Landlords to face up to 5 years in prison and evictions to be made without a court order as government cracks down on rental sector
The Department for Communities and Local Government announced yesterday that new measures will be introduced in England to target rogue landlords who rent properties to immigrants withouth the required legal status to remain in the country.
A government press release says the forthcoming Immigration Bill will introduce a new criminal offence aimed at landlords who repeatedly fail to conduct the necessary "right to rent" checks or fail to take steps to remove illegal immigrants from their property. The offence will carry a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison.
In addition, the government says the Bill will enable landlords to evict illegal immigrant tenants more easily, even without requiring a court order. A Home Office notice will be issued to the landlord when a tenant no longer has the right to rent in the UK: "The landlord would then be expected to take action to ensure that the illegal immigrant tenant or occupant leaves the property."
The press release says that that the West Midlands pilot scheme requiring landlords to conduct "right to rent" checks on their tenants' immigration status was "successful" and is set to be rolled out across the whole of England.
Communities Secretary Greg Clark said: "We are determined to crack down on rogue landlords who make money out of illegal immigration – exploiting vulnerable people and undermining our immigration system."
"In future, landlords will be required to ensure that the people they rent their properties to are legally entitled to be in the country."
"We will also require them to meet their basic responsibilities as landlords, cracking down on those who rent out dangerous, dirty and overcrowded properties."
The press release adds that legislation will create a blacklist of rogue landlords and letting agents who persistently break the law.
You can read the government's consultation paper - Tackling rogue landlords and improving the private rental sector: a technical discussion paper - here.
BBC News reported that the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants' (JCWI) Habib Rahman said the West Midlands "right to rent" pilot scheme has yet to be officially evaluated and it had serious shortcomings.
"We have heard that British people with foreign accents are finding it difficult to get tenancies from some of the, you might say, unscrupulous landlords," Rahman was quoted as saying.
David Smith, from the Residential Landlords Association, was quoted by the BBC as saying there was evidence of "document discrimination" with some landlords reluctant to rent their properties to anyone who could not produce a valid passport.
The Nearly Legal housing law blog warns that proposals for eviction on Home Office say so without a court order "runs roughshod over centuries of land law, in which an estate in land in wholly distinct from any mere personal characteristic."
Nearly Legal asks: "Where is the route of appeal? Where is the possibility for scrutiny by the Court? Hard to say until the detail becomes clear, but there is enough here to make it likely that the legislation will be a complicated mess."