News

• Nov 05

  Domestic Energy Efficiency

  From 19 December 2017 to 13 March 2018 a consultation was run to amend the Energy Efficiency (Private Rented Property) (England and Wales) Regulations 2015 was run. It received 198 responses. The Government have now release the responses to the consultation and given in indication of their thinking of how they will make changes.
  
  The consultation proposed a range of amounts of money a landlord would have to fund to get a property out of band F or G. The maximum figure they discussed was £5,000, though they were talking about £2,500. Following the consultation the amount they are suggesting seems to have been increased to £3,500 per property. There are currently around 280,000 properties in bands F or G. If each property spent £3,500 (and they won't all need this much spent on them) it would total just shy of a billion pounds of spending.
  
  Where landlords can obtain funding from things like Green Deal, they will not have to contribute their own money unless the external funding is not enough to get out of band F or G. Then the landlord would only have to spend the amount of the shortfall.
  
  84% of respondents agreed that  some sort of funding by landlords should be introduced. This probably gives a good indication of the strength of feeling on the issue.
  
  This information indicates that this policy is very likely to come into force and it is only a question of when. As it only needs regulations it will not take long but first the Government will produce their full response to the consultation (giving the details) and then the regulations have to be drafted and passed. The originally planned date for this was April 2019 and this may still be possible.
  
  
  
  

• Aug 22

  New Court Forms

  All landlords and agents should be aware that there are new N5B, N5 and N119 Court forms on the Court service web site. The update seems to be about now containing a data protection statement with information about their use of personal data.
  
  Whilst the change may not be considered significant in the content of the form, there is a very real risk that if you use an out of date form your case could be rejected. Always use the latest forms available from the HMCTS web site.
  
  The new forms say they were uploaded 13 August 2018 and carry the date 0718 in the footer of the first page. Looking at the update history for the N5B is says the following:
  

  1. 13 August 2018Updated N5B Form.
  2. 10 August 2018Updated form N5B.
  3. 6 August 2018English version updated
  4. That is a pretty interesting revision history if they have uploaded four versions over 16 days.
  5. The N5B for a property in Wales has not been updated as of today (22/8) and neither has the bilingual version of the N5B for houses in England (contains English and Welsh side by side).
  6. The N325 (application for a bailiff) has not been updated, but this is possibly because long before you come to enforce a judgement you will have issued the N5B so they will already have the privacy information.

  
  

• Aug 06

  Client Money Protection

  If you have not already done it you might be interested in reading the draft client money protection regulations. The requirement to belong can be found here  and the rules for the schemes can be found here.
  
  Agents would be well advised to study this legislation as it contains some interesting provisions. For example, it comes into force on the 1 April 2019 and agents will have to pay any interest earned back to the owner of the client money, this may make insured deposit schemes much less attractive.
  
  Scheme members will have to have a written procedure on client money and this will have to be displayed in the office and on the web site.
  
  Not being a scheme member carries a maximum penalty of £30,000 and not displaying membership carries a maximum penalty of £5,000. The penalties can be used by the local authorities for general enforcement work in the private rented sector.

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