Government consults on national landlord register
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The government has today launched a consultation paper to discuss proposals to introduce a national register of private landlords.
The proposals form the government’s response to the Rugg Review, an independent review of the private rented sector by Julie Rugg and David Rhodes published last October.
An independent organisation would run the register, which would be based online with an equivalent telephone service for landlords without internet access.
Landlords or their letting agents would have to register each year and pay a small administration cost in return for a landlord registration number.
Data likely to be included on the proposed register would involve the landlord’s name address and the addresses of the landlord’s property holdings.
But the National Landlords Association says a similar landlord registration scheme exists in Scotland with research from Shelter Scotland showing that one in four rental properties are not registered.
David Salusbury, chairman of the NLA, says that although he sees the benefits of trying to root out rogue landlords a register may not be the appropriate way to go about it.
He says: “The NLA would be opposed to the collection of rental property addresses.
“We consider this to be overly intrusive and of no direct benefit to tenants or landlords.”
Salusbury says landlords already face a heavy regulatory burden as it is.
He adds: “In the current economic climate, the last thing good landlords need is to feel penalised.
“If a register is introduced it needs to focus totally on pushing up standards and rooting out rogue landlords.
“We will be looking for assurances that a register would be properly resourced and be of direct and immediate benefit to landlords and tenants.”
Other proposals included in today’s government consultation paper include mandatory regulation of all letting and managing agents, and protection for tenants where landlords default on their mortgage payments.
Readers' comments (2)
London Landlord | 4 Feb 2010 0:33 am
True. I agree with NLA. I think the government is being stupid. Look at the way housing benefit works now, they got LHA, which is a good idea, but the payment made to tenant is not being paid to landlords. So what option does that leaves to the landlord, if the rent is not paid, what can a landlord do?
The government lives in a fairyland, they dont realise a lot of unemployed tenant have finance problems and many are also on drugs or have gambling addiction. Government need to wake up. Some of the tenants are claiming housing benefit and not paying the rent, shouldn't that be seen as benefit fraud?
Secondly the register for landlord will not work. Best thing to do is have a ombudsman to work by resolving issues for tenants and landlord. And the deposit protection scheme should be scrapped, the deposit protection scheme is not working and its very unlikely the landlord register will work.
Just open a ombudsman for tenants and landlords to resolve issues, scrap the deposit protection scheme, scrap paying housing benefit paid directly to the tenant, pay the housing benefit direct to the landlord, this will reduce the fraud.
Create a database for all non UK citizens. The database to contain all European Union national as well as all foreign nationals to ensure they dont cheat the housing benefit system. I know there are lots of fraud due to the government paying housing benefit to the tenant, now the tenant dont pay the rent, and secondly once they get tenancy agreement then they stop paying the rent and claim housing benefit, so the landlord evicts them, however the tenant use mail redirection letter with the post office services to redirect all housing benefit cheques to other address and they cash the cheque, when the innocent landlords have no idea whats going on as he have already evicted the tenant and knows nothing about the housing benefit claim as the landlord is not informed the tenant is claiming the housing benefit. Now why should the landlords get punished???
Look at the tenant, the tenant offers no security, they just run away with rent, furnitures, and appliances, now when these tenants steal and leaves without paying rent then the landlord have to be very worried next time s/he rents out as they dont want same things happening again. So get the tenant sorted, get the law sorted to protect landlords too just like there is law overprotecting the tenants then see whether the landlord follows and works ethically.
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Anonymous | 6 Dec 2010 6:37 am
hi have rented property i went landlord registration unfortuntly i had other debt proplem so they desided to fail me landlord regsister than they wrote to my tenant not pay rent the tenant living free am still paying mortgages to save my property since this landlord regsister became in power am financialy been hit hard in england there are no landlord regs why is it still law in scotland one law for english one law for scottish its not justice the tenants are takin full advantages and landlords are suffering hards
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