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The Housing Bill - Effective Regulation or More Burden?

Sally Lawson of Concentric Lettings comments on the proposed changes for the housing sector through the Housing Bill 2015

The government is proposing quite a few changes to the housing sector at the moment and is currently in discussion with the industry as to how these will be implemented across the board, which landlords need to be aware of as it will affect both landlords and agents.
The bill in fact covers many areas, not just the PRS (Private Rented Sector) but within this article I want to look at the items that directly affect us as residential property practitioners.

Banning Orders
The first call to look at is the call for banning orders on landlords and agents that flout the law, this has been in place for many years for estate agents, but not letting agents, and discussions are in place as to how this could work. There are three key points to consider here. They are:
- Who would be banned?
- Who can do the banning?
- Who would be told about it?

Who should be banned?
Consider you run a large letting agency organisation and one member of staff does something to fall foul of the regs and then as a result the entire company receives the ban instead of the individual. That would mean severe loss of jobs etc as a result of one person's actions. Alternatively consider that the "company" receives a ban for operating illegally, this would not prevent the directors as individuals of that company setting up under a different company and trading again. So the call from ARLA is that it needs to be the individual that commits the offence, that is blacklisted not the company.  

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