Welcome to our first Newsround for July, Let’s see what has caught our eye this week.
Calls grow to end insured protection deposit scheme
Generation Rent has this week launched a petition calling for the end of insured protection deposit schemes in which the landlord or agent holds the tenant’s deposit.
As opposed to a custodial deposit scheme, where the deposit is held by a scheme provider.
This follows on from last week, when Matthew Pennycook, Housing Minister said that the insured scheme is more open to fraud and gives advantage to the landlord. Generation Rent claim that this enables a landlord to exaggerate a claim and put more pressure onto a tenant to accept any claim damage.
They also claim that in 2019 custodial deposits were 32% more likely to be disputed than deposits that are in an insured scheme.
Eddie Hooker, Chief Executive of MyDeposits says
No impact assessment, consultation paper or research has been published by the government to demonstrating its that insured schemes present a materially greater fraud risk than custodial schemes.
An insured scheme is subject to statutory safeguards.
Strangely, many landlords have told me that they use an insured scheme as it allows them to refund the deposit money to tenants quicker than it takes to get the money paid out from custodial schemes. Have Generation Rent taken this into account, I wonder?
Councils can’t enforce blanket HMO license conditions, says Upper Tribunal
The Portsmouth & District Private Landlords Association (PDPLA) have won a significant victory over Portsmouth Council over the conditions they have been imposing on landlords in HMO licenses, which have resulted in many small HMO landlords selling up.
The decision confirms that Councils cannot, through license conditions:
- prescribe the detailed content of tenancy agreements
- make it an offence to provide documents unless the request is made via a 235 notice
- require landlords to provide tenants’ personal information to the Council
- apply discretionary licence conditions on a blanket basis across all HMOs – ‘standard’ conditions must be supported by property-specific reasoning
Landlord Simon Fletcher, who took the case to tribunal, said:
We hope this decision will be noted across the country as a large number of councils impose conditions on a blanket policy basis without proper justification.
This is too little too late to make any real difference to the overall PRS landlord exodus; but we hope that it will prove useful in helping to ensure responsible and experienced landlords remaining in the sector are not overly burdened by over-zealous councils.
PRS Database fees to fund enforcement – claim
Matthew Pennycook, the Housing Minister, has this week stated that in order to continue to help support councils in carrying out enforcement in addition to providing £41.12 million to local housing authorities for financial help to undertake enforcement, the government’s long-term objective is to have a sustainable fund for enforcement ‘based on future Private Rented Sector Database fee revenues’.
This could mean that fees from the new PRS Database may fund future council enforcement as they continue to give more powers to local councils. Fees for the new database have yet to be announced.
Snippets
Quiet enjoyment vs essential access: Striking the right
Landlord fined after repeatedly ignoring improvement notices
Latest licensing costs for landlords revealed
Fraudsters target homes in title hijack attempts
Government claims tribunal rent system protects tenants from arrears
Govt warns landlords and agents against Right to Rent discrimination
See also our Quick News Updates on Landlord Law
Newsround will be back again next week
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