Mar

NRLA chief rebuts claims that he ‘misled’ MPs about PRS shortages

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A Commons committee has confirmed that NRLA chief Ben Beadle did not mislead MPs when giving evidence about the diminishing supply of private rented housing.

An article in The Guardian had accused Beadle of making up stories about the state of the sector in a bid to persuade the government to scrap restrictions on mortgage tax relief. It said the landlord body was warning of landlords selling up due to punitive taxation and that Beadle had told the select committee into the PRS last September, “We are already seeing landlords and, critically, homes leave the sector…The exodus is well under way.”

It reported that he told an industry webinar last week: “Actually the truth is that while some landlords are leaving the sector, this sector is actually still increasing. That’s not terribly helpful to our argument to be honest with you. But in the context of cost of living and rising costs we have to tell that story and link the two.”

Red handed

Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke claimed the clip showed Beadle and the NRLA being “caught red-handed making up stories about a ‘shortage’ of rental stock so landlords can jack up rents and to scare politicians who should know better”.

According to the English Housing Survey, the number of private rented households rose in England by 177,000 from 2021 to 2022 – figures published since Beadle’s committee appearance, he insists. “It was to this that I was referring on the webinar. However, my comments did not provide the full context. The latest English Housing Survey data remains an outlier when compared to all empirical evidence and other key industry data.”

Following a meeting yesterday, the committee agreed that he had not misled them.

Beadle (main picture) adds: “Everything I told MPs was completely accurate based on the published data available at the time. The NRLA will continue campaigning for a sector that is fair to both responsible landlords and tenants.”

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