Labour wants councils to have the power to implement landlord licensing across their full boundaries, without requiring government consent.
Currently councils wanting whole-authority licensing must seek the consent of the Housing Secretary; in the past this has led to conflict, such as when Liverpool council wanted to have a licensing scheme for every single one of its private rental properties.
In the end a compromise saw Liverpool license 45,000 out of 55,000 private rental units, but Labour’s shadow housing secretary - Lisa Nandy - says councils should have the power to do this without requiring the green light from the government.
This is one of a string of demands from Nandy, contained in a letter sent to the new Housing Secretary, Simon Clarke; these have now also become Labour policy following a debate yesterday at the party's annual conference in Liverpool.
Labour says that if it wins the next General Election it will, within 100 days of wtaking office, implement many of the policies put forward in the Tories’ controversial Fairer Private Rented Sector White Paper but will also go much further in giving additional powers to tenants.
These include:
- End Section 21 evictions;
- Reduce eviction powers for landlords whose tenants are in arrears;
- Introduce four month notice periods;
- Examine scheme for ‘portable’ deposits making it easier for tenants to switch properties;
- Allow tenants to have pets;
- Permit renters to make ”reasonable alterations to a property”;
- Create a national register of landlords;
- Initiate a legally-binding decent homes standard in the private rental sector.
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Labour will kill the PRS 💀💀
They will just finish off what the present government have been doing
Nobody would let in those circumstances. This nonsense is forcing landlords to sell before the next general election.
A charter for bodgers
Andy Pandy Nandy at it again
I heard she's got a PHD in talking total and utter b0**0©k$
Should be lots of BTL's on the market soon so there's an opportunity to go to your local council to house people kicked out of the homes to access temporary accomodation. Until politicians start to understand the property market we going to get this rubbish
How could anyone possibly risk renting to a low income/vulnerable tenant knowing that if they can not pay the rent, they won’t be able to regain possession. Labour may not like landlords - so they’re planning to get rid of as many as possible but they have nothing in place to replace all the properties that will no longer be available for rent.
The only tenants that will have a chance of finding anything will need to have savings, guarantors, long term jobs, glowing landlord references, impeccable credit history, no pets etc etc to even have a hope of making the shortlist. This will be catastrophic for renters - landlords will just shrug, sell up and move on.
And those are the kind of tenants most likely to see through all the pro tenant hype and understand the harm being done to them and other decent tenants by both main parties.
Hopefully Truss's new right wing agenda party might eventually recognise the real way to help all decent tenants and landlords, but no chance for us Scottish Landlords any time soon!
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