Nearly a third of letting agents in a major city are failing to comply with legislation despite being advised only last year of the need to display their fees.
Of 47 letting agents in York, 15 (32%) have since been found to be non-compliant.
A decision session of the city council was told that of those 15, seven were failing to display their fees in their offices, four were failing to display fees on their websites, and five were failing to display their fees on both their websites and in their offices.
In line with government guidance, all 15 have been served a notice which allows 28 days to appeal or risk a maximum fine of up to £5,000.
To date, following the notice of intention stage, final notices have been served to two agents, one at the maximum level and the other at a reduced level.
Cllr David Carr, executive member for housing and safer neighbourhoods, said: “Letting and property agents play a significant part in York’s private rented sector.
“It is important that it provides a fair and transparent service to all its tenants and landlords and we will continue to advise and regulate agents as the new legislation allows.”
News of York’s crackdown comes after housing minister Gavin Barwell responded to a written parliamentary question from Bridget Phillipson, the Labour MP for Houghton and Sunderland South.
She had asked whether the Department for Communities and Local Government would review the operation of the requirement for letting agents to publicise their fees.
Barwell has now replied, saying: “In May 2015, the Government introduced measures in the Consumer Rights Act 2015 that require letting agents to publicise prominently in their offices and on their website, a full tariff of their fees, whether or not they are a member of a Client Money Protection scheme and which redress scheme they are a member of.
“We are committed to reviewing the impact of transparency requirements. We recently established a working group with Baroness Hayter and Lord Palmer to look at how Client Money protection is currently operating and whether to go further by making use of the powers taken through the Housing and Planning Act 2016 to make Client Money Protection mandatory.”
Comments (4)
The councils shouldn’t do that anymore Trevor. Are you still experiencing that?
With regard to the topic, I recently raised this issue with the representative from our local newspaper. There was only ourselves and one other agent advertising our fees in the weekly Homes section. So she quizzed the agents not advertising fees and the response was “we won’t do it until we get told to do it, they won’t fine straight away, we will get a warning”.
I fear that this is the apathetic viewpoint of the vast majority of estate agents, the councils just do not have the resources to police these things!
I lay odds the newspaper too the money and still went ahead and published their adverts!
So far, only this site has shown any interest in the research we did into agents complying with Consumer Rights in our local area. Our local newspaper didn’t pick it up, and we have yet to hear anything back from the Ombudsman. It is disheartening.
It’s right that agents should have to show what a tenants expenditure will be.
Equally, when are councils going to take action on their staff that wrongly tell tenants to stay put when landlords and agents serve notice for tenants to vacate costing agents and landlords huge loss of rent and court bills.