properties from private landlords to fit the government’s orders.
Pressure is on procurement officers to bring in a certain amount of new properties every month. All of them insist on gas safe certs as a minimum. we insist on elec safe as well but as you know HB cuts is driving landlords away from HB tenants in droves and we cant get enough properties to fit the amount of people the government requires us by law to house.
Its numbers not quality that we are under pressure to provide. If we only took on decent homes we wouldnt be able to deal with the numbers who need temporary accommodation and would have to stick them all in B&B which brings another government department down on our heads for breaking the law. We cant win whatever we do.
I doubt vey much if, in the incident above the property would have been taken on without gas safe, we arent that mad haha. A gas leak can occur even with a safety certificate. It happened in my flat a few month’s ago.
Rogue landlords, rogue agents, run down and dangerous properties all seem to be getting blamed on councils. Like attacking banks and the news of the world it is an easy target that garners popular support and draws attention away from the real problem, cuts in staff, ridiculously complicated regulation and prosecution systems and the refusal of the government to help us deal with these things
Hi Ben,
Appreciate your comments. I have to say that my personal experience of local authority involvement in our block, particularly under Private Sector Leasing has left me furious that they won’t willingly work with either us or our managing agent.
When it comes to blame however, I have never blamed councils per se because I feel it is the refusal to licence landlords (outside of HMO’s and selective licencing which hardly any councils use) that is the key problem.
One of The Rugg Review recommendations focused on the fact that a licence would deal with the key area of visibility. This is an essential area because far too many landlords renting out individual flats are falling under the radar if they do not belong to trade bodies or have accreditation.
Block management has a difficult enough time with unlicenced managing agents, let alone being powerless to deal with unlicenced landlords and unlicenced letting agents.
The fact that councils are under the amount of pressure you describe, leaving them powerless to make the necessary checks is absolutly ludicrous!
Knowingly putting tenants into an unsafe property is a criminal offence but find me a tenant who is willing to go to the Health and Safety Executive to complain. We can’t!
Sharon
I’ve been talking to someone over Twitter. I picked up on the conversation after realising that they hadn’t had a gas safety check for over 6 years.
I advised her to speak to the local authority who eventually came round when harassment was also brought into the equation.
The long and the short of it is this. It has been accepted that the property they are living in is effectively uninhabitable. They are offered housing by the council but aren’t considered high enough up the list to actually get one. The Housing benefit is still being paid to the landlord. They can’t use the gas so have little or no cooking/heating facilities.. thankfully it is summer. what happens when winter comes again?
They can’t go the private route because they don’t have a deposit or a guarantor.
I know they are currently trying to get in touch with the local MP and constantly on at the council to get them out.
Any other ideas please let me know so that I can pass them on. Better still if you know of a landlord in Chesterfield area who would be willing to take them as tenants
Sandra first. There are too many variables in there for me to comment on the case Sandra. Different local authorities have different banding systems for re-housing too. And Chesterfield is a long way from the Old Kent road I’m afraid. Councils often have deposit bond schemes or other measures in place ot help people with no deposit and on benefits people can sometimes apply for Budgeting loans for deposits.
Sharon. My hope and prediction for the future is that council’s will work with landlords closely, helping them out in every area. No need for me to reiterate my views on the problems of enforcing action againts rogues. i think if council’s will forge alliances with the best landlrods and agents in their area the rogues will either gradually fall away or get with the programme if they want to stay in the business.
In September my lot have a landlords day we are running and I am doing a workshop with landlords to find out how we can best work together, how we can scratch each other’s backs.
Loosening up councils to work this way, which has recently happened with rule changes I honestly think is the most exciting area of housing to be in and I know loads of council staff feel the same way too, breaking away from being pseudo civil servants and into being quasi enterpeneurs, able to really change the way housing does its thang
Hi Ben,
I like your hope for councils to work with the best landlords. Personally I think its about time that the private sector landlord trade bodies put more effort into seeing the bigger picture. They seem to be effectively promoting their own accreditation schemes to the councils and this may well help HMO’s but this goes not nearly far enough.
I have done my bit in trying to get my council to communicate with me in that I have asked them to notify our managing agent when a property on this block is presented to them for acceptance on the Private Sector Leaseing Scheme and I am going to ask a neighbouring council to do the same. Time will tell whether they do so.
Any chance I can attend your workshop? Is it expensive?
It’s hard learning this on the fly!
Sharon
No its free. Going to be of interest to our council landlords really but you are welcome to turn up.
There is bound to be a mixed bag in terms of resposnses from councils at the moment. The culture of many years will be slow and patchy in it’s rate of change but I know enough people in different council’s who are gearing up for the challenge. Once publicity gets out about proactive (there’s an unusual word for councils) organisations making headway in this others will fall like dominoes. Thats how it works, they are reluctant to make the first move but when they see the water is lovely they will jump on in.
Rather than prosecuting rogues, you police from the inside by becoming the best and most respected and trusted agent in the business. Create an organsiation that peolpe would fall over themsleves to be part of.
Imagine an agent who had access to all the things that a council has acces to and a team who will bring all of that to bear to help landlords and tenants, not just be running around with a blue light on top of our heads threatening people with tothless legislation.
As Gary Glitter once sang “Do you wanna be in my gang?”……………..sorry, on reflection not a great metaphor
Hi Ben,
Thanks for allowing me to attend. Not a great metaphor? Funny though!
Again, I can see the merits in what you say. I guess it’s why accreditation is often seen as the way forward.
Sharon
I am not vastly surprised at all this. Local authorities aren’t model landlords themselves. I speak as a long leasehold tenant of an allegedly ‘good’ London local authority (not Westminster BTW).
My experience as a tenant has been: 1) still waiting, five years on, for external redecoration, repeatedly requested – my flat has damp caused by disrepair to the exterior; 2) had to bring a claim against LA for money they promised to contribute to a communal repair I carried out at their request (because I had builders on site) – subsequently denied all knowledge, LA solicitors instructed at no doubt vast expense, all for a £125 claim, and they settled before trial; 3) falling hazards? – well, we’ve had no lighting in the communal stairwell for several years. I use a torch; 4) several years of fungus in the communal hall due to a leak, which, after four years of complaining, took an hour to repair.
The thing is, the council doesn’t enforce HHSRS against itself.