I wrote a blog post recently on the landlords from hell program from Jon Snow and Channel Four. Followed by another post about letting agent regulation.
People like Ben and myself often feel like we are shouting in a void, so it is good to see a few other reports coming out.
For example this report here is a BBC post about an investigation into letting agents and landlords flouting tenants rights, particularly with regard to tenancy deposits.
Then this lettings today post reports MP Graham Jones requesting an “urgent statement” from housing minister Grant Shapps “on the crisis of rogue landlords in the private sector”.
Its encouraging to see that the idea of rogue landlords is starting to penetrate Westminster. The trouble is, for the lettings industry anyway, the danger of overreaction and inappropriate hasty legislation.
The tenancy deposit legislation was hasty, a late amendment to the Housing Act 2004. And look what happened to that!
But effective overregulation can be worse. After all the decline of the rented industry prior to the 1990s was in part due to the strong rights given to tenants in legislation from about 1915, which made renting deeply unattractive to investors.
Before this legislation (brought in during the first world war), about 80% of us lived in rented accommodation. By the time the law changed again in 1989, this had gone down to about 8%.
Reports are not really the answer – after all the Law Commision spent years compiling a report carrying out a huge consultation exercise, which has been almost comletely ignored.
My view is that greater efforts should be made to enforce more effectively the laws we already have, coupled with agent regulation. But more effective enforcement will inevitably need more funding for the enforcers. Which is the big problem.
But surely there is a benefit to society of getting rid of the rogue operators and dodgy housing, which can be costed and used to justify this expense? What do you think?
And judges must take cases more seriously if it is to deter rogues. £200 and £300 fines are a joke for people using violence to intimidate people in their homes and flouting the law.
We do 8 or 10 injunctions a month to stop harassments and reinstate illegally evicted tenant. In half those cases the landlords ignore it and yet despite the first line of the injunction clearly stating they can be committed to prison if they don’t comply the judges just give them a mild telling off.
Shelter are pressing for councils to prosecute more but they should be applying pressure on the judiciary. If they start taking it seriously TROs like me might deem prosecution worth the extra time and resources
I agree Ben, much of the problem lies in the punishment not being effective. Sorry but I not convinced passing more regulations helps when the basic problem is that the current regulations are not being followed.
By definition, people who are not following the rules now are not necessarily going to follow another rule. Passing a rule because a current rule is not effective needs careful consideration. After all, if they get one of Ben’s derisory fines of £200 for not being registered, what is the difference? They are simply fined for a different offence.
We should also look at other options. For example if the landlord unlawfully evicted, would it be possible to get a Proceeds of Crime order to recover all the rent paid by the following tenant as without the unlawful eviction they would not have been able to collect the rent from the new tenant?
I think many in society are appalled, not just in housing, about what is perceived as lenient sentencing.
I am not for passing any more regulation David, apart from compulsory regulation of agents.
My argument is the unwieldy-ness of it all. PFEA breaches are criminal offences, therefore the standard of evidence is very high. Plus many times the tenant has behaved helpfully in response which can make it very difficult.
A recent case I recall on nearly legal was of a tenant who won about £12,000 in damages but then had it knocked down to £2,000 because of their own behaviour.
My manifesto is:-
agent regulation.
courts to impose better fines.
civil remedies made clearer and easier for tenants to use.
If that was in place it would my job as prosecutor of landlrod tenant law matters much more easy to do and would result in real solutions. Shelter’s campaign doesnt address the solution properly and looks to many people as if it is the council’s who are at fault or just being lax. Whereas the people doing the job are just too overburdened with rogue landlords and trying to operate in a system that doesnt actually support action
That sounds spot on to me Ben. I wonder also if there is any room to consider a different standard of proof for housing related offences. Not much good having an offence on the statute books if it is so difficult to prove that it is impossible to use.
Maybe a different category of offence, say from murder and burglary and rape.
Perhaps it could be called a public wrong or something, rather than a crime, and be dealt with differently.
My tenants are very happy, my properties are well maintained. They only leave when they are moving on, change of job, buying a house, end of studies etc.
Private renting is a market place. If a shop sells junk or a hotel is a dump then less people go there again. They lose business & either go bust or have to improve.
Why is it tenants don’t move to somewhere better in the same way. This is what puzzles me. There’s no law that says a tenant has to stay somewhere he’s not happy with.
Move to somewhere better for heavens sake.
If all tenants did that the slumlords would go out of business wouldn’t they.
As for mould. That’s usually due to the tenant drying clothes in the flat cooking showering bathing yet never opening windows. I know from experience. Mould can be ‘tenant specific’.
AS for tenants from hell. Why does it take 6 months to get them out ?
The laws weighted heavily in their favour.
I don’t condone bad landlords, but the Dispatches programme was biased.
Hi Pobinr, thanks for your comment. What you say is fair enough, but the trouble is that there is a shortage of housing at the present time which means that many tenants cannot find anywhere else to move on to.
If there were enough housing then the bad landlords would be less of a problem, as people would avoid them, as you say.
The timing for evicting tenants depends on a number of things – including whether a notice needs to be served first, how busy the court is, delays in getting a bailiffs appointment, delays caused by errors in the paperwork etc. It can take six months, can be less and sometimes can be longer.
Tessa
I tenant can trash a property in five minutes. Whether it takes 3 months or 6 months to evict them is immaterial. It’s far too long !
As a Landlord I perceive the problem from a different perspective. In a block of flats a tenant (not mine) torched his flat after four attempts on one night. The fire service was called on each occasion. It transpired that he had already served time for arson but nevertheless was bailed to remain living in the same block with a friend. He then torched another flat, his excuse was that he went in to put out the fire, an excuse which was believed by the police and magistrates.
It took a full six months to evict the person who meanwhile endangered the lives of 100 other families. Landlords need some tools with which to effectively manage bad tenants and the present law does not help.
By all means licence landlords but at the same time let us have a licence for tenants.
David I agree with you, with tenants like this it can be difficult. There are plenty of rogue tenants as well as rogue landlords. Nobody would deny that.
What we have here is both landlords and tenants complaining that the law is not working for anyone, and with that I also agree.
But the problem is wider than the application of law in a specific circumstance. If it were made easier for landlord’s to evict tenants the rogues would use the slackened law to oik people out inapproriately. In the case that you mention (and I’m using this to play devils advocate, not insult you) if the courts and police believed the tenant what further proof did the landlord have that discounted the accepted version?
Lets not forget that tenant protection was instigated in 1915 after a swathe of tenants being evicted from properties without due process while their menfolk were away fighting the first world war.
I meet loads of lovely landlrods with god awful tenants but the law is as it is to protect tenants from the considerable amount of rogues there are out there still.
If you are a landlord trying to evict a tenant the law must seem all on the tenant’s side but if you are a tenant being illegaly evicted, often with Police assistance and the courts dont take the matter seriously, the law would seem all on the landlord’s side.
Its a question of perspective allied to circumstance
The way the Judges look at it is that depriving someone, anyone, of their home is a very serious matter indeed. Which of course it is.
If a possession order is to be made, and the defendant made homeless, the landlords case must be properly prepared and presented.
This is I think a reasonable viewpoint.
I do have some sympathy with the length of time on possession actions sometimes though Tessa. I dont think the procedure should be tinkered with, in terms of necessary evidence and time to prepare a defence but months are added just because of bureacracy and court diaries.
I just met a nice old landlady this afternoon with an awful bully of a tenant who she is scared of. She went to a solicitor and paid him £150 to draft and serve a section 21(4)a: He got the end date wrong but there was a saving clause but the judge rejected it and the poor woman, who has been doing everything by the book is right back at the start, because her lawyer made a mistake and the Judge was being a hard-arse
In response to Ben’s comments concerning the “arson” tenant, there is a vast void between knowing that someone did the deed and proving beyond all reasonable doubt. Often the courts and the police have to reject a case because of the very stringent requirement for proof.
Specifically the tenant set off the fire alarm four times in the space of 6 hours with the fire appliance attending four times at a cost of £500 a time so I am told by the fire officer. The tenant had served time for Arson. The tenant was the only person injured in the second fire (smoke inhalation) which was in an empty flat where the front door had been forced. In this case a fire appliance and an ambulance attended. There was a smell of petrol in the flat. Enough circumstantial evidence to convince a thinking person, but not enough evidence to prove beyond all reasonable doubt in a court of law.
It is even difficult to prove a civil case on the balance of probabilities which is why the advice is always to go for a section 21 rather than section 8, or perhaps issue both just in case the section 8 fails. There should be a quick way to evict a tenant who is misbehaving, including not paying rent which morally is theft.
A good landlord should be able to differentiate between a bad tenant and inadequate tenants such as the old lady I have who refuses to flush the toilet and has to have the drains cleared every three months. She will never be evicted by me not even with a section 21, I will just pay a plumber once in a while to attend to the drains.
The law is totally ineffective; in 20 years with 50 properties and hundreds of County Court Judgements I have NEVER had a tenant pay a penny. I have managed to evict problem tenants who were making life intolerable for all their neighbours but only after the near mandatory six months and at great expense.
And in response to Ben’s comments about judges, there are far too many who get picky about inconsequential technicalities (and why does the law require these technicalities) rather than consider the case on its merits.
An Englishman’s home is his castle – but only if he pays the rent and respects the property.
And David that is exactly my point, just from the other side of the fence.
Your friend couldnt get justice against an arsonist tenant and I can never get justice against a rogue landlord
Might this chap be a ‘tenant from hell’?
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/bizarre/horny-man-assault-bust