DCLG
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Latest property news
Sajid Javid heads up the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Housing has been put at the heart of the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) after Sajid Javid was today given the title of Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Until now Sajid has been simply the Communities Secretary but, it is believed, PM Theresa May wants to raise housing up the political agenda and be seen to be doing something about the ongoing supply crisis. It’s not clear how his role will work with the new Housing Minister, Dominic Raab, and who will be responsible for what within the newly-named government department. The cabinet reshuffle comes at a perilous time for Sajid Javid – who must now steer the tenant fees ban through parliament following a debate on the subject this afternoon in Parliament. “We welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement today. Housing strategy should be at the forefront of the Government’s thinking,” says Richard Lambert, CEO at the National Landlords Association (NLA). “However, we hope that this works out to be more than just rebranding exercise, and that Mr Javid and his department will look to address the housing crisis by genuinely working across all tenures, not by fixating on building more homes.”
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Electrical installation checks of rented properties to become compulsory
Letting agents and property managers in England and Wales will soon have to organise electrical installation checks of privately rented properties following the recommendations of a government report. After a detailed examination of the subject, the working group set up by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has recommended that electrical installation checks should be compulsory for properties within the Private Rented Sector (PRS) and carried out every five years. The working group also says a scheme should be set up to register and approve the people who will carry out the checks and separate electrical safety from the Building Regulations regulatory framework. Led by five senior figures from the DCLG, the working group’s members included every membership organisation within the lettings industry including most of the main membership associations representing agents and landlords. electrical installation checks The final recommendation is that the requirements for electrical installation checks should be phased in, starting with new tenancies before being rolled out to include existing ones. But the rest of recommendations are not mandatory and include instead recommendations. These include that landlords or agents should carry out visual checks of electrical equipment at a change of tenancy, that paperwork confirming…
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Draft Tenant Fees Bill is published
The government has this morning introduced its draft Tenant Fees Bill in parliament, which reveals the full details of its plans to make the charging of fees to tenants an offence, and to make it compulsory for agents to be a member of a client money protection scheme. The announcement comes after nearly seven months of waiting for agents during which a three-month industry consultation has been completed, and the draft bill will be the government’s initial framing of the bill following that. “The ban will make renting fairer and easier for tenants by allowing them to see upfront what a given property will cost them – the rent that is advertised will be what you are expected to pay, nothing more,” says Sajid Javid, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (pictured, left). “It will also sharpen and increase letting agents’ incentives to compete for landlords’ business, resulting in a better and more transparent service for everyone.” The bill applies to both landlords and their agents and bans all fees or prohibited payments as a condition of arranging the grant, renewal or continuance of a tenancy in England. It puts payment by tenants to landlords or agents into…
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Government to introduce regulation of leasehold property management
The government is to introduce measures for the regulation of leasehold property management, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid has revealed. His department is now seeking views on whether “a new regulatory model is needed for agents in the leasehold sector” and “what form regulation of letting and managing agents should take to best protect and empower tenants and leaseholders”. The proposals set out by Sajid take a three-pronged approach to regulate the management of leasehold properties. This will include measures to bring in regulation of managing agents, measures to protect consumers from unfair costs and overpriced service charges, and ways to give leaseholder more “say over their agent”. The Communities minister also wants to know if a new independent regulatory body for the property management sector. This is because, the Department of Communities and Local Government says, the sector is only “partly self-regulated” through the Association of Residential Managing Agents (ARMA) and ARLA Propertymark through their codes of conduct. Agents who are not members are not therefore covered by these codes and this “can provide a poor deal for consumers”. “This is supposed to be the age of the empowered consumer – yet in property management, we’re still living in the…
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How much will agents lose when letting agent fees ban kicks in?
It’s a figure much discussed within the consultation document published on Friday setting out the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG’s) plans to introduced a letting agent fees ban. If the DCLG’s plans are implemented as they stand following the consultation period, then neither landlords nor agents will be able to charge tenants any “fees, premium or charges to facilitate the granting, renewal or continuance of a tenancy”. “The Government also proposes to ban any letting fees charged to tenants by landlords and any other third parties to ensure that letting agent fees are not paid by tenants through other routes. Tenants should only be required to pay their rent and a refundable deposit,” the consultation says. Average fee Within the document’s detail, the DCLG says the average fee taken by agents is between £200-300, based on the 2014-15 English Housing Survey, while the National Approved Letting Scheme (NALS) is reported to have indicated an average fee of £172 with a range of between £30 and £500. Campaigning group Generation Rent told DCLG that the average for a couple renting a home is £400 within range of between £40 and £780, while homelessness charity Shelter believes one in seven renters…
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Lettings fees ban WILL go ahead, says DCLG
The lettings fee ban is set to go ahead. The Government has announced its intention to introduce a total ban ands agents across the UK will not be able to charge any fees to tenants for their services, if the Government’s proposals are implemented. This isn’t a case of rattling cages to get the message through to agents that their fees may be disappearing, if they do not receive suitable responses from the consultation – today’s publication of the Consultation Paper leaves us in no doubt that there will be a total ban on lettings fees, as stated by Baroness Hayter (right) last week at the arla|propertymark Conference, it is just a matter of when and how it is implemented. Within the document, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) says, “DCLG officials undertook some market research of letting agent fees. We randomly chose 50 agents of differing sizes and models (i.e. franchises, independents and national branches) across the country and searched their website for a list of letting fees charged to tenants. This exercise reinforced how difficult it is for tenants to both find and compare agent fees since it was not always simple to either find the fees…
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Housing White Paper: Is this the week when everything changes?
The Government’s much-anticipated housing White Paper is due out this week and already several government sources including housing minister Gavin Barwell have indicated that a radical shift in policy is to take place. After nearly forty years of preferring and supporting home ownership over renting, several Whitehall sources as well as ministers have indicated they intend to tackle the rental market to make it a more secure housing option. Communities secretary Sajid Javid (pictured, left) said he wanted housing to be more affordable and that the rental market must offer more choice. He described both the rental and ownership markets as ‘broken’. The main thrust of the White Paper is likely to include three-year long family-friendly tenancies, tougher action against rogue landlords, more ‘affordable rent’ properties within new-build developments, as well as more detail on the letting agent fees ban consultation. Gavin Barwell (pictured, right) appeared on BBC1’s Sunday Politics TV programme and, during a grilling by presenter Andrew Neill, admitted that the government’s track record on building affordable homes was ‘embarassing’ and that wanted that to stop that in the future. “Whether you are trying to buy or to rent, housing in this country has become less and less…
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