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More than £4 million of funding for councils to tackle
criminal landlords across England.
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Move to empower councils to stamp out exploitative
landlords and enable good landlords to thrive.
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Builds on strong action already taken by government to
drive up standards in the rental sector.
More than 100 councils across England have been awarded a share
of over £4 million to crack down on criminal landlords and
letting agents, Housing Secretary MP has
announced today (3 January 2020).
The majority of landlords provide decent homes for their tenants,
but a small minority persist in breaking the law, making tenants’
lives a misery by offering inadequate or unsafe housing.
The new funding will be used by councils to take enforcement
action against these landlords, and advise tenants of their
housing rights.
This action will continue the government’s ongoing work to make
the private rented sector fairer and stamp out criminal practices
for good.
Among the councils to benefit from the funding are:
- 21 councils across Yorkshire and Humberside – to train over
100 enforcement officers across the region to ensure standards
are being met by landlords
- Northampton – to create a ‘Special Operations Unit’ to
enforce against the very worst landlords responsible for over 100
homes in the town
- Thurrock – to work with the care service to ensure the most
vulnerable young tenants are in decent, well-maintained homes
- Greenwich – to trial new technology to identify particularly
cold homes to ensure renters are warm over the winter period
Housing Secretary Rt Hon MP said:
This government will deliver a better deal for renters. It’s
completely unacceptable that a minority of unscrupulous
landlords continue to break the law and provide homes which
fall short of the standards we rightly expect - making lives
difficult for hard-working tenants who just want to get on with
their lives.
Everyone deserves to live in a home that is safe and secure and
the funding announced today will strengthen councils’ powers to
crack down on poor landlords and drive up standards in the
private rented sector for renters across the country.
Councils already have strong powers to force landlords to
make necessary improvements to a property through use of a range
of measures, including civil penalties and banning orders for the
worst offenders.
The grants will support a range of projects to enable councils to
make the best use of these powers. This will include trialling
innovative ideas, sharing best practice and targeted enforcement
where we know landlords shirk their responsibilities.
Today’s announcement demonstrates government’s commitment to
helping good landlords to thrive, and hard-working tenants across
the country get the homes they deserve – creating a housing
market that works for everyone.
This government has committed to delivering a fairer deal for
renters and empower them whilst also giving greater peace of
mind.
We will end no fault evictions, so that landlords can’t remove
tenants without good reason, and introduce Lifetime Rental
Deposits so renters don’t have to save up for a new deposit while
their money is tied up in an old one.
There are more than 4.5 million households in the private rented
sector in England, with recent statistics showing that 82% of
private renters are satisfied with their accommodation.
The fund will help councils take on the most common challenges
that stand in the way of tackling poor standards in the private
rented sector, including:
- encouraging positive landlord/tenant/local authority
relationships, particularly with vulnerable groups such as care
leavers
- the need for better information – on housing stock, and on
landlords and agents operating in their areas
- data sharing between authorities and agencies – identifying
and bringing together different data sets to enable better
enforcement targeting which protects the most vulnerable tenants
- internal ‘ways of working’ – improving housing-specific legal
expertise, in-house communication between teams, and tools and
strategies to effectively implement policy
- innovative software – for enforcement officers to record
their findings, gather evidence and streamline the enforcement
process
A summary of funding for PRS Innovation and Enforcement Grant
projects can be viewed here:
