Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are facing calls to scrap the controversial Right to Rent scheme if they become Prime Minister – despite the Home Office still appealing a court ruling against the policy.
A coalition of organisations made up of the Residential Landlords Association (RLA), the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, and the3million which represents EU citizens in the UK, have called on the Conservative Party leadership to scrap the much-opposed regulations after the High Court ruled it causes discrimination against British ethnic minorities.
The scheme, introduced in 2016, makes landlords or their agents responsible for checking the immigration status of their tenants with the prospect of prosecution if they know or have “reasonable cause to believe” that the property they are letting is occupied by someone who does not have the right to rent in the UK.
It was deemed illegal by the High Court in March but the Home Office is appealing the judgement.
Despite the appeal not being heard yet, campaigners are urging whoever becomes Prime Minister to scrap Right to Rent.
David Smith, policy director for the RLA, said: “Right to Rent has been a failure. No one has been prosecuted under the scheme but it has created a great deal of anxiety for landlords who do not want to go to prison for getting it wrong.
“Landlords should not be used to cover for the failings in the UK border agencies.”
Comments (2)
It’s all well and good campaigning to get this scrapped – it’s the one anti-landlord measure that the left are also against it because of its promotion of racism in effect. We need our landlord organisations to also campaign as vociferously as possible for the Government to stop in its tracks, as it is in the process of working out how to ruin the PRS with the introduction of indeterminate tenancies. This will be more catastrophic than Section 24 in my view, introducing huge insecurity for landlords regarding both ever getting their assets back as well as facing tenants serving notice willy-nilly whenever they feel like it.
The poorest and yet easiest bit of legislation to have to comply with….great in principal but not an estate agents job