In a report today the Public Accounts Committee says it
is “too difficult for renters to realise their legal
right to a safe and secure home” and that local
authorities - constrained by a lack of support
from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and
Communities (DLUHC) and its approach to licensing
landlords - do not have the capacity and
capability to provide "appropriate and consistent
protection for private renters”.
The private rented sector in England has doubled in size in the
last 20 years and now houses 11 million people. 13% (589,000) of
privately rented properties currently pose “a
serious threat to the health and safety of renters” -
costing the NHS an estimated £340 million each year – though
enforcement in the sector “is a postcode lottery …with 21% of all
privately rented homes in one region estimated to be severely
unsafe”.
Tenants face increasing rents, a rising number of
low-earners and families renting long-term, and the prevalence of
“no-fault” evictions leaving households at risk of homelessness,
and when trying to enforce their legal right to a safe and secure
home private renters face an inaccessible, arduous and
resource-intensive court process and the risk of retaliatory
eviction. There is also evidence of unlawful
discrimination in the sector, with 25% of landlords
unwilling to let to non-British passport holders and 52%
unwilling to let to tenants who receive Housing Benefit.
The Committee says DLUHC has “only made piecemeal
legislative changes in recent years, and in doing so has made the
regulatory system even more overly complex and difficult to
navigate for tenants, landlords and local authorities” and is
concerned that plans to address problems in the
sector in a White Paper later in the year will be
hampered by DLUHC’s poor understanding of the issues in
the sector including overcrowding, harassment and
evictions, and the actual effect of
regulation.
Chair's comments
, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee,
said:
“Unsafe conditions, overcrowding, harassment, discrimination, and
dodgy evictions are still a huge issue in the private rented
sector.
And yet the sector is a growing provider of homes
and rents keep rising meaning that safe,
suitable housing is too often out of reach for
renters. Renters with a problem are faced with a complex and
costly redress system which is not fit for purpose and many
tenants give up at the first hurdle.
We need to see a change in balance. We expect DLUHC to
produce the promised White Paper in a timely and
effective fashion and start to turn around its record
on addressing the desperate housing crisis in this country.”
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