The Housing & Planning Act 2016

Private Rented Sector Homes & the Impact of New Legislation

• The Government has identified the significant impact that rogue landlords can have on the standard of housing in the private rented sector and has proposed a number of legislative changes to help local authorities tackle rogue landlords. Because of the referendum, we are waiting for more guidance on the detail but we are aware that new powers are likely to include:-Introduction of Banning Orders. This will enable landlords to be banned from operating and renting out properties. Details of what constitutes an “offence” and duration of any ban are yet to be determined
• Provision of a national database of rogue landlords — this will be centrally controlled but each local authority will be able to update the database and identify rogue landlords who may be based in other areas but also operating across authority boundaries. How this will be received, or more importantly, managed, is to be seen. How will privacy & Human Rights affect the way this is managed?
• Rent Repayment Orders — these are to be extended to cover offences other than purely licensing and be used as an extra financial penalty against landlords
• Introduction of Financial penalties . The local authority will have the opportunity to consider the imposition of a civil penalty where a landlord breaches specified legislation as opposed to taking a prosecution. This is likely to see a maximum penalty of £30K and the money recovered can be retained by the authority to be re-used in the housing field.
• Electrical Safety — likely introduction of increased requirements on landlords in regards to the electrical safety within their properties. Currently, this is referred to as a “grey area”. Many agents and landlords do not understand that legislation exists in relation to electrical safety and portable appliances, yet the “wooliness” with which the legislation was written has caused problems.
• Data Sharing and the introduction of processes that will allow local authorities to access landlord details and information held by the Tenancy Deposit Schemes to help improve intelligence. Again, there may be concerns about how this data is shared and what impact it will have on the individual.
• There also initiatives within the Act relating to Client Money Protection (CMP), Abandonment and this is managed and HMO legislation.

It may be late 2017 before all parts of the Act are enabled.