Anyone following House of Lords debate on RRB?
A few glimmers of hope. Potential amendments includes:
S.21 to stay for small landlords (5 properties) and delayed for large landlords until courts can cope.
Rent rises not above inflation and CPI linked for 4 years.
Students and overseas tenants can pay 12 months rent in advance.
12 months AST for students still.
Tenants to give 2 months notice but not until after 4 months rather than immediately.
But you also have other amendments restricting Landlords ability to take Guarantors, and restricting the liability of those Guarantors to a max equiv. of 6m rent.
So things can easily get worse yet…
Yes indeed. I am not particularly hopeful, but RGI will help with a guarantor restriction.
Have never taken RGI. Touch wood, never needed to claim either so has been money well saved.
Those amendments wont pass. Theyre from Conservative peers and the Govt opposes them and can just ignore them. The proposal on retaining s21 is in any case impossible as it only applies to ASTs, which are abolished under the Bill. This commitment to abolishing them is part of the long title of the Bill and my understanding is that no amendments can be made to anything proposed in the title.
Since the First Reading in the House of Commons I have read every word in Hansard about the Renters’ Rights Bill and I have listened to every minute of the HoC Public Bill Committee stage. The only amendments that have been made have been government amendments. All other amendments have been rejected out of hand. In the HoC committee not a single opposition amendment went to a vote, they were all withdrawn at Pennycook’s request. The opposition just caved. The same thing will happen in the Lords when they eventually get round to their Committee stage.
It’s galling to me because I managed to get an amendment tabled and I thought there was a real chance of it being accepted. My amendment would have added an additional mandatory ground for a possession order in cases where the property is a “Granny Annexe” (the actual definition was more detailed than that) and the landlord requires the accommodation for a live-in carer. But “my” amendment got no further than any of the others.
I agree there is a risk that the government might be persuaded to make further amendments of its own but they would be additional onerous provisions.
So far as s21 is concerned, it’s dying. It is shuffling off this mortal coil. It will soon be an ex-section.