The Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) believes that the Law Commission’s proposals for enforced self-regulation for letting agents shows the way forward but still believes that all letting agents should be licensed.

In a response to the commission’s consultation document ‘Encouraging Responsible Letting’, ARLA points out that it believes that only half of all letting agents belong to self-regulating professional bodies and that most new entrants to the industry are untrained and unaffiliated. ARLA now hopes that the Government will consider legislation requiring all letting agents to be members of a professional body before they can begin to trade.
Robert Jordan, ARLA president, said: “We would like to see all letting agents licensed, but the private rented sector still needs regulating. This experienced regulation can be organised and policed by professional bodies such as ARLA who provide qualifications, complaints and disciplinary procedures and maintain the safeguards for tenants deposits and landlords rents. This blueprint is needed for the whole of the rental market, not only for our members.”