Renters (Reform) Bill- The Missing Bits
The Renters (Reform) Bill is claimed to have provisions relating to the Decent Homes Standard and also bans on landlords refusing to let to tenants with children or animals. These reforms were in the original Fairer Renting White Paper and the Secretary of State has talked about them a fair bit.
These changes were supposed to do two key things.
The first was to apply the Decent Homes Standard to the private rented sector. This is already used in the social sector as a means of measuring property standards but it has no application in the PRS. The intention was to require this and to require local authorities to enforce it. However, it was not a popular idea with many as it largely replicated existing standards and requirements without adding much additional value.
The second obligation was to prevent landlords from refusing to rent to tenants with children or who were on housing benefit. However, this is a hard thing to legislate for as there are bound to be justifications for not letting to children, where a property is too small for example. Likewise, many landlords would assert that refusing to let to people on benefits is a fair response to court delays and the insistence of many local authorities on asking tenants to hold on in the property as long as they can.
The thing is there is nothing in the Bill as it currently sits before Parliament about either of these two items. The DLUHC guidance note on the Bill says that the government remains “fully committed to implementing these reforms” and that it will “bring forward legislation at the earliest opportunity”.
The thing is that a “full commitment” would indicate doing this in the current Bill, and that would also be the “earliest opportunity”. So that suggests slightly less than a “full” commitment. The other possibility, which was suggested to me by DLUHC staffers was that these provisions are to be inserted in the RRB as it passes through Parliament. I suspect that this is actually the intention of the government as there appear to be other things missing too. For example, there is nothing that I can see that actually allows PBSA student accommodation to exempt itself from this legislation, despite the comments in the guidance on tenancy reform. Therefore the government is going to have to make further amendments to the Bill or make substantial amendments in regulations.
This is a real annoyance. There is nothing worse for lawyers than legislation that is claimed to do one thing and actually does something different. But in practice it hurts everyone. Landlords and tenants have a false picture of their rights and enormous amounts of court time are wasted in dealing with mistaken understandings. Alternatively, if the plan is to slot these things in later then the inevitable question is why has the government published an unfinished Bill? It again gives a misleading picture and also evades Parliamentary scrutiny as amendments then get slipped in after parts of Parliament have considered the Bill. That is ultimately anti-democratic and often leads to legislation being passed with significant errors in it. The slotting of tenancy deposit provisions into the Housing Act 2004 at the last minute led to a large number of costly cases in the High Court and Court of Appeal and then to the provisions being amended twice in further legislation.