Councils appeal to private landlords to help with housing crisis

"The council says it is offering attractive financial incentives, including upfront cash, deposits, advance rent and continuous support for both landlords and tenants."

Will then they go after the LL who accept their 'generous offers' (cough, splutter) as soon as the RRB hits and fine them for accepting illegal upfront payments?

EVERY SINGLE COUNCIL offers to pay the rent in advance...they will all be totally stuffed when the (hated) private landlord calmly reminds them they can't surely be inciting them to break the law???

Wonder what Councils will come up with next to replace this 'incentive' for a legally compliant one, or do we expect a flurry of wording on the current amendment to exempt Councils specifically from offering the RIA and a LL accepting? Yet another 'one rule for them and another for us' cop out?

Their options are somewhat limited unless then of course they are willing to stand as full guarantor in such circumstances?

shuffling sound, creak and bang...
(Council leaves the room....)

The responses given so far on this thread are a catalogue of the disgraceful practices by councils that have been going on for decades. They will never learn to change their behaviour until all PRS landlords refuse to deal with them and their chickens finally roost.

As several people have commented, these councils offer warm words and "help" to sucker landlords in, but once the tenants have moved in, the Rental Reform Act will mean the landlords are *toast*. Too many of the tenants will default, they will trash the place, they will terrorise the neighbourhood and if the landlord tries to eviction, they face a minimum of 3 months with no rent, then, what, 8 months to get a Section 8 through the courts, and then court finding some petty infringement and denying the eviction, and councils continuing to tell the tenant "don't move out before the bailiffs are called in, or you will be making yourself intentionally homeless and we can't help you."

Even if a few people in the council genuinely want to support the PRS to help solve homelessness, there are dozens of their colleagues who affect neo-Marxist views and will do everything they can to subvert the scheme working effectively, which means sticks for the tenant as well as carrots.

Lolz, thanks but no thanks. Just look at the coments here, no one has had a good experience with this.

Councils shd be getting government money to joikd their own accomdation. No place for private landlords in providing essential housing, and paying them monthly rent when council could be building its own , the taxpayer paying it back would at least mean the taxpayer ultimately owns solid assets....rather than private landlords

Reply to the comment left by David100 at 31/01/2025 - 09:44
Couldn’t agree more..

What this Government has done to private landlords..

No chance, getting rid!

After the way Councils have treated me as a Landlord they can go swivel - I'm selling up.

Sorry to all the lovely families I genuinely liked but they are somebody elses problem now. I can get 5% - 7% investing the money from selling up nice and safely without the worry of this ridiculous Landlord Hating Government.

Good luck to all you guys that stick with it - you're going to need it.

I am in a position where it is advantageous for me to remain in the short term, BUT I will never again take any tenant from ANY council and will take great delight in telling them to swing their corporate hook.
Landlords have been and are being treated with contempt, and the government and local authorities deserve all the trouble they have heaped on themselves. There will be no cooperation from this landlord.

I was about to say this would be something I would consider if it was easy to evict a bad tenant, e.g within 4 weeks. Then I read all the comments.

People need to be given a chance, but there needs to major reform of the relationship between the council and landlord.

Reply to the comment left by Rookie Landlord at 02/02/2025 - 19:17
Look no further than the Renters' Rights Bill, unfortunately the reforms are all in the wrong direction.

Reply to the comment left by Guy Malone at 02/02/2025 - 14:52
Guy Malone - the UK Treasury has been hostile to state involvement in housebuilding for decades. Council Planning departments used to be really powerful, with substantial resources, project managers, surveyors and the like to oversee their own housebuilding programmes. This tends to be reserved just for local authority-led infrastructure nowadays.

Instead HMG and councils decided to sell off their housing stock to housing associations and to force private housebuilders to deliver what used to be known as council housing, via the mechanism of the dreaded S106 agreement. Instead of being treated like any normal business, taxed via corporation tax etc, housebuilders are been loaded up with extra taxes, such as infrastructure levies, ecology obligations, infrastructure "contributions" and the like. The "affordable homes" have to be virtually given away to housing associations - the houses are built to the same standard or higher as the ones for private sale, but the builders are only paid the actual construction cost at best. The housing association effectively gets the land on which the house sits for free, and has to pay nothing towards the planning, development and utility costs or the finance costs. And the developer is not allowed to make a penny in profit.

Social housing is a dead weight around the neck of the housebuilding industry, because the government is not prepared to pay for this massively subsidised housing itself. S106 and Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) have contributed enormously to killing off SME builders, and mean the only way for the builders who do survive to make a profit is to cram their sites and add the costs dodged by social housing onto the prices of their private houses instead.

This is worth repeating: any one who builds a new-build home is also paying for about 50% of the value of the "affordable" house next door, the one occupied by people who pay tiny rents and are most likely to be the ones terrorising the neighbourhood and keeping you up all night with their music, fighting and drug dealing.

I can think of no other industry, except perhaps oil and gas with their 80%+ tax rates, where profits are so tightly controlled and where Government thinks it has the right to dictate that 33-40% (and now 50% under Angela Rayner) of your business activity has to be spent on constructing something on its behalf and at a hefty loss, whilst still paying all the usual other business taxes. It's not surprising housebuilding is on its knees and it is so hard for small builders to have any chance of growing and competing with the consolidated big boys.