The Property Ombudsman last year referred 1,476 complaints about landlords to Shelter.
Landlords currently do not have to offer redress and TPO is unable to handle complaints about them.
Ombudsman Katrine Sporle said that the HCLG Committee report by MPs on the private rented sector was accurate in its references to the imbalance of power between landlords and tenants.
She said: “The Property Ombudsman deals with many enquiries which highlight the imbalance of power for tenants in the sector, and as a result we are pleased to see the HCLG Committee is looking to address this issue.
“In 2017, The Property Ombudsman referred 1,476 enquiries to Shelter, predominantly because of the absence of consumer redress.
“Tenants and agents alike need to be able to report landlords who try to rent sub-standard accommodation, in the sure knowledge that something will be done about it.”
Comments (3)
Tenants with genuine complaints about disrepair or lack of compliance by an agent or landlord will get more satisfaction from the citizens advice bureaux.
Okay, here’s a wacky thought.
If you want to rent a property, you must either use an agent who is part of a redress scheme, or you must register with the redress scheme and be held to the same standards of behaviour as an agent. If every landlord had to use an agent then decent agents would not allow unsafe or uninhabitable properties on their books, so landlords would either have to try and find a backstreet agent who won’t get decent tenants as they have a reputation for bad properties, or they do the work to get a property up to ‘code’ and behave decently for the tenants!
But nothing will happen. Shelter and Government are just interested in punishing horrible evil agents who they convinced cackle with laughter when receiving money from tenants.