With the Renters (Reform) Bill on the scrapheap, what’s next for landlords
‘The biggest shake-up of the private rented sector in more than 30 years’ was what the Government promised with its Renters (Reform) Bill. Now, after five years of hard work, the Bill is in tatters after falling at the final hurdle last week. NRLA Chief Executive Ben Beadle talks about what this means for landlords – and why the next government has to get it right.
The Renters (Reform) Bill was the Government's masterplan to transform the private rented sector, promising more security for tenants; including controversial plans to abolish section 21, get rid of fixed term tenancies and introduce a new registration scheme for landlords.
First mooted by Theresa May during her time as Prime Minister in 2019, the controversial Bill has been in the pipeline ever since, with the NRLA spending years working with members and Government to hone and amend the plans to ensure they were fair to landlords, while allowing Ministers to honour their commitments to tenants.
While there’s no suggestion that what was on the table until last week was the ‘perfect’ Bill as far as landlords, and arguably tenants were concerned, what we had was something that we believed was fair and workable.
It came as a huge blow, therefore, that Rishi Sunak’s decision to call an election when he did, rendered it dead in the water.
It is even more frustrating when we understand, that the Labour party would have supported the Renters (Reform) Bill had it been selected for ‘wash-up’ – the process in which outstanding parliamentary business is completed ahead of Parliament being prorogued.
Why did the Bill take so long to pass through Parliament?
Years of debate about what the Bill should look like followed the 2019 announcement, with the proposed legislation finally presented to Parliament in May last year.
It was then five months before the second reading in the Commons, with many backbenchers objecting to the plans, causing significant delays to the progress of the Bill; the reason it was still passing through the House of Lords when the election was called.
As any parliamentary business not completed by the end of ‘wash up’ cannot become law and cannot be carried over to the next Parliament the Bill was consigned to the scrapheap.
What does this mean for landlords?
In basic terms this means that whoever triumphs at the polls on 4 July will need to start from scratch when it comes to developing new legislation around private rented housing.
This, in turn, means even greater uncertainty for landlords who have already been waiting for five years for answers on how they must run their businesses going forward.
The repercussions could be far-reaching – for landlords and tenants.
With the country already in the midst of a cost-of-living and housing crisis, latest figures show increasing numbers of landlords are already considering their future in the private rented sector.
The fall of the Bill and, critically, the crippling uncertainty that comes with it, means it is highly likely many will decide to simply cut their losses and sell up.
This in turn is bad news for renters looking to the sector for a home, with most recent figures from property platform Rightmove showing there are now 15 tenants competing for each property.
What happens next?
Once the election has taken place the new Government will decide how to progress with plans to reform the private rented sector.
Both the Conservatives and Labour have previously committed to abolishing Section 21, one of the cornerstones of the Renters (Reform) Bill, but it will be down to the new administration as to how they progress this – and what priority it is given.
We may have more clarity on what approach the different parties may take once election manifestos are published in the coming weeks.
Whatever happens we are committed to working constructively with them to ensure proposed changes are fair and workable for landlords and tenants alike.
More information
Please follow our social media channels and keep an eye on the NRLA news site for all the latest on the General Election and rental reform going forwards – as well as checking out the latest on the party manifestos on the NRLA’s dedicated General Election Hub.
