A judicial review is set to begin today into the legality of the Government’s controversial Right to Rent scheme as new figures claim landlords have become less likely to rent to those without British passports.
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) is mounting today’s challenge in the High Court, arguing that Right to Rent discriminates against foreign nationals.
The case is supported by the Residential Landlords Association (RLA), which has released a poll showing that 44% of landlords are less likely to rent to those without a British passport, up from 42% a year ago.
The research found that the fear of penalties for getting the checks wrong means that 53% of landlords are now less likely to rent to those with limited time to remain in the UK, up from 49% in 2017.
In a sign of the uncertainty caused by Brexit, 20% of landlords said they are less likely to consider letting property to EU or EEA nationals, up from 17% in 2017.
David Smith, policy director at the RLA, said: “The Right to Rent is creating a hostile environment for those who are legitimately in the UK but may have documentation that is not easy to understand for landlords.
“It creates needless friction between landlords and tenants. Landlords cannot be blamed for taking a cautious approach as they are not immigration officers.
“It is a policy that clearly leads to discrimination against certain groups and needs to be brought to an end. Despite promises from the Home Office, little progress has been made and this is reflected in figures.
“Also the Government has so far failed to provide any single document providing clear advice to landlords about the rights of EU nationals to rent property in the event of a no deal Brexit. It is leaving many with a sense of frustration as they do not know if they should renew tenancies and create new ones.”
Comments (5)
Not such a big issue initially, but I am beginning to deal with expired permits that is a bit of a pain, which I had not considered pricing into our fees as follow-up checks can be time consuming.
The best way for the Home Office to continue to ask us to do their job is to provide every legal immigrant/foreign worker/married to a citizen with a letter/card stating that X has the right to work and live in the UK until 20XX. So Tenancies can be given up until that date, and a new one needs to be issued three months before the current one expires. The Tenant is then responsible for bringing it to the Agent/Landlord to copy at least 2 months before the end of the Tenancy or notice will be served to end the Tenancy as there is not a presumed right to live in the country.
Ideally it would be a card similar to a driving license, with their picture, DOB, country of origin/citizenship and registered address. Hey, charge £20 a pop for them and maybe they’d have the budget to do their own job properly!
What percentage of illegal immigrants live in rented properties?
Bigot!!!
a person who is intolerant towards those holding different opinions is a bigot. Were you looking in the mirror when you made the comment. The purpose of Right to Rent whether you like it or not, was to weed out all those people who are in this country illegally and hide in rented accommodation, not all living in plain view on park benches.