Labour MP questions landlord role in tackling tenant anti-social behaviour

Everyone is finding Landlords an easy targets to achieve their publicity to be in media.
1. Landlords have to check immigration or right to exist status to provide Home office service.
2. Landlords take antisocial behaviour resposibility to replace council responsibility.
3.landlord have to provide excellent services better than he or she has.
4. Landlord has to work like dog who is obedient and faithful to tenant and council.
5. In most cases bear the high running cost to provide accommodation to eliminate homelessness.
6. Landlords are blamed for housing shortages instead of councils building new homes in desirable areas.
7. Extract maximum money through fines and licencing instead of improving economy, creating jobs and useful technical for all the people.
8. Landlords unable to increase rent to meet fees because rental increase has limit due to iffordability.
9. Private landlords who has built private renting for their life support instead of receiving benefits and credits will pushed into poverty so become state dependent.
We Landlords have become easy target to punish for any inability of elected politicians. I don’t hear any strategy which will prepare nation to face challenging world and become self sufficient. For them it is Easy goal to find easy target and push responsibility to weak elements of society inorder to calm public anger.

Landlords are not acting as stand-in parents/guardians of its tenants. If the same anti-social tenant were owner-occupiers then complainers would have to resort to the Police and/or Local Authority, just because they’re a tenant shouldn’t alter that. You cannot make Landlords responsible for the actions of their tenants, we’re would it end are we responsible for them shoplifting, stealing, burglary, stabbings, murder?

Reply to the comment left by Hassan khan at 29/05/2026 – 11:33
This is true.

Labour refused to publish the results of their justice impact test on the courts.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/buy-to-let/labour-urged-publish-renters-rights-impact-assessment/?msockid=0b8a4155c7db6ba1058955b1c6196a07

If they have not already done it either the opposition parties or our press needs to be issuing a freedom of information act request for this and checking what does actually happen in the courts.

If labour want to fix a problem caused by removal of no-fault evictions they need to create obligations upon councils and the police to pass on evidence of antisocial behaviour at properties to landlords. If you had a problem with antisocial behaviour and either put up cameras or hired a private detective to investigate the police would be more likely to prosecute the landlord than the tenant. You don’t have any power.

The short-term solution is just not to take the problem tenants in the first place by adopting both robust credit-referencing and introducing character referencing FOR ALL TENANTS.

Why should a landlord be doing unpaid the job of the Police and the Local Authority? Many are doing the job of housing those that the LA cannot, or even will not.

This is one of the straws that with the RRA and the RReformBill before that that was a significant reason me me to start the selling of my portfolio.

Forget that I won’t see 70 again but at 5’3″ and female why would I put myself in the very real danger of physical and verbal abuse?

Reply to the comment left by Judith Wordsworth at 29/05/2026 – 13:19
Of course a landlord SHOULDN’T be obliged, unpaid, to do the job of the Police and the Local Authority: The answer is DON’T house those that the LA cannot, or even will not house.

As for those who have already been housed, the majority of landlords may even now be blissfully unaware that a failure to send the Labour Renters Rights Act Information sheet to all named tenants by this Sunday (31st May) CREATES AN OFFENCE under the Labour Renters Rights Act, for which the landlord is potentially liable for £4,000-7,000, potentially rising to £40,000 if the offence continues beyond 28 days, if I’ve understood the situation correctly. A lot of landlords still won’t know about this and may be criminalised unnecessarily, just because the OBLIGATIONS under the Labour Renters Rights Act have not been effectively publicised by labour.

I think more importantly (because labour would have to be completely stupid to impose these fines for ‘offences’ committed in 2026 when it did not publicise this change widely in relation to the number of small landlords) if a landlord subsequently has to go to court to get his or her property back for any reason but has COMMITTED AN OFFENCE under the act (a) will the court be ABLE to return the property (b) will a judge who has a bias in favour of tenants be able to use this as an EXCUSE to ignore mandatory grounds for repossession and find in favour of a tenant?

Labour refused to publish the results of its court impact assessment of the impact of its Renters Rights Act.

https://mortgagesoup.co.uk/govt-declines-to-publish-renters-rights-bill-court-impact-assessment/#:~:text=The%20government%20has%20refused%20to%20release%20a%20key,renewed%20concerns%20over%20transparency%20in%20the%20legislative%20process.

The Labour Renters Rights Act is not the Conservative Rental Reform Bill. The Labour Renters Rights Act is heavy-handed, disempowers landlords, and stops them from being able to do something about antisocial behaviour. It is also likely to criminalise them when the real criminals are occupying their properties.

In the same way the police will not help Landlords when tenants smash up our property (its a civil matter don’t you know) we wont help police enforce criminal matters. And if we did, we would probably get sued!

Reply to the comment left by David100 at 29/05/2026 – 14:46
I doubt that any labour MP has any understanding of how problematic this is, even if it’s not a criminal matter. At the simplest level I’ve had problems with tenants who don’t sort their waste into the correct waste bins, or put the waste out for collection by the local authority, even though they are paying for the service via their council tax. End result was piles of maggots and vermin (foxes and rats) attacking the rubbish and spreading it around neighbouring properties. I’ve also had tenants holding wild parties late into the night, upsetting the neighbours. There is a whole spectrum of ‘antisocial behaviour’ from this kind of thing up to tenants smoking crack in stairwells, injecting drugs or growing them.

As a landlord you don’t have the POWERS to deal with this kind of thing. Your OBLIGATIONS imposed by government are to leave the tenants in peace to ‘enjoy’ the property. And any powers that as a landlord you did have before (no-fault evictions) have just been taken away by the Labour Renters Rights Act.