9th May 2006

Welcoming the publication of the Law Commission proposals on rental tenures, ARLA, the Association of Residential Letting Agents, said they serve to highlight the missed opportunity of the cabinet reshuffle, announced on the same day.

Not since the Macmillan government and the concerns of post war housing regeneration has a designated Housing Minister been appointed to Cabinet, although many feel that housing should take its rightful place alongside education and health in the Cabinet Room, the Association states.

The announcement of the Law Commission proposals was heralded by the Commission as “a clean-sheet start” for renting homes. A Housing Minister of cabinet rank would have meant a clean sheet start for the whole of the housing sector, ARLA believes.

The key features of the Law Commission proposals are radical. They provide for just two forms of rental tenure instead of the wide variety of tenancies that still exist today. One new contract-type would apply to council, housing association tenants and landlords who provide long term security to their tenants. The other type will mirror the Assured Shorthold Tenancy, the most commonly used tenancy agreement in the private rented sector. There would be compulsory written contracts for all forms of rental.

Said Adrian Turner, Chief Executive of ARLA, “The Law Commission proposals are to be welcomed and we will study the draft bill with interest. The proposals will simplify tenancy contracts so that no one, landlord or tenant, inexperienced or vulnerable, need feel intimidated by paperwork or lose out because of the lack of it.”

Mr Turner believes that a single approved model tenancy contract for private rentals would also do away with the need for the whole “interpretation industry“, those who make it a business to find different interpretations for every clause and sub-clause written into even the best of today’s tenancy agreements.

This echoes the view put forward three years ago at the ARLA National Conference by Professor Martin Partington who led the Law Commission review.

Adrian Turner also expressed his Association’s disappointment that yet again a cabinet re-shuffle has failed to give housing the priority it deserves, rather than leave it as a sub-section of another department.

“Good housing is as important to the health and wealth of the national as education and the NHS and all sectors of residential housing are interlinked. The private rented sector carries within it property sales for buy to let, while buy to let is playing an increasing part in the supply of social housing through private sector leasing schemes,” he said.

“In turn all of this must fit within urban regeneration and planning, yet it is all done piecemeal. The political spotlight has yet to be turned back on to housing of all kinds and at all levels within a cabinet rank portfolio,” he added.

ARLA members, with some 1,800 offices between them account for close to half of all rentals arranged through agents.

The Law Commission Report on Renting Homes can be downloaded as PDFs from our Member's Area

 

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