A tenant activist group is demanding renters be given immediate powers to claim rent refunds from rogue landlords as the Renters’ Rights Bill is debated in the House of Lords.

Dan Wilson Craw, Deputy Chief Executive at Generation Rent (main image), says the Greater London Authority’s data shows council enforcement against offending landlords is patchy at best, with just five London boroughs responsible for 87% of all fines.

Reward renters

“Rewarding renters for calling out their landlords’ rule-breaking is just as important as council enforcement,” says Wilson Craw. He insists that “tenants are better placed than councils to spot landlord wrongdoing and could act as an army enforcing the new rules.”

The group claims that across much of London, landlords committing housing offences are just as likely to face tenants claiming back rent through Rent Repayment Orders (RROs) as they are to be hit with council enforcement action.

The most common offences relate to landlords’ failure to obtain appropriate licences. While only around 7% of private landlords in England are currently subject to existing licensing schemes, all landlords will need to join the private rented property database after the Bill becomes law.

Under existing proposals, only councils can take immediate action against landlords who fail to register, and tenants can apply for an RRO only after the council has fined the landlord and they still fail to register.

The threat of having to pay back many months’ rent should spur landlords into registering.”

Generation Rent is pushing for amendments to allow tenants to claim RROs as soon as landlords fail to register on the database.

“The threat of having to pay back many months’ rent should spur landlords into registering on the new database,” Wilson Craw says. “But as things stand, only cash-strapped councils will have responsibility for making checks.”

The activists warn that without stronger incentives for compliance, thousands of criminal landlords will dodge the new rules, undermining the new protections the reforms are supposed to provide tenants.