MPs return to the Commons today after a substantial Easter recess - and with progress on the Renters Reform Bill on the agenda.
Although no date has been set for the next stage - a Third Reading in the Commons - but just before Easter the housing minister Jacob Young wrote to Conservative MPs suggesting progress was imminent.
In that letter Young set out amendments to the Bill in a bid to reach a compromise - those amendments have been sharply criticised by activist groups Generation Rent and Renters Reform Coalition.
The amendments include:
- A ‘moratorium’ on tenants serving their two months’ notice in the first four months of a tenancy – with certain exceptions, such as significant hazards in the property, domestic abuse and death of a tenant. This will in effect mean a six-month initial period at the beginning of a tenancy during which both parties are committed;
- Assessment of the courts and barriers to possession prior to abolishing Section 21 for existing tenancies;
- Review local licensing schemes with an aim of reducing burdens on landlords, given the introduction of the property portal. This includes both selective and HMO licensing;
- Ensuring the new mandatory possession ground for student lets applies to any property let to students, rather than just HMOs, provided the landlord includes their intention to use this ground in the tenancy agreement;
- Ensuring that properties cannot be used as short-term lets after using the move in or selling grounds for the three-month period during which properties cannot be marketed or relet as long term rentals; and
- Amending local authorities’ homelessness prevention duty, so that it applies where a tenant has been served a valid Section 8 notice.
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Just in time to claim expenses no doubt
Our current political class have no class at all
I genuinely think Labour will have such a majority, that this will comes in asap when they take power. 🫣
Don’t be too sure. I recall Neil Pillock being supremely confident of winning an election. 😂
Also I notice the attacks on REFORM are increasing so something is worrying the politicians which can only be good. 😉
Keir and sunak are both members of the wef
They’re following orders and both are as bad as each other , neither are real politicians like in the old sense
Far too few proposed changes, and Minister Jacob Young has been sent a list of others needed, by an MP I wrote to.
Still now, all I got back was Jacob Young's letter, meant to be a reply?, ignoring all of my points (over 70 paras.) and just saying how good the Government was in its stupid RRB.
With muppets like him as ministers, to quote the old Dad's Army phrase "we're all doooomed". (That's tenants, especially the hard-working poorer ones without rich parents that Labour also ought to be thinking about- like NHS and Care staff, and landlords.)
The bill needs to come back in a form which will give landlords the confidence to let their properties. As it stands, and even with the proposed amendments, that is not the case.
There is also the key point that a general election could be called at any point and therefore the bill may not complete its journey through Parliament.
The bill needs to be scrapped.
It does Al! That would be the best thing that could happen.
However, Labour will bring in rental legislation.
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