Fees Again
The managing agent has asked Adrian to pay £300 Ground Rent. Priscilla’s rent has always included a sum for utilities but when energy prices rose last year, the landlord started asking for an additional £40 every month, in cash. These things are shocking because they are illegal.
Five years after the Tenant Fees Act came into effect, dishonest landlords and agents are again charging banned fees. Don’t let them get away with it!
Your local council‘s Trading Standards Officers enforce the Tenant Fees Act. Any single breach is a civil offence, for which the landlord or agent can be fined up to £5,000. But if the breach is committed within five years of a penalty for a previous breach, it’s a criminal offence. That landlord/agent can be prosecuted. Then, local government officers can issue a fine of up to £30000 and apply to the First-tier Tribunal for a banning order. A banning order prohibits a landlord from letting out a property or an agent from operating.
Alternatively, you can apply to the First-tier Tribunal to recover unlawfully charged fees. You can probably get from either the local council or a local advice agency (such as Citizens Advice) in making your application. If a letting agent or managing agent charges a fee illegally, you should contact their redress scheme to recover your money.
All agents are obliged, by law, to be members of one of the independent, government-backed redress schemes. Details of their membership should be displayed on their website and in their offices. You can confirm an agent’s membership:
An agent that does not belong to a redress scheme is operating illegally. And again, it’s Trading Standards who can act.
It’s well worth noting that, if you have been charged an illegal fee, you cannot be evicted via the section 21 procedure. Not until the landlord or agent has repaid any fee charged unlawfully.
Against Landlords: How To Solve the Housing Crisis
Barking & Dagenham Council would like your input to decide on the future of property licensing schemes in the borough.
Since 2015, Barking and Dagenham Council has operated a Selective licensing scheme. That’s due to end on 31 August this year. But do you agree that further property licensing schemes should be introduced to support improvement to standards in private rented homes locally?
As well as a replacement Selective licensing scheme, Barking & Dagenham Council is proposing a new Additional licensing scheme. They hope that this will help to improve standards in smaller house shares and houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) not covered by mandatory HMO licensing, because they are in purpose-built blocks, for example.
You can find out more by reading the Evidence Report and giving your feedback online, here
If you live in LB Hammersmith & Fulham, the Council needs to be made aware of what happens to renters in the borough, to maximise the usefulness of their services for private renters. To that end, the Council is currently consulting on a new policy for the private rented sector.
The council has created an online survey, which closes on 21 April and would love to hear from as many people as possible.
Some key findings from that survey so far include:
- Only 50% of private tenants are satisfied or very satisfied with their landlord.
- 28% of private tenants are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their landlords.
- One in three renters has been unhappy with the quality of their rented accommodation recently
- One in three renters has felt unable to complain to (or about) their landlord through fear of repercussion.
- A lack of housing and low availability, alongside high rents, are consistently being reported as the most significant challenges for renters.
I’ll be mentioning the sharp practices of some criminally bad managing agents operating in Hammersmith & Fulham. But whether you know something about that or anything about something else, do please contribute a response? Here’s a link to the survey