Tory conference to debate private rented sector reform and green homes plans

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The Conservative party faithful will get the chance to share their views with MPs on the future of the PRS and making homes greener at next week’s conference.

Away from the main stage, fringe events at the Manchester meet include a discussion on what the Renters’ Reform Bill means for the future of private renting, when Shelter’s chief executive Polly Neate will join Eddie Hughes, Minister for Rough Sleeping & Housing, to discuss renting before the return of the Renters’ Reform Bill.

This fringe event promises to explore how it can, “use this moment to deliver lasting change to the private rented sector, working with renters and landlords”.

The government has promised to introduce the Bill in the autumn which will include details on abolishing Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions, proposals for a new ‘lifetime’ tenancy deposit model and reforms to drive improvements in standards, including by ensuring all tenants have a right to redress.

Green plans

Another meeting will see Housing Minister Christopher Pincher (pictured) joining other MPs to discuss the government’s pledge to ‘build back greener’.

“It will consider how best to overcome the obstacles that are holding back a green housing revolution, and discuss incentives to homeowners, the regulatory and financial structures to drive technological development, and the responsibility for decarbonising social housing stock,” says the promotional blurb.

Landlords will be hoping that they manage to come up with something better than the Green Homes Grant, which handed out funding for energy efficient improvements but was scrapped in March, just over six months after its launch.

Spending watchdog the National Audit Office has since slammed the government’s handling of the scheme, saying it was delivered to an over-ambitious timetable and was not executed to an acceptable standard.

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Purchase of second home in Family Trust for son?

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Hi All, My wife and I have a small property portfolio held in an LLP. We are in the process of purchasing a property for our 37-year-old son using the equity from our main home.

As he’s autistic and unable to handle his finances prudently

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LATEST: Scotland to begin paying £10m fund to tenants with Covid rent arrears

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The Scottish government has outlined how co-operative landlords and tenants can share a £10 million fund to help plug Covid-related arrears, four months after announcing the measure.

Councils have been tasked with distributing the new grant fund which aims to help both private and social tenants who have fallen behind on their rent and are at risk of eviction.

Each authority will get a one-off allocation of funds, based on an agreement with CoSLA, The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.

Tenants and landlords are being told that they can’t apply directly for funding – instead local authorities will use their discretion to determine whether individual circumstances warrant a grant payment.

The cash will be available until the end of March 2022.

Housing Secretary Shona Robison says the grants will support tenants and landlords who are willing to work together to address rent arrears and agree a repayment plan.

“Councils have substantial experience in supporting people who have fallen behind on their rent and are therefore well placed to work with both tenants and landlords in making use of this grant fund,” says Robison (pictured).

“Anyone who has been financially impacted by the pandemic and needs help to avoid eviction should contact their local authority housing department to discuss their circumstances.”

Nina Ballantyne, Citizens Advice Scotland social justice spokesperson, adds that the network saw a real spike in demand for housing-related advice during the pandemic.

“Our analysis suggests almost 300,000 people in Scotland missed a housing payment last year because they ran out of money before pay day.”

The new grants come on top of the Scottish government’s £10 million Tenant Hardship Loan Fund launched last December, offering an interest-free loan.

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Thirty percent of UK commercial premises at risk of flooding

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Climate risk adds a new dimension to growing commercial risk when it comes to flooding of commercial premises. More heavy summer downpours with flash floods are putting business operations at risk across the UK, with all the disruption that entails. These long-tail risks occurring in random locations are hard to predict, leaving many commercial operations unprotected.

According to Aviva data reported by webwire.com, July and August are now the most likely months for these random flood events to occur, and these are reflected in their claims for commercial premises flooding and the consequent business disruption.

Extreme weather events

Aviva maintains that almost one in three commercial properties in the UK are at some risk of flooding, according to their report. The evidence is backed by their claims from July 2021 which saw the highest number of commercial flood claims in one month, double their previous high.

Feed back from surveys of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) show that over half (around 57%) believe that climate change is going to have some impact on their business over a 10 year period – extreme heat and flooding are their biggest concerns.

However, Aviva reckon that despite the risk, and concerns about it, few businesses, only around 20%, have actually put in place a continuity plan in case the worst should happen and their operations are brought to a standstill due to flooding.

Business advice and planning

Given its concerns, Aviva has launched a partnership with private advisory, Enterprise Nation, an organisation which provides a UK-wide network, a community of small businesses and business advisers that exist to give trusted business support. British businesses need this kind of support as they are being put at risk from extreme weather events. Their lack of awareness and preparedness for the risk is putting their survival at risk thinks Aviva.

A YouGov survey conducted for Aviva, which forms the basis of its ‘Building Future Communities’ report, found that 57% of SMEs believe climate change will impact their business in the next ten years, and a further 25% believe it will affect their livelihood within the next year. However, at lease 17% of the respondents said they were not concerned at all.

Further research by Aviva, looking into how flood risk areas and map data, shows that almost one in three (30%) commercial properties are at risk of some form of flooding. Aviva’s analysis of its claims records shows that there is an even more worrying picture, with its July 2021 claims its highest on record for commercial flood claims, double its previous high for January 2016.

Most recent data on weather shows that patterns are shifting with high risk flooding events no longer confined to winter months, but now prevalent in summer, with July and August most at risk.

The research shows that many businesses lack the information they need to ascertain the risk to their businesses, which is preventing them taking action such as planning flood mitigation strategies.

Aviva thinks its “Building Future Communities” report will help businesses understand the risks and meet the challenges they face from extreme weather. The report outlines key steps they can take now to minimise these risks.

Enterprise Nation and Aviva are to launch a ‘Plan it with Purpose’ free educational hub, which provides free online events, advice and educational resources to SMEs on a range of sustainability issues, including an educational series on climate resilience.

Nick Major, MD, commercial lines, General Insurance at Aviva, said;

“Unsurprisingly, over the past year businesses have been focused on dealing with the impacts of Covid and Brexit. However, as our data shows, climate change is already having devastating impacts here in the UK, and extreme weather is set to become more commonplace in future.

“Businesses frequently bear the brunt of this damage, but are often overlooked when it comes to prevention and protection. Planning regulations often prioritise homes over businesses, which leaves many SMEs exposed to flooding and other climate risks.

“SMEs account for over 99% of UK enterprises5, and they are vital to the wellbeing and recovery of local communities – particularly after extreme weather – offering support, jobs and stability. It’s crucial, therefore, that businesses receive more support with better insight into the risks they face to help them safeguard their livelihoods from climate change.

“In our ‘Building Future Communities’ report, we call for actions to be taken to ensure that SMEs are sufficiently protected from the impacts of extreme weather. By partnering with Enterprise Nation, we can help provide advice and support to SMEs, enabling them to become more climate-resilient.

“But we’re also calling for action to be taken across industries and Government, to ensure that businesses, from design to construction, are both sustainable and resilient to the changes that climate change will bring, and that they are built to the right standards, in the right places.”

“Climate change is already having devastating impacts here in the UK, and extreme weather is set to become more commonplace in future. Businesses frequently bear the brunt of this damage, but are often overlooked when it comes to prevention and protection.” – Nick Major, MD, commercial lines, General Insurance at Aviva

Excess heat is also a concern

While Aviva says that flood risk is the predominant concern, they believe that climate change will increasingly bring other risks including excess heat and storms. Their survey identifies that 42% of respondents are also worried about excess heat and 35% are worried about violent storms.

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Labour would fix the housing crisis?

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In her Labour Party Conference Speech, Lucy Powell, Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, said that she sees housing as very much a public health issue.

Lucy wants to tackle what she perceives as issues of quality, affordability and security in private rentals and end No-Fault Evictions.

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Pay Less Property Tax presentation by Mark Smith (Barrister-At-Law) – Titans event 14th October

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Hon. Legal Counsel, Mark Smith, Head of Chambers at Cotswold Barristers will be presenting, ‘Are you paying too much tax on your property rental business? Business structures for Landlords’ at the next TITANS meeting (re-branded J6 event) run from the Crowne Plaza in Gerrards cross on Thursday the 14th of October.

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WARNING: Plans to nationalise Berlin rental market to have ‘global effect’

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Berliners have voted to forcibly buy housing owned by large property companies in the German capital in a bid to combat rising rents. 

While delegates at the Labour conference have been debating rent controls in Brighton, Berlin tried and failed to establish a rent cap in January 2020 – but this step is an even more dramatic approach.

If approved, Berliners’ vote to take public ownership of private property could have ‘worldwide ramifications’ and set a precedent for similar initiatives worldwide.

The non-binding referendum, which got 56% support, would mean the local government would buy 11% of the city’s properties to make housing more affordable by transferring about 226,000 apartments into public hands.

The proposal applies to property companies that have more than 3,000 rental units, however Deutsche Wohnen, which owns more than 100,000 units in the city, says it doesn’t expect the transfer will happen, and that such a move would be ‘unconstitutional’.

Tied up

The firm says: “Funds and resources would be tied up for decades in compensation payments and thus be lost to the construction of urgently needed housing and further investments in the infrastructure of the growing city.”

More than 84% of the population of Berlin are tenants and are paid an average salary lower than other major cities, yet rental prices have increased markedly in recent years.

The neighbourhood of Mitte is the second most unaffordable neighbourhood in Germany, according to estate agent Homeday.de, where someone earning the average salary would need to spend 61% of their net income on rent.

It says a rental burden of more than 40% of the household income is defined as financial overload, meaning that the average earner is priced out of 17 out of 19 Berlin neighbourhoods. 

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Lobby group: ‘Tenants should be paid £1,700 to move out when served no-fault notice’

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Tenants should be able to challenge Section 21 notices and get compensation if they’re forced to move home for reasons outside their control, says Generation Rent.

The campaign group is calling for measures to challenge ‘mandatory’ evictions when a landlord wants to sell and to help tenants fund the £1,709 that it costs an average household to move home.

Generation Rent says Section 21 is used by landlords when selling up, who can also abuse it to re-let at a higher rent, or to avoid making repairs.

40,000 households

Its research shows that more than 40,000 households in England have been threatened with homelessness by landlords using no-fault eviction grounds in the two years since the government promised to abolish them.

Between April 2019 and March 2021, councils dealt with 557,030 cases of homelessness, of which 91,710 were private tenants facing eviction. Of these, 44,040 households were facing eviction due to their landlord selling up, re-letting or evicting following a complaint by the tenant – representing 0.9% of England’s 4.7m private renter households.

The Prime Minister’s local borough of Hillingdon has the second worst rate in the country, with 29 in every 1,000 private renter households having faced homelessness after complaining about disrepair, or after their landlord decided to sell or re-let their home.

Alicia Kennedy, director of Generation Rent (pictured), says: “Being forced to move for reasons outside your control creates unimaginable stress, uproots you from your community and disrupts children’s education. Right now, landlords need no reason to inflict this on their tenants.

“The government has rightly committed to the abolition of Section 21 evictions, but this is too late for the thousands of renters who have faced homelessness while the reforms have been delayed.”

Read more about Section 21 eviction notices.

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Boris U-TURN – New Planning Reforms ditched!

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New planning reforms set in motion by Robert Jenrick, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings are to be scrapped.

Boris Johnson draws property industry’s ire over watered-down planning reforms. Plans aimed to curb councils’ power to oppose developments and speed up delivery of new homes in England scrapped.

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BTL product choice is still increasing

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There are now more Buy-to-let (BTL) products available today than on offer in March 2020, before the impact of the pandemic was felt across the sector, according to the latest data from Moneyfacts.co.uk.

– September started with 2,968 products on offer in the BTL sector

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