Half-Cock Housing Regulation

The government has decided that it is a Good Thing to impose greater strictures on the rented housing sector by requiring private landlords to register annually and, of course, raise a few bucks by charging an annual fee.

This follows a review at their request by Dr Julie Rugg of the University of York who has made a number of recommendations to impose further requirements on landlords but, interestingly enough, none on tenants.

Now, I don't know if Dr Rugg has ever been involved in letting a property but there are most definitely two in the marriage. Certainly there are bad and neglectful landlords but there are also some appalling instances of tenants who have been known to all but destroy the properties let to them in good faith.

And there is the rub. The law already protects tenants to a very high degree but offers virtually no financial redress to the landlord whatsoever apart from the prospect of being able to retain the deposit after a tussle with the holder. This is quite possibly inadequate for the repairs and, of course, by that stage the tenants have long gone and are probably without funds to recover any further sums anyway.

Like so much in life in Great Britain, personal responsibility seems rare and there are far too many cases where tenants see the whole exercise as 'fair game.' You cannot imagine this happening in the US where they take the business of indebtedness more seriously with the ultimate penalty of jail for anyone refusing to meet their obligations.

I have spent almost all my working life in the property business and have seen the argument from both sides. Bad landlords make good headlines, bad tenants we are supposed to suffer. Yet that is a fundamental imbalance that can only give rise to a future reaction somewhere in the letting market.

Dr Rugg has got herself a good gig, probably as a result of writing such gritty insights as 'Conceptualising the contemporary role of housing in the transition to adult life in England' and 'Housing advantage? The role of student renting in the constituion of housing biographies in the United Kingdom.'

I'm afraid I instinctively distrust academic approaches to the subject, particularly when they are wrapped up in jargon. The government, however, loves jargon. It understands it, it breeds it, and ultimately spends unimaginable fortunes of taxpayers' money on programmes that can be 'muddied' by it.

The sharp end of the rental business needs addressing from a fairness viewpoint with enforcement and penalties applying to both sides.

We have had the next to useless HIPS fiasco; please try and get this one right Mrs Beckett.