6th
Oct 2021
The Rental Reform’s White Paper could be delayed as the minister responsible says it is still being discussed with colleagues for finalising its details as they are still in the “middle of meetings and consultations”.
Eddie Hughes, the housing and homelessness minister at the newly-named Ministry of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, has just announced to a fringe meeting at the Tory , that his team are “in roundtables” and many online discussions with various groups.
Hughes said: “We’re reaching out to all elements of the sector to try to make sure there are no unintended consequences” he told the event, organised by campaigning charity Shelter and the Onward think tank.
Hughes also stated: “We want to get this right. For example if we start from a position of ‘Landlords Bad/Tenants Good’ then the approach might be too stringent for landlords and they’ll be forced out of the market. We don’t want that.”
However he refused to state whether the government’s White Paper will include recommendations for a national compulsory landlord register: “I’m not ruling anything in or out”. He did say that he would make sure that councils would get up to speed with how many landlords are in their areas.
He confirmed that the lifetime deposit system so tenants are able to move far easier between rented ‘residences’ is a certainty.
The minister also stated that the White Paper would look at Section 21 but he reassured that the powers will remain essential in principle with somewhat ‘appropriate’ safeguards.
Hughes called the White Paper and the consequent legislation as “a very significant piece of policy.”
In the meeting landlords and tenants posed questions to the minister and in spite of a small support for Shelter’s demands, the majority were extremely critical of the government’s past series of punitive tax and legislation changes, however it was also pointed out that the PRS is in a far healthier state than the social sector.
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