Over 90% of landlords have received no information from the Government on their new legal duty to check the immigration status of their tenants. This is despite a law now in force that says landlords must undertake checks on their tenants to ensure they have the right to live in the country.

According to a survey of over 1,500 landlords, carried out by the Residential Landlords Association (RLA), the lack of information from the Government is leading to confusion about how landlords are expected to carry out the checks.

The survey found that that 72% of landlords do not understand their obligations under the policy, designed to make the country a more hostile environment for illegal immigrants.

The result will be that many landlords are unlikely to rent to those who cannot easily prove their right of residency. The survey also found that 44% of landlords will only rent to those with documents that are familiar to them: this will cause serious problems for the estimated 17% of UK nationals without a passport. This is likely to be a higher proportion of young people and the less well off.

The RLA is calling on the Government to undertake a more thorough evaluation of the impact of this policy, known as ‘Right to Rent’ in the West Midlands where it has been piloted, before rushing into rolling it out across the country.