The Government have now published the above named review (conducted by Heriot-Watt University) of the regulation of the UK rented housing market. The report highlights the yawning discrepancies in regulation between the public and private rented sectors and details the comparatively few rights of redress which a private tenant enjoys, compared with his social housing counterpart.
Some moves have now been made to protect private sector tenants - for example the introduction of the Tenancy Deposit Scheme in April 2007 and the introduction of licensing of Houses in Multiple Occupation in April 2006. However, there is still no obligation on private landlords to be licensed, despite existing Law Commission recommendations in a 2006 report that compulsory regulation be introduced.
According to a Citizens Advice Bureau's report carried out in 2007, private tenants are often unwilling to complain formally about landlords for fear of eviction, and as a result of this could be suffering a lower standard of living compared to public sector tenant. More worryingly, however, is the fact that the same report found that complaints to the CAB about private landlords substantially outweighed those relating to social lettings. The Office of Fair Trading's statistics also corroborate this since they show that the majority of complaints from consumers in relation to landlord/tenant disputes are from the private rented sector.
The most common types of private sector complaints relate to rents/charges, disrepair and security issues, and threatened eviction. Other issues were the non return of deposits or rent receipts, landlord entering without warning or permission, and harassment by the landlord. This is clearly at odds with the fact that this is the least regulated sector and one which often offers an inferior standard of housing stock to be let out, in most cases, under Assured Shorthold Tenancies offering relatively little security of tenure.
