Lettings news: Levelling Up Whitepaper and Right to Rent changes

What is the Levelling Up Whitepaper?

The Levelling Up Whitepaper is a document published by the UK government containing 12 “levelling up missions” as their plan to transform the UK over the next ten years.

How will this affect the Private Rented Sector (PRS)?

• First of all, they will announce that all homes in the PRS will be required to meet a minimum standard of criteria, called The Decent Homes Standard. 

• Section 21 allowing landlords to serve notice for ‘no fault’ evictions will be scrapped. There isn’t a lot of detail about this in the whitepaper at the moment, but plans for this will actually be set out further in the Renter’s Reform Bill, another whitepaper due to be published in spring 2022.

• There will be a consultation on the introduction of a national register for landlords, alongside plans to crack down on rogue landlords. 

These are all part of their wider goal as set out in the whitepaper, to reduce the number of non-decent rental homes by 50% before 2030. 

If you would like to read the whitepaper or an executive summary of its contents, you can do so here.

Significant Right to Rent changes April 2022

As well as the levelling up plan, you should also be aware of changes coming for landlords and letting agents with regards to Right to Rent. 

From 6th April 2022, the immigration status of all adult prospective tenants will need to be checked using the Right to Rent Online Checking Service, a new digital service from the government for biometric residence card/ permit holders. From this date, manual Right to Rent checks can no longer be carried out using biometric residence cards/ permits. 

This is an important change to note, as non-compliance carries a minimum fine of £1000 for first offences, but for repeat or more serious offences there is no upper limit to fines and there could even be prison time. 

Retrospective Right to Rent checks

Once these changes take effect, retrospective checks on tenants who used a physical document to keep their checks are not required. It’s important to note, however, that if a landlord does carry out a retrospective check for some reason and discovers in the process that their tenant no longer has the Right to Rent in the UK, they will need to fill out an online form to report this to the Home Office, in order to maintain a statutory excuse against prosecution. 

Are you feeling a bit overwhelmed with the constant changes in legislation that landlords are expected to know? That’s why we’re here! Check out our landlords' page for more information about our management services.