Angela Rayner launches £1 billion scheme to tackle evictions

Reply to the comment left by Maureen Treadwell at 20/12/2024 - 16:28
That's right, satisfaction is high because on the whole most PRS landlords do a good job.

The reason councils needed their extra £1 billion from the magic-money-tree is because there is an imbalance between supply and demand and everything that government proposes to deal with rising rents that does not address the core problem only drives rents up.

If they really wanted to address the problem then they would:

(a) allow you to rent any EPC band property and make the system meaningful such that a band F property would command a much lower rent than a band A property. Let the market sort it out.

(b) allow small landlords to offset their finance costs against rents (at the very least for the most energy efficient properties without forcing them to install damaging technologies).

(c) eliminate the phrase 'rent control' from the vocabulary of government such that agents can go back to recommending that small landlords hold rents down a bit to encourage long-term tenancies rather than driving up rents for new lets because they won't be able to do it later.

(d) stop all proposals to give renters extra rights to stay without first sorting out the court system such that landlords can get their properties back from problem tenants and are not discouraged from renting them in the first place.

(e) stop imposing additional costs on landlords that do not significantly improve tenant safety. I think we all accept the need for gas safety certificates. I was not convinced that the recent imposition of mandatory EICRs created any significant extra benefit over and above your existing obligations to provide safe accommodation for your tenants. It just produced a gravy-train for electricians.

(f) stop pursuing inflationary policies that result in the BOE being forced to raise interest rates because more than half of rental properties are mortgaged and the majority of small landlords are unable to offset their interest payments against rents.

That £1 billion is the biggest sticking plaster ever.

Reply to the comment left by Mick Roberts at 20/12/2024 - 15:09You are right, Mick. Talking to LLs and correcting government policies won't cost them £1 billion either. They could spend some of it fixing the Court delays. Using an intelligent strategy clearly takes second place to bunging money around willy-nilly to make headlines!

The Tories were a disingenuous bunch when it came to the PRS. Osborne can’t really have been so thick as to believe that owner occupiers were taxed more than landlords. That was just nonsense.

Labour have missed the opportunity to go to the correct side of where the Tories ended up after Gove picked up the baton to beat landlords with.

They could have actually gone with the truth that the Tories had used small landlords supposed shortcomings as a cover for the abysmal failings in so many areas that ended up making the PRS completely dysfunctional.

Instead they have doubled down and gold plated ridiculous policies that - if the Tories had sincerely believed in would have been implemented in the near five year term they had to do it in.

Looking at the hopeless bunch of them still acting as though they are running an election campaign and none of them seemingly able to read the room as politicians, they will have to suffer the consequences of doubling down on more of what drove the PRS onto the rocks in the first place.

Again, I feel very sorry for tenants and the increasing number who can only aspire to be tenants, but this hopeless bunch will get the message loud and clear in under five years.

Reeves will find there is no growth from her business bashing budget but likely a recession, and Rayner will find her 1.5 million homes is just as far off as it was under the Tories when they were saying just the same. The boats keep coming, the bloke who can’t devise a strategy to approach a bacon sandwich will condemn us to power cuts by switching off gas generation at leat a decade too soon - presided over a millionaire who has his own special act of Parliament to exempt his own pension from his DPP days from the punitive 55% tax charge others were subject to and is totally and utterly oblivious to the reality of what is happening around him.