Landlords ‘running scared’ of Renters’ Rights Bill
6 months ago | 6 comments
Peers to debate final amendments to Renters’ Rights Bill tomorrow
10:38 AM, 13th October 2025, 6 months ago
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Peers will debate last-minute amendments tomorrow (14 October) as the Renters’ Rights Bill reaches its final stages.
Over the weekend, further amendments were added to the list, though no major changes are expected
The bill will go back and forth between the Lords and Commons to resolve any remaining disagreements on amendments.
Pet damage deposit
One of the key issues Peers are revisiting is the proposal to allow landlords to take a separate pet damage deposit.
As previously reported by Property118, Peers in the House of Lords voted to accept an amendment allowing landlords to take a separate pet damage deposit of up to three weeks’ rent on top of the usual deposit cap. The government, however, rejected this, arguing that the Tenant Fees Act 2019 already provides sufficient protection.
Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook said: “The amendment to allow landlords to require an additional deposit, equivalent to three weeks’ rent, as a condition of consent to a tenant’s request to keep a pet. We cannot support this amendment. Requiring a further three weeks’ deposit would cost the average tenant in England over £900.
“Such sums would be unaffordable for many tenants and would greatly exceed the average deposit deduction for pet damage of £300.”
Local authorities to meet the criminal, rather than the civil, standard of proof
Another key set of amendments, Lords Amendments 26 and 27, would require local authorities to meet the criminal, rather than the civil, standard of proof when imposing penalties for rental discrimination and rental bidding breaches.
These changes would raise the evidential bar for enforcement, requiring proof beyond reasonable doubt instead of on the balance of probabilities.
The government previously rejected these amendments, with 404 MPs voting to reject and 98 voting against rejection.
Mr Pennycook previously told a debate: “The government are absolutely clear that the civil standard, which is aligned with similar legislation, such as the wider anti-discrimination provisions of the Equality Act 2010, is the appropriate one to apply in these circumstances.
“Requiring local authorities to meet the more stringent criminal standard of proof for provisions that cannot lead to a criminal offence where the conduct persists would make local authority enforcement extremely challenging, and would be prohibitively resource-intensive. We cannot accept the amendments for those reasons.”
A third amendment being reintroduced would create a new ground for possession, allowing landlords to regain their property to house a carer for themselves or a family member.
The government has again opposed this proposal, warning that it could be open to abuse.
In the amendments-in-lieu paper, the Commons disagree with the amendment on the basis that “there is insufficient justification for enabling possession to be sought to accommodate carers.”
Commons has the authority to override the Lords
Peers are also once again pressing the government for Amendments 18 and 19 would reduce the prohibition on re-letting or re-marketing a property following the use of possession ground 1A from 12 months to six.
Currently, under the Renters’ Rights Bill, if a landlord evicts a tenant to sell a property but the sale falls through, they must wait 12 months before re-letting it. Amendment 19 would allow shared owners to bypass this restriction.
Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook previously opposed it, warning that it “could undermine protections for the small subset of tenants who happen to rent a sublet home from a shared owner.”
Other amendments to be debated tomorrow include the housing of agricultural land workers and the government to produce an annual report on the Decent Homes Standard for Ministry of Defence accommodation in England.
If disagreement between the Lords and Commons continues after tomorrow’s debate, the Commons has the authority to override the Lords and push through the government’s policies.
The full list of amendments can be seen by clicking here
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House of Commons, House of Lords, Landlords, Matthew Pennycook, pet damage deposit, pet deposit, renters rights bill, tenants
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Member Since May 2018 - Comments: 2016
4:56 PM, 16th October 2025, About 6 months ago
A few people on this thread have made comments about tenants with pets. In my experience as a landlord, tenants with children do more damage than tenants with pets, but this does depend upon the parents and how many children they have.
The Daily Express just published an article saying that an expert has suggested that a solution to closing asylum hotels is to put the tenants in social housing:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2121967/solution-to-close-migrant-hotels-being-considered
Now this may make perfect economic sense as the cost of putting tenants in social housing is probably a fraction of the cost of putting someone in a hotel.
But migrants are likely to be housed in areas where there is already pressure on social housing and where inter-community tensions are likely to arise if family or other community members have been on the social housing waiting list for months or years or are in poor-quality temporary accommodation: If all of a sudden in these areas ‘migrants’ appear in the community in either social housing or private rental accommodation, that is likely to cause considerable inter-community tension.
At the moment, implementing the Renters Rights Bill in its current form with the courts being in the state they are presently in will make an increasing proportion of tenants too high-risk to house in the PRS.
Even if the government believes that it needs to introduce the ‘Renters Rights Bill’ in the state that it is presently in, making it less attractive, and in particular more risky, for a landlord to house someone in need of a house in any GB community in comparison to an asylum seeker or economic migrant would be crazy.
Some landlords are worried about tenants with pets. My worst-ever tenant was born in the UK and worked in the public sector.
What I want from a tenant is (1) pay the rent on time and in full (2) look after the property (3) get on with the neighbours. I don’t care what skin colour they are, what religion they espouse (or none), what their sexual orientation is, or where they were born. But if somebody is paying the rent for them the skilled asylum-seeking, economic migrant family from e.g. Syria who don’t aspire to own a dog but as a consequence of their religion do believe in a clean house, raising well-behaved children and present a lower risk of addiction, may well be the lower risk tenant….particularly if a company is paying their rent for them.
As the government introduces its ‘Renters Rights Bill’ it needs to be very careful not to fuel right-wing extremism, particular in areas where people have been marginalised and where rents may be lower. Making it more risky (as the ‘Renters Rights Bill’ will do) to house people who were born in GB but are at the lower end of the economic scale is a very stupid thing to do.
Member Since October 2013 - Comments: 1635 - Articles: 3
8:33 PM, 16th October 2025, About 6 months ago
Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 16/10/2025 – 16:56
I think we are already beyond that point, as the Epping situation made clear. For the Home Office to state the rights of migrants are more imports than those of Epping residents, says it all. Locally, we see migrants being given social housing when the local population will have been waiting for social housing for years. This is a very worrying situation.
Member Since May 2018 - Comments: 2016
11:59 AM, 17th October 2025, About 6 months ago
Reply to the comment left by NewYorkie at 16/10/2025 – 20:33
I appreciate that many landlords will already be thinking twice about who they decide to house as a consequence of the proposals in the Renters Rights Bill. But it ain’t over until the fat lady sings as the saying goes. And so it ain’t really over until the Renters Rights Bill receives Royal Assent.
I’m a a small portfolio landlord with more than twenty years experience. Twenty years ago I used to house benefits tenants. Now I don’t do it because it’s just too high risk; benefits tenants don’t make it anywhere near the front of the queue.
Over the time that I’ve been a landlord the rhetoric coming out of some of the main parties concerning landlords has changed…the recent proposal from the Green Party to ‘ban the landlord-class’ really makes this point. The extreme left-wing parties see landlords as a class-enemy and they spit the phrase out….they might as well use the phrase ‘serial killer’ as the word ‘landlord’.
Apparently, labour is abandoning its target for building affordable housing:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15198639/Labour-slash-affordable-housing-targets-frantic-bid-meet-pledge-1-5million-new-homes.html
It was always obvious to anybody who was not completely incompetent that labour could not afford to build 1.5 million homes: The housing associations don’t have the money, the government doesn’t have the money and many potential first-time buyers can’t afford to buy them either. This is because they don’t have the deposit, or can’t afford the finance, or maybe their earnings are being held down because of what this government just did to attack anybody who was in employment outside the public sector or a unionised industry.
The bit of the market that could raise the finance to buy the accommodation that has already been built is the private rented sector, or PRS. But the loony-left parties are busy attacking that, the Green Party extremists being the latest bunch to crawl out from under a rock, take their lollipops out of their mouthes and yell class-war.
Just as I stopped taking benefits tenants years ago many landlords will now be reviewing who they can risk taking on as a tenant and who is about to become just too high risk. For some landlords who own their properties outright or via a limited company, or for some landlords whose lenders and insurers permit them to house ‘asylum seekers’ the people with an open cheque book are the Home Office because it keeps their hotel bill down. And it may be even cheaper for the taxpayer and even for local councils for ‘asylum seekers’ to be housed in social housing. This ‘social housing’ probably doesn’t even need to make EPC band C.
But making it more risky to house a benefits tenant or somebody on a low income who is trying to work and possibly having wages supplement by universal credit and/or housing benefit than an asylum seeker is an act of exceptional stupidity. Even for a political party, it is egregious.
The Renters Rights Bill was originally going to be a Rental Reform Bill…the idea being that there would be reciprocal responsibilities between landlord and tenant. That is not what it is today.
The Renters Rights Bill has not yet received Royal Assent. If the government uses its majority to pass the RRB in its present form then they really are very stupid and incompetent indeed. It is now not just benefits tenants who are becoming too high-risk to house in the PRS.