Landlord leader calls for peace talks with tenant campaigners
Ben Beadle of the NRLA has written to renter groups to find 'common ground', and stop them fighting with landlords.
Landlords leader Ben Beadle (main picture) has challenged rental campaigners to put down their arms and find common ground.
Beadle, who is CEO at the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA), has offered an olive branch to groups and charities working for tenants in an open letter calling for both sides to work together.
Polarised
He says landlords and tenants have become “increasingly polarised” in recent years, and people are seen as either pro-landlord or pro-tenant.
Everyone involved in the PRS needs to come together, and ensure improvements are made that benefit all sides, he says.
The letter was sent to campaign groups including Crisis, Shelter and Generation Rent, as well as Citizens Advice.
Conflict
Beadle identifies court backlogs, grounds for possession, pets and DSS ads as areas where conflict needs to be resolved.
Debate about the future of the private rented sector has become increasingly polarised as a battle.”
“Over recent years, debate about the future of the private rented sector has become increasingly polarised as a battle between the needs of tenants on the one hand and those of landlords on the other.
“We do not think this has to be the case and are concerned at some of the language which gives the impression that someone can be pro-landlord or pro-tenant, but not both. This is simply not true,” Beadle says in the letter.
Divisive
He also says that: “Whilst we accept that there are issues on which we will not agree, we believe it important that as groups representing tenants and landlords, we are able to find common ground where we can work together for the benefit of the sector as a whole.”
It is time to end the “divisive rhetoric,” he says, which gives “the wholly inaccurate impression that the majority of landlords cannot be trusted”.
Dialogue with Tenant groups, yes, of course.
But asking them for Reasons or justification for Not paying Rent ! –
is like asking Shop keepings for reasons when its okay to Shoplift.
The sector is becoming increasingly ‘polarised’ for two reasons:
Ive been in the business close to 20 years and the vast majority of landlords (Well in excess of 90%) are decent hardworking folk who provide good quality accommodation for their tenants and are legally compliant.
The private rental sector has been demonised, over regulated and increasingly taxed out of existence. The problem is so acute that landlords are leaving the market in their thousands.
The second problem is those groups who claim to represent tenants (although no one has voted for them) are self appointed political activists who have an ‘anti private landlord’ political agenda.
The overriding issue however comes down to basic economics; very high demand and low supply.
You demonise the sector, result; landlords leave.
Meanwhile Net migration is running at half a million a year.
As the American’s would say: YOU DO THE MATH.
Tenant campaigners on the whole want to see state control of the rented sector – an equality for tenants who ‘own’ their property through renting. It is communism dressed up as equity and fairness and an agenda set out by the United Nations to be achieved by 2100. In the long term there is no place for the private landlord, rented accommodation will not be owned it will be a service paid for out of social credits.