Ban on ads ruling out children and benefit families ‘set to become UK-wide’
Michael Gove is talking to the Scottish and Welsh Governments about outlawing blanket bans on children and families on benefits.
Radical measures to stop landlords and letting agents from banning families with children and people on benefits, could be extended across the UK.
Housing secretary Michael Gove has written to the Scottish Government to agree a joint approach to letting rules, and already had talks with Welsh political leaders, according to BBC News.
“We know this is a priority we share with the Scottish government, and would send a clear message to providers across the whole of Great Britain,” Mr Gove said in a letter to Scottish housing minister Paul McLennan.
A Scottish Government spokesman told the BBC: “We are aware of the UK government’s plans to introduce a ban on excluding those in receipt of benefits and those who have children, and welcome this proposal.”
Outlaw
The Renters Reform Bill, which is passing through Parliament, will outlaw ads banning children or families on benefits. It will also give tenants the right to request a pet be allowed in their home, and the landlord cannot unreasonably refuse.
Of 8,000 adverts looked at by the BBC around 1,800, or 24%, said families should not apply.
A similar assessment of Zoopla ads revealed more than 300 that said children were not welcome, which was less than 1% of the total.
When checked for mention of pets, 73% of the OpenRent sample banned them, and 6% of Zoopla properties.
Landlords ‘vital’
Earlier this week, Gove said independent landlords were ‘vital’ to ensuring a fair and functioning private rented sector.
Writing for the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA), Gove said landlords provide tenants ‘with flexibility and choice, and the value for money options that go with them’.
As Phillip Ilic has said, there’s usually a genuine reason why children are excluded, for example properties with no garden or stone steps inside (older cottages), or perhaps the neighbours are elderly and the prospect of noisy children could cause problems – it’s not a case of being discriminatory for the sake of it.
The Government are making a total hash of The Private Rented Sector and in my opinion, it’s only going to get worse!
We are a small Independent Agency with only twelve properties currently advertised ‘for sale’. Of those, seven were previously tenanted properties, rented out through us. If you replicate this ratio across the country, there’s a big problem just around the corner.
Michael Gove – you need to wake up and smell the coffee and re-think what your Government is doing to The PRS!
Perhaps it is not a ban on children it is a sensible policy that the property is not suitable for children. A 2 bed flat with no garden is not suitable for a family of 2 adults and 2 children a landlord deprived of the discretion is effectively depriving a single occupier or couple from a property they are much better suited to and puts them into competing with tenants simply not suited to the property and should be housed by other means.
Gove is trying to manage a crisis of successive government’s making, with useless policies that fail to address the real issues. Failure to tackle housing, failure to tackle uncontrolled immigration. The BBC is a political biased mouthpiece for the establishment, with the public criminalized if they dont pay into it. Defund the BBC
Oh dear; bad future for tenants again as supply will drop more.