News

• Aug 16

  Welsh fee ban guidance

  The Welsh Assembly have released the guidance for landlords for the upcoming tenant fee ban in Wales. It can be accessed here.
  
  Much of it is unsurprising and lays out the basic requirements contained in the legislation in slightly simpler form. However, the language also seems to imply that they will be bringing in the ban without having set a cap on deposits and some other elements we are awaiting for regulations (like default payments).
  
  For those operating in Wales, the biggest danger lies in what you read in the media as this is mainly about the law in England. The Welsh law, while very similar, has some significant differences. For example, Wales has 8 permitted payments, England has 10. Wales has not included variation of the contract and early termination in their list of permitted payments, though the guidance contains some interesting information.

• Jul 18

  Regulation of agents

  This group, chaired by Lord Best, has produced its recommendations for the way forward for the regulation of property agents. One of our concerns is trying to lump all "property agents" into a single scheme. Several of the comments in discussions were not appropriate for some areas of the market.
  
  They have made a number of recommendations, still to be formally agreed by Government. Essentially they will introduce an agent licensing scheme with a requirement that the staff within an agency are also trained, qualified to at least level 3 and licensed. A list of regulated activities is planned and if any of these activities are undertaken by a member of staff they will need to be regulated. By having individual members of staff licensed it will make it easy for them to work in more than one agency or to change jobs.
  
  They propose a regulator to oversee compliance. The details of this will be important as there is a danger of yet another regulator or body. With redress schemes, local councils, local Trading Standards, The National Trading Standards team in Bristol, deposits schemes, trade bodies and now another regulator, the chances of a tenant being able to know to whom they should complain is limited. As an alternative, but this is probably dreaming, why not merge many of these bodies into one single regulator and start a scheme of joined up thinking in the market.
  
  All pigs fuelled and ready to fly!

• Jul 17

  Tenant Fee Ban

  The Tenant Fees Act 2019 has passed all the Parliamentary hurdles and now in force (from the 1 June 2019).
  
  The CMP provision came into force on the 1 April when CMP became mandatory. This part just made some technical changes for the CMP being introduced under separate legislation.
  
  There are transitional provisions in section 30 about what happens with fees already in a tenancy in existence before the law is passed, but essentially it will be fully in force by 1 June 2020 following a 12 month transitional provision.
  
  There are a number of surprises (like if the landlord charges a fee he cannot serve a section 21 notice but if the agent charges a fee this does not prevent the use of a section 21 notice). Although talked about (and named) as tenant fees, it also bans requiring the tenant to pay a third party for services or enter into a contract for services. The most obvious issue here will be tenancy agreements used to require professional cleaning of a property, this will be illegal under the tenant fee ban.
  
  The final guidance has also been produced and can be downloaded the the internet. We have our concerns about a couple of points in terms of their accuracy so be careful with what it says.

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