Please stop making good landlords’ lives harder

Apparently, landlords in Greater Manchester are to get a special programme to help them understand how to be landlords.

Somewhere in government, that need ought to prompt an awkward question.

Would complying with the rules be easier if the government and councils stopped adding so many of them?

Now there’s the Better Renting programme in Greater Manchester which promises practical tools, a website and help with understanding responsibilities, including licensing.

According to Property118, The Dispute Service Group and Nationwide Foundation are behind it.

Landlords are struggling

Is it useful? Potentially. But before anyone celebrates another source of guidance, I would like to know why the people expected to obey the rules are struggling to find their way through them.

The research highlights that landlords in Greater Manchester find it difficult to keep up with policy and consequently they struggle to comply.

And there is an admission in the announcement that deserves attention.

Dr Jennifer Harris, the head of policy at The Dispute Service Group, says: “The vast majority of landlords want to do what is right for their tenants and remain compliant with all their obligations.”

She continues: “However, our research shows that fragmented channels of communication and difficulties accessing official resources are making this harder than it should.”

Take a breath and read that again. Landlords want to comply, but getting hold of the information is harder than it should be.

How has that become the landlord’s problem to solve?

Landlords shouldn’t be expected to go on a time-consuming quest finding the right guidance to comply with a law.

If councils or government must insist that responsible landlords ‘have nothing to fear’, they should their requirements understandable.

Is the rule needed?

Above all else, surely now is the time for somebody in power to question whether another requirement is necessary before deciding how to explain it.

So, can landlords in Greater Manchester answer this: has the Good Landlord Charter made your responsibilities clearer, or left you with more questions?

We also need to examine what a rule requires a landlord to do; how much it costs and what tenants gain from it.

I think we should have an explanation of any proposal for landlords and what it will address and why existing powers cannot deal with it.

The growing burden matters every new requirement shouldn’t be considered in isolation but how it fits in with all of the other duties a landlord must fulfil.

But ask whether a rule is necessary and we will hear an argument about providing decent housing.

The vast majority of landlords already provide safe homes, carry out repairs and meet their responsibilities.

That means we should demand that policymakers justify any new rule they want to impose because both of those expectations belong together.

Landlords are overwhelmed

Paul Dennett, the deputy mayor of Greater Manchester, acknowledges that landlords have been expected to keep pace with increasingly complex rules and responsibilities.

If that’s the case, then let us have a serious conversation about reducing that complexity.

Will this new scheme identify confusing requirements and recommend changes?

Will it tell councils where communication fails?

Will anyone be prepared to say that an obligation duplicates another or achieves too little to justify its cost?

Those would be useful results.

The simplest help this Labour government and councils could offer is to stop piling needless laws, regulations and costs onto landlords already trying to do the right thing.

Let’s review what exists and remove unnecessary duplication.

Make essential landlord requirements understandable, and publish accessible guidance when changes are introduced.

By all means, give landlords practical support but please have the ambition for a system we can reasonably understand and afford to comply with.

Before commissioning another landlord scheme, rules or laws, let’s take a step back and consider whether quite so many obstacles need to be there.

You know, like try a little common sense, preferably before someone decides it needs a licence or a hefty fine to force ‘compliance’.

Until next time,

The Landlord Crusader