Charity urges crackdown on letting agents

I am amazed that anyone got a wiring repair in 24hrs, isolation and made safe perhaps. This type of rhetoric ignores the reality of finding trades at short notice.

Reply to the comment left by Paul Essex at 04/06/2026 – 08:43
You’d struggle to get that service as an owner-occupier. I use an agent and generally the service is good. But it’s not perfect. The last time I received a property inspection report the person doing the inspection couldn’t find the smoke, heat and CO alarms. So I did a landlord’s inspection having given 24 hours notice. I found that they were all in situ in their original locations even though the “inspector” couldn’t locate them. And the “inspector” hadn’t detected the one that wasn’t working because the tenant had interfered with it. I’m guessing that was a training issue…the box was almost ticked but not ticked very well and as a consequence the inspector didn’t pick up the fault CAUSED BY THE TENANT.

Clearly I couldn’t respond to that WITHIN 24 hours. But overall the service the tenant gets from the agent is good and because agents have access to lots of local people who do maintenance my experience is that generally a tenant gets better service than an owner occupier does.

This charity is calling for the government to clamp down on letting agents warning that failure to do so could undermine the progress made by the Renters Rights Act. At this stage I don’t think there is any evidence at all that the Renters Rights Act has made ANY progress, although my view is that it is likely to be very good for agents because more landlords are going to need agents to screen tenants, and agents are going to charge for this.

Does anybody know whether there is anywhere on gov.uk where a landlord or agent can sign up for email alerts on changes introduced by government relating to landlords, e.g. by the Renters Rights Act? If you want email alerts from HMRC on changes to tax affecting landlords then you can sign up here:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/hmrc-email-updates-videos-and-webinars-for-landlords

But I don’t know of anywhere on gov.uk where a landlord or agent can sign up for alerts on changes introduced by the Renters Rights Act in order that as a landlord or agent you can stay up to date with things affecting you. I didn’t know for example about the requirement for agents AND landlords to send the renters rights act information sheet to ALL NAMED TENANTS by the 31st May. I found out about that on this site and as far as I can see it wasn’t effectively publicised by the government.

Anyone know where landlords and agents can sign up for alerts?

These clueless charities is the reason why the rental market is in turmoil. Neither the charities nor the councils nor the so called governmental redress scheme are capable of managing their own affairs, let alone the vast property market, nonetheless the government’s policies run on them. A complete disaster if you ask me. By the way, none of the ministers have ever run a business or carried our ventures or entrepreneurship and it shows.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 04/06/2026 – 16:22
If they do that, then how are they going to catch the landlords unaware and force them to pay huge fines?