The private rented sector seems awash with new legislation and consultations. The draft tenant fees ban has been published, with the surprise that fees will not be banned for all tenancies. We have the huge issue of the General Data Protection Regulations steams down the track and we have the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards due to start from April 2018 (banning properties in bands F and G). The Government are consulting on introducing mandatory Client Money Protection Insurance and there has been a call for evidence on ideas for regulating the whole letting sector. This would effectively mean some sort of licensing of agents and all landlords being required to join a redress scheme. For agents the discussion has started as to if there should be a single redress scheme to make it less complex for consumers wanting to complain. Draft legislation has now been laid bring in banning order offences, where a landlord or agent is guilty of a list of offences, including unlawful eviction, failure to comply with improvement notices and a range of other breaches, then they could also be banned from working in lettings. If banned it would be a for a minimum of 12 months but could be permanent. If that was not enough they are reviewing the Right to Rent and Smoke alarms regulations for effectiveness. To tackles all these issues (and others) we will be running out Legal Update 2018 courses starting in January 2018. We are starting early this year as there will plenty to do for many agents before some of these items come into force later in the spring. Go to the "Training" link above to find the venues and dates. This really is an event to to be missed. We will explain what you have to do to comply with GDPR, we will explaining how you could delay the impact of MEES by up to two years and we will explain which tenancies you can still charge fees on, plus lots lots more.