Regulator ‘must have teeth’ to suspend estate agencies, Lords told

A new regulator for property agents must have the ‘teeth’ to stop estate agencies from operating, a Lords committee was told.

Timothy Douglas, Head of Policy and Campaigns at Propertymark (main picture), said there are ‘gaps’ in the current redress schemes, and any new regulatory system must be co-ordinated.

Teeth

A new RoPA body set up to act against rogue agents “needs to have the teeth to remove people from operating”, he said.

“The existing redress schemes are inconsistent in the way they deal with complaints,” he added.

The House of Lords’ Industry and Regulators Committee is looking at the regulation of estate agents.

The Committee, chaired by Baroness Taylor of Bolton, is considering whether there should be a new regulator of property agents, as recommended by the report of the Regulation of Property Agents working group in 2019.

We need to license and qualify agents first.”

Douglas also said: “A staged approach is what is going to be needed. We need to license and qualify agents first.”

Luay Al-Khatib, Director of Knowledge and Practice at RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors), said a new RoPA system must be fully supported financially: “It needs to be properly resourced or it won’t be worth the paper it’s written on.”

Last week, The Neg revealed how the committee heard calls from Generation Rent that letting agents dealing with low-income tenants and those on welfare support should be qualified to help promote understanding and stem the rise in homelessness.

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