{"id":6106365,"date":"2025-09-15T14:57:53","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T13:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/?p=6106365"},"modified":"2025-09-15T14:58:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T13:58:19","slug":"landlords-renters-rights-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/news\/landlords-renters-rights-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Landlords Left Behind: The One-Sided Approach of the Renters\u2019 Rights Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am going to say something here that probably won\u2019t go down well among some Labour supporters, but the Renters\u2019 Rights Bill<\/a>, which is only days away from getting Royal Assent, has been crafted with an incorrect assumption at its core.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Bill<\/a>, which currently runs to 258 pages, will vastly increase landlords\u2019 and property managers\u2019 responsibilities and duties.<\/p>\n

Labour housing minister Matthew Pennycook\u2019s premise when selling this to fellow MPs in parliament has centred on the assumption that too many landlords are rogue, criminal, lazy or avaricious and therefore shouldn\u2019t be trusted with their tenants\u2019 welfare.<\/p>\n

This is particularly true, he has pointed out on many occasions, when it comes to property standards and evictions.<\/p>\n

While for anyone who reports, like me, on the private rented sector, there is much truth in what he claims, given the many council reports on their PRS housing stock I\u2019ve seen over the years, which often reveal that up to 40% of local rented homes aren\u2019t up to scratch.<\/p>\n

My beef with this approach is that it is one-sided. The Renters\u2019 Rights Bill does not in any way recognise that good landlords often have to pick the pieces, literally, when rogue, criminal or just idiotic tenants trash properties and\/or fall behind with their rent – too often with intent rather than because of difficult personal financial situations.<\/p>\n

During Pennycook\u2019s most recent speech in parliament he several times said \u201clet us leave no loopholes for rogue landlords\u201d and on 19 different occasions referred to \u2018greater protections\u2019 for tenants.<\/p>\n

But how many times did he refer to anti-social behaviour by tenants or \u2018rogue tenants\u2019 and protecting landlords from them? None.<\/p>\n

If anything, the Bill will make it harder, more time consuming and expensive for landlords to eject poorly-behaved tenants from properties. Because, while in the past properties could be repossessed relatively quickly via a \u2018no fault\u2019 or \u2018no reason\u2019 Section 21 notice, going forward landlords will need to gather evidence and present it to a court via the Section 8 process and then have their day in court.<\/p>\n

It is regrettable that the current Government sees the relationship between tenants and their landlords through this lens, particularly because it is going to impact many property investors\u2019 appetite to plough their own money into providing rented accommodation for others.<\/p>\n

It is fair to say that renters do need more protection from the worst elements of the private rented sector, but the pendulum is about to swing too much the other way, and rogue tenants will be enjoying the benefits of their new rights and protections for many years to come \u2013 at the expense of landlords.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am going to say something here that probably won\u2019t go down well among some Labour supporters, but the Renters\u2019 Rights Bill, which is only days away from getting Royal Assent, has been crafted with an incorrect assumption at its core. The Bill, which currently runs to 258 pages, will vastly increase landlords\u2019 and property… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4215,"featured_media":6106105,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,179,699,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6106365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buy-to-let-landlords","category-expert-advice","category-guestposts","category-uk-housing-market"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6106365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4215"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6106365"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6106365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6106367,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6106365\/revisions\/6106367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6106105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6106365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6106365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6106365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}