And in Other News (July)
Tenant Fee Bill Drafted
New 'How To Rent' Available
Ambulance Chasers Target Local Landlords
Tenant Fee Bill Drafted
The 1st draft of the bill to ban tenants fees has been published. It is quite detailed already but needs to go through the full parliamentary process, so will change and it will be October at the earliest it becomes law if it makes it that far.
The key points are:
- Letting Agents (& by implication Landlords too) will not be able to charge tenants any fees for admin or anything else other than rent
- Security deposits have to be a maximum of 6 weeks rent
- Holding deposits can be no more than 1 weeks rent and must be returned if the prospective tenant chooses to pull out
- The only other fees permissible are for specifics such as replacing lost door keys, letting people in when they have forgotten their keys and the like
New 'How To Rent' Available
The governments 'How To Rent' document has now been updated and every landlord should give a copy to every tenant at the start of a tenancy else they may not be able to obtain possession at a later date without a great deal of extra trouble. Find it here.
The How to Rent guide is currently prescribed information required by section 21B of the HA 1988 (Regulation 3, Assured Shorthold Tenancy Notices and Prescribed Requirements (England) Regulations 2015 (SI 2015/1646)). A landlord must supply a copy of the current version of the How to Rent guide to its tenant prior to commencement of a tenancy; either as a hard copy, or, if the tenant agrees, via email as a PDF attachment. Given that the guide is full of hyperlinks, the latter option seems preferable in practice.
Landlords are not required to supply a further copy of the How to Rent guide each time a different version is published during a tenancy.
The Government has also published other online "How to" guides, as part of its commitment to ensure everyone has a decent, safe place to live. These offer guidance to landlords (How to let), long leaseholders (How to lease) and to help tenants identify unsafe conditions within a rented home (How to rent a safe home).
Ambulance Chasers Target Local Landlords
All of our members will have protected their tenants deposits by using one of the prescribed solutions, but others are being targeted by 'ambulance chasing' legal outfits as can be seen from this advert published in Portsmouths 'The News' last week:
