By Vivienne Russell | 18 July 2013
Local authorities should gain new powers to ‘drive out’ bad landlords from the private rented housing sector and reclaim Housing Benefit when property conditions fall below legal standards, MPs said today.
The communities and local government select committee warned that the sector was unlikely to play a full role in meeting housing need so long as bad landlords operated without effective checks.
It said the private rented sector was ‘still relatively immature’ and did ‘not yet offer many renters what they are looking for’.
Committee chair Clive Betts said: ‘I want to see renting as an attractive alternative to owner occupation. Bad landlords should be driven out of the sector.’
He called for clarification of the ‘bewildering regulatory framework’ that had grown up around renting.
The committee recommended that local authorities should be given powers to recoup Housing Benefit payments where a landlord is convicted of letting property below legal standards. The money raised would be used to finance enforcement work.
Betts said: ‘It is unacceptable that taxpayers’ money is being used to pay Housing Benefit to landlords for sub-standard properties. Where this occurs and the landlord is convicted, local authorities should be able to get that money back.’
He also urged greater freedom for councils to impose licensing regimes on landlords with ‘heavy penalties for non-compliance’, so that only those that meet sufficient standards be licensed to offer homes for rent in the area concerned.
The report called for measures to end a ‘vicious circle where, in some areas, over-inflated levels of Housing Benefit drive up rents, in turn increasing the Housing Benefit bill still further’.
To do this, it said the Local Housing Allowance should be reviewed to assess whether there was scope for more flexibility in its setting, with local authorities incentivised to reduce the Housing Benefit bill by being allowed to retain any savings for investment in affordable housing.
Developing a strong private rental market would also require a ‘crackdown on the unreasonable and opaque fees charged not only by a few rogues but by many well-known high street [letting] agents’, the report said.Longer tenancies should be encouraged, but with quicker evictions in cases of default, together with ‘more systematic, less arbitrary approaches to setting and increasing rents’.
