This article is an external press release originally published on the Landlord News website, which has now been migrated to the Just Landlords blog.
An industry peer has moved to lambast the Right To Rent legislation, suggesting that the Government is largely unaware of its impact.
Mr John Perry, senior policy advisor at the Chartered Institute of Housing, feels that the Government must rethink the scheme before it rolls out to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Application
Writing in The Guardian, Mr Perry said that no one knows if the Right to Rent bill is achieving its objective or if it even being applied whatsoever.
Perry wrote: ‘The Home Office has admitted it cannot monitor the scheme and it’s a fair bet given the limited publicity that at least a proportion of England’s 1.8m private landlords are still completely unaware of it.’[1]
‘Refugees who have been accepted in the UK often have to wait many weeks for documents to prove it – and many become homeless because they can’t get either a social or a private tenancy. Meanwhile British people can also be affected if they have no passport or other accepted proof of UK residence, and there are a raft of other circumstances that could mean a person may not satisfy the checks,’ he warned.[1]
Housing chief slams Right To Rent
Checks
At present, Perry thinks that there are 11,300 daily Right To Rent checks, but as of December 2016, there were only 654 individuals without documents attempting to rent.
Concluding, Mr Perry said: ‘The additional work by landlords was estimated by the government to cost a staggering £4.7m a year. It’s time for the government to seriously reconsider the impact of right to rent on vulnerable tenants and would-be tenants before it is rolled out to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It’s simply not good enough to claim that the scheme has a deterrent effect when the proven benefits are so limited and there are regular reports of the damage being caused.’[1]
[1] https://www.lettingagenttoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2017/2/right-to-rent-housing-chief-says-its-not-good-enough
