![]() | This article needs to be updated.(January 2019) |
Right to Rent is the name given to a UK Government policy contained in the Immigration Act 2016 [1] [2] whereby landlords in England have to check the immigration status of tenants they rent properties to, and deny lodgings to those who cannot prove they are permitted to live in a rented home. [3]
The policy makes it a crime in England for anyone to provide lodgings of a tenancy nature to the targeted people. In addition it requires landlords to report prospective tenants to government authorities if the tenant's documentation is inadequate, as well as whenever a (legally permitted) tenant's documentation reaches its time limit while a tenancy is still ongoing.
Right to Rent is widely described as one of several measures in the UK's Hostile Environment policy. [4]
The pilot was responsible for finding 109 individuals who were in the United Kingdom illegally. [5]
The scheme was subsequently extended to all of England. [6]
On 1 March 2019 the scheme was ruled to be incompatible with human rights by the High Court of Justice [7] in a case brought by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants.
As a result of the High Court ruling, the restrictions have not been extended to Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland as of March 2020. However they remain in effect throughout England.
The Court of Appeal partially upheld this ruling, [8] finding that the Right to Rent scheme makes it harder for BME people and minorities to rent a home - perhaps taking twice as long for BME people and migrants to find a home to rent compared to a white British person. However, the Court stopped short of finding Right to Rent violated human rights law. They leave it to MPs and the Government to decide whether the racial discrimination is ‘greater than envisaged’.
Permission to appeal this decision at the Supreme Court was denied. An application to appeal the decision [9] will be made to the European Court of Human Rights.
Right to Rent has been criticised for discrimination against ethnic minority groups. The trade publication Inside Housing published an article showing that the pilot of right to rent resulted in some landlords being more reluctant to rent to those from minority groups due to the possibility of being fined. [10]
![]() | This article needs to be updated.(July 2019) |
The UK government published a 21-page booklet 'A short guide on right to rent' for landlords in July 2019. [11]
The Residential Landlords Association (RLA) are heavily critical of the above July 2019 guidance, maintaining that this "New guidance from the government on its Right to Rent scheme would see landlords breaking the law if they followed it". [12]
The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which has now been repealed and replaced by the Equality Act 2010, except in Northern Ireland where the Act still applies. Formerly, it made it unlawful to discriminate against people in respect of their disabilities in relation to employment, the provision of goods and services, education and transport.
A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, land, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called a tenant. When a juristic person is in this position, the term landlord is used. Other terms include lessor, housing provider, and owner. The term landlady may be used for the female owners. The manager of a pub in the United Kingdom, strictly speaking a licensed victualler, is referred to as the landlord/landlady. In political economy it refers to the owner of natural resources alone from which an economic rent, a form of passive income, is the income received.
Eviction is the removal of a tenant from rental property by the landlord. In some jurisdictions it may also involve the removal of persons from premises that were foreclosed by a mortgagee.
A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the user to pay the owner for the use of an asset. Property, buildings and vehicles are common assets that are leased. Industrial or business equipment are also leased. Basically a lease agreement is a contract between two parties: the lessor and the lessee. The lessor is the legal owner of the asset, while the lessee obtains the right to use the asset in return for regular rental payments. The lessee also agrees to abide by various conditions regarding their use of the property or equipment. For example, a person leasing a car may agree to the condition that the car will only be used for personal use.
A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to hold land or property in which a lessee or a tenant has rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord. Although a tenant does hold rights to real property, a leasehold estate is typically considered personal property.
The Right to Buy scheme is a policy in the United Kingdom, with the exception of Scotland since 1 August 2016 and Wales from 26 January 2019, which gives secure tenants of councils and some housing associations the legal right to buy, at a large discount, the council house they are living in. There is also a Right to Acquire for assured tenants of housing association dwellings built with public subsidy after 1997, at a smaller discount. By 1997, over 1,700,000 dwellings in the UK had been sold under the scheme since its introduction in 1980, with the scheme being cited as one of the major factors in the drastic reduction in the amount of social housing in the UK, which has fallen from nearly 6.5 million units in 1979 to roughly 2 million units in 2017, while also being credited as the main driver of the 15% rise in home ownership, which rose from 55% of householders in 1979 to a peak of 71% in 2003; this figure has declined in England since the late 2000s to 63% in 2017.
A house in multiple occupation (HMO), or a house of multiple occupancy, is a British English term which refers to residential properties where 'common areas' exist and are shared by more than one household.
Land reform in Scotland is the ongoing process by which the ownership of land, its distribution and the law which governs it is modified, reformed and modernised by property and regulatory law.
Landlord harassment is the willing creation, by a landlord or their agents, of conditions that are uncomfortable for one or more tenants in order to induce willing abandonment of a rental contract. This is illegal in many jurisdictions, either under general harassment laws or specific protections, as well as under the terms of rental contracts or tenancy agreements.
Agudas Israel Housing Association (AIHA) is a BME Housing Association that provides over 900 low-cost homes for members of the Orthodox Jewish community in need across the UK. The non-profit includes low-cost housing for rent and shared ownership; retirement living; residential and nursing care; supported living for people with special needs; and a mother-and-baby home.
Under the provisions of the United Kingdom Housing Act 2004 every landlord or letting agent that takes a deposit for an assured shorthold tenancy in England and Wales must protect the deposit under an authorised tenancy deposit scheme. The regulations came into effect on 6 April 2007, and were amended by the Localism Act 2011 and the Deregulation Act 2015. Most recently the Tenant Fees Act 2019 provided further protections for tenants.
The Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 is a UK Act of Parliament on English land law. It sets minimum standards in tenants' rights against their landlords.
The history of rent control in England and Wales is a part of English land law concerning the development of rent regulation in England and Wales. Controlling the prices that landlords could make their tenants pay formed the main element of rent regulation, and was in place from 1915 until its abolition by the Housing Act 1988.
A section 21 notice in England and Wales also known as a section 21 notice of possession or a section 21 eviction, is the notice under the Housing Act 1988 section 21, which a landlord must give to their tenant to begin the process to take possession of a property let on an assured shorthold tenancy without providing a reason for wishing to take possession. The expiry of a section 21 notice does not bring a tenancy to its end. The tenancy would only be ended by a landlord obtaining an order for possession from a court, and then having that order executed by a County Court bailiff or High Court enforcement officer. Such an order for possession may not be made to take effect earlier than six months from the beginning of the first tenancy unless the tenancy is a demoted assured shorthold tenancy. If the court is satisfied that a landlord is entitled to possession, it must make an order for possession, for a date no later than 14 days after the making of the order unless exceptional hardship would be caused to the tenant in which case possession may be postponed to a date no later than six weeks after the making of the order. The court has no power to grant any adjournment or stay of execution from enforcement unless the tenant has a disability discrimination, public law or human rights defence, or the case is pending an appeal.
The Tenancy Deposit Schemes (Scotland) Regulations 2011 came into force on 7 March 2011. Every landlord or letting agent that receives a deposit in Scotland must register with their local authority and join a tenancy deposit scheme.
Rent regulation is a system of laws, administered by a court or a public authority, which aims to ensure the affordability of housing and tenancies on the rental market for dwellings. Generally, a system of rent regulation involves:
The bedroom tax is a United Kingdom welfare policy whereby tenants living in public housing with rooms deemed "spare" experience a reduction in Housing Benefit, resulting in them being obliged to fund this reduction from their incomes or to face rent arrears and potential eviction by their landlord. The policy was introduced as part of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 passed during the Premiership of David Cameron. Bedroom tax is the most commonly used term for the policy, especially by critics of the changes who argue that they amount to a tax because of the lack of social housing for affected tenants to downsize to. The bedroom tax is also referred to as the under-occupancy penalty, under occupation penalty, under-occupancy charge,under-occupation charge or size criteria.
The Housing Act 1988 is an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. It governs the law between landlords and tenants. The Act introduced the concepts of assured tenancy and assured shorthold tenancy. It also facilitated the transfer of council housing to not-for-profit housing associations, which was then carried out partly through the system of Large Scale Voluntary Transfer.
The Housing and Planning Act 2016 is Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom that makes widespread changes to housing policy and the planning system. It introduces legislation to allow the sale of higher value local authority homes, introduce starter homes and "Pay to Stay" and other measures intended to promote home ownership and boost levels of housebuilding. The Act has been subject to a number of criticisms by those opposed to the loss of social housing promoted, the extension of right-to-buy to housing associations and possible work disincentives under "Pay to Stay".
The UK Home Office hostile environment policy is a set of administrative and legislative measures designed to make staying in the United Kingdom as difficult as possible for people without leave to remain, in the hope that they may "voluntarily leave". The Home Office policy was first announced in 2012 under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. The policy was widely seen as being part of a strategy of reducing UK immigration figures to the levels promised in the 2010 Conservative Party Election Manifesto.