Encouraging Responsible Letting
Recommendations:
On 14 August 2008 we published our final proposals on better regulation of the private rented sector in the report Housing: Encouraging Responsible Letting. A press release is also available.
The project, which arises out of our previous work on housing law reform and tribunals, aims to identify and address regulatory challenges in the private rented sector. This is the first project undertaken jointly with the Welsh Assembly Government (housing is a policy area devolved to the National Assembly for Wales).
This project is not proposing major changes to the law. Rather, it examines ways in which the current law can be made more effective. There is a great deal of law that applies to the sector, but much of it does not work as Parliament intended. As a result, the standards set by the law are often not met, particularly in relation to the physical condition of housing. In turn, these failures contribute to the sector suffering from a poor reputation which, arguably, gets in the way of it playing as full a part as it should in providing housing.
The report recommends a programme of staged reforms based on principles of smart regulation. Following responses to our consultation paper, we propose a system of self-regulation designed to enhance voluntary initiatives already in place, leaving open the option of future reform to create a compulsory system. It is intended that implementation of our proposals would harmonise and simplify of the current system in an affordable way, with benefits to both landlords and tenants.
