1^st Oct 2018

Industry association forces government to hold a second consultation into seeing what effect the ‘Right to Rent’ scheme has had upon the private rented sector's investors after calls had been made to suspend it.

The Home Office has told the association that on the 11th October its private rented sector consultation will be reconvened. The panel will discuss this in a House of Commons' meeting space to receive further feedback on 'Right to Rent' and how the sector has been affected by it. The meeting will be held a year after the panel was first assembled, and as of yet it has not consulted any organisation representing migrants or other parties that may be affected by the scheme.

The consultation will be open to the industry association to make its views known over their concerns with Right to Rent, and will voice many of their members' negative feedback.

Research held in 2017 showed that 42% of landlords were unlikely to take on tenants who do not have a British passport; however 76% of UK citizens do hold one.

Letting agents and landlords by law must check the immigration status of tenants and must inform the Home Office if they have ‘reasonable cause’ to believe that any of their tenants may not have the right to remain in the UK.

An association's representative said: "While we welcome the news the Home Office is keen to re-engage with the sector, we want to see them take bold action. Would-be tenants who are legally entitled to live in the UK, but struggle to prove it, are being denied homes and we believe the time has come to suspend this unfair scheme."


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