Consumer champion Martin Lewis - the man behind the Money Saving Expert website and TV shows - has backed the Renters Reform Bill.
In particular he has backed the concept of a compulsory redress scheme which individual landlords must join.
He says: “We have long needed a statutory single private rental Ombudsman - so I’m pleased to see it in the legislative plans.
“After all, disputes are often between two individuals - landlord and tenant – rather than between companies, so it can be very personal and difficult to sort.
“Crucially, it won’t be voluntary, all private landlords will be required to join the Ombudsman, and it will have legal authority to compel apologies, take remedial action and pay compensation.”
Meanwhile the Bill - introduced into the House of Commons today - continues to arouse controversy in Tory backbenches.
Marco Longhi, Conservative MP for Dudley North, told the Daily Telegraph that the Bill was “like wielding a hammer to crack a nutshell”.
He is quoted as saying: “It’s a disaster. You will see huge swathes of landlords leave the market, and this has been happening for several months already.”
Longhi - a private landlord himself - says: “The government doesn’t realise how much it depends on private sector landlords. These properties landlords are now selling aren’t even affordable for the majority of renters, so where are these people going to go?”
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I've just given the Bill a quick scan on the Gov website and it confirms the Conservative Government's intention that all PRS stock will have to meet the Decent Homes Standards. This confirms the 'direction of travel' of EPC Grade C as a minimum for all PRS houses and flats. This spells the end of expensive to heat/fuel poverty EPC Grade D and Grade E housing units. When I checked with my local MP she confirmed that The Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard Bill is now almost confirmed as Law, with all domestic rental stock required to to EPC Grade C by December 2028, latest. So we've got 5 1/2 years to insulate the walls, loft or roof and install a cost effective heating system into our units. This is clearly best done when the unit is vacant and in-between tenancies.
The American Petroleum Institute's Stanford research paper from 1968, confirming that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, would suggest that investing in a new gas combi boiler is not a wise move. Dimplex Quantum electric night storage heaters or Sinclair electric air-con splits (that provide winter heating via simple internal cassettes) seem like the obvious way forward for us. I've commissioned up-to-date draft EPCs from my energy assessor and asked him prepare draft predicted EPCs to find the least expensive pathway to make my rental units both EPC Grade C AND All Electric. It's a cost but so far all pretty straightforward
All electric? Be careful. Our Assessor told us he did an EPC on a house with a brand new electric boiler, which was not recognised on the matrix so scored 0!!! How can one assessor say double glazing is average and another good? I believe the EPC legislation needs a radical overhaul and reassessment of grading
The bill has not been published. Parliament has not seen it so more Gibbons gibberish.
In the same week government is about to announce net migration last year of what is rumoured to be as high as 900,000, they introduce a piece of legislation that will reduce the amount of homes avialable for people to rent. As john redwood put it on the today program, we need to build a small city each year just to house new migrants let alone deal with the massive backlog.
Its going to be carnage, many of my clients have had emails from LLs in the last 24 hours asking them to explain the implications of removing section 21. Final straw for many, and mainly because they dont want to take the time to understand how to get their properties back through some convoluted new court system. Easier just to sell up before the CGT threshold halves again.
(Gibbons is a chatbot.)
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