REVEALED: Why Labour suddenly dropped pet damage insurance rule
Minister shines a light on last week's U-turn which pulled Labour's requirement that tenants take out pet insurance should landlords require it.
The Government has revealed why it decided not to allow landlords to require tenants with dogs and cats to sign up for pet damage insurance within its looming Renters’ Rights Bill.
The clauses within the Bill covering this were unexpectedly pulled last week leaving many within the industry puzzled as to why such a sensible solution to the ‘pet damage’ conundrum had been scrapped.
But House of Lords’ housing minister Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (main image) yesterday afternoon revealed that, following talks with the Association of British Insurers and other industry bodies, it had become clear that pet damage insurance ‘at scale’ could not be developed fast enough before the Bill becomes law, most likely later this year.
Pet subject
The announcement came during the Bill’s second report stage in the Lords, which was dominated by arguments about tenants’ rights to have a pet and under what circumstances landlords could object.
Baroness Taylor said that, “I have listened carefully and recognise that while the insurance industry does respond to public policy there is a risk [in this case] that relevant insurance does not come on to the market sufficiently [quickly] following the implementation of the Bill.
“To avoid a situation where landlords could veto a tenant’s reasonable request to keep a pet [because the tenant cannot find insurance to take out] we are withdrawing the pet insurance provisions from the Bill.”
The Government is satisfied that five weeks’ rent is a sufficient level of deposit to cover pet damage.”
The minister went on to say that although the insurance industry will develop products at a later date, “we accept that this will not happen at the scale necessary”, she said.
Baroness Taylor also said that the Government is satisfied that five weeks’ rent is a sufficient level of deposit to cover pet damage, and not the eight weeks’ rent that several Lords had suggested during the debate and which is the case in Scotland, although nor did she mention the ‘pet deposit’ championed by several property industry bodies.
What insurers would be mad enough to want to cover the damage caused when they’ve no idea which pet owners are responsible or irresponsible people? As above, increasing the rent sends the fairest solution.
Q Tenant: Do you earn 2.5 times the annual rent? Yes
Q Employer: Does your employee work more than 10% of their time from home? No
You cant have a pet it will be stuck at home all day on its own neglected.
Usually a tenant who leaves a property with substantial pet damage hasn’t bothered to pay the last months rent, clean the property or the oven which leaves one weeks rent to repair damage and clean. Result landlord sells up. I would love the name of the Optician who provides these people with rose tinted glasses sadly the rest of us live in the real world.
I rarely use guarantors as they are not the solution to a weak application in most cases but I see me looking to have a guarantor as an extra option with pets.
We used to charge an extra £100 deposit if they had a pet and no one had an issue with that. We now charge an extra £25 per month and no one has an issue with that. If a tenant stays for 5 years it’s cost them an extra £1500 due to the government ‘helping tenants’.
Remember the days when they simply paid a slightly deposit which they got back if no damage. And it worked. Us Landlords would take em. Yet the Govt didn’t like that. And they wreck things that worked
So, simple solution would to delay until insurance industry is ready. Labour haven’t a clue.
Just unbelievable. Five weeks’ deposit to cover pet damage, including trashed carpets, wrecked furniture, lint and faeces everywhere? And what about all the other calls that might still need to be made on utterly inadequate deposits, such as other sources of damage through to three months’ minimum unpaid rent? Dodgy tenants with misbehaving pets are likely to bring a whole load of other troubles in their wake. Any applicant with a pet who cannot provide rock-solid references about the behaviour of said animal is still going to be in real trouble with any landlord who does proper due diligence.
Bring on the guarantors!